I need to get something off my chest.

My name is Dylan. I am forty-five years old. I have a beard. I own power tools. I paint tiny plastic soldiers for fun. I have strong opinions about welding techniques from my commercial diving days. I am, by most external metrics, a Dude (not really but for this post let us pretend).

And my Spotify Wrapped looks like it was curated by a fourteen-year-old girl at a sleepover.

Taylor Swift. Sabrina Carpenter. Chappell Roan. Dua Lipa. Christina Aguilera. Mandy Moore. If she has ever been described as a “pop princess” by a magazine with a glossy cover, there is a very strong chance she is in my top ten most played. This is not a phase. This is not ironic. I am not doing a bit. I just genuinely, deeply, without reservation love pop music made by women and I am done pretending that requires an explanation.

Because here’s the thing — it doesn’t. But people act like it does. There’s this weird cultural expectation that a guy my age should be listening to, I don’t know, classic rock? Dad music? Whatever Spotify thinks a 45-year-old man should listen to based on some algorithm that has clearly never met me? And when you deviate from that, people get this look on their face. The look that says “oh, okay” in a way that is absolutely not okay. The look that says they’re recalculating something about you in real time.

And to those people I say: I don’t care. I am free. I am liberated. I am listening to “Espresso” for the forty-seventh time today and I am having a better day than you.

Here’s where it gets interesting though. I have ADHD. And if you know anything about ADHD brains, you know that we latch onto things that give us dopamine with the grip strength of a toddler holding a cookie. Pop music — good pop music — is engineered for dopamine. The hooks. The builds. The drops. The bridge that changes key and makes you feel like you’re ascending into heaven on a glitter-covered escalator. It’s not shallow. It’s precision-crafted emotional architecture. These women are building cathedrals out of three minutes and forty seconds and a chorus you can’t get out of your head.

Taylor Swift didn’t become the most successful artist on the planet by accident. That woman writes songs that burrow into your brain like they’re paying rent. Christina Aguilera has one of the most powerful voices in the history of recorded music and the fact that she got lumped into some teen pop dismissal in the early 2000s is a crime. Mandy Moore went from “Candy” to writing the emotional backbone of This Is Us and if you don’t think that’s range then I don’t know what to tell you.

And Chappell Roan. Listen. If you are not listening to Chappell Roan right now you are missing out on one of the most exciting things happening in music. “Good Luck, Babe!” is the kind of song that makes you pull your car over because you need to just sit with it for a second. She’s doing something special and I will not shut up about it.

Sabrina Carpenter is — and I will defend this with my life — one of the best pure pop songwriters working right now. “Espresso” is a perfect pop song. I don’t mean good. I mean perfect. Every syllable is where it should be. The production is immaculate. It’s fun and clever and it makes you want to move your body and that is what pop music is supposed to do.

Dua Lipa made Future Nostalgia during a pandemic and it sounded like the inside of a disco ball feels. That album is joy in physical form. I will not be entertaining counterarguments.

Here’s my theory. Somewhere along the way, we decided that music made by women — specifically pop music made by women — was less serious. Less worthy. Something to be embarrassed about. And that’s garbage. The craftsmanship in a great pop song is every bit as impressive as whatever seven-minute prog rock odyssey is supposed to earn you credibility at a dinner party. More impressive, maybe, because you have to do it in three and a half minutes and make it sound effortless.

I think the ADHD thing is real though. My brain needs stimulation. It needs novelty and hooks and things that grab it by the collar and say pay attention to this. Pop music does that better than almost anything else. When I’m coding and I need to focus, it’s pop. When I’m painting miniatures and I need to zone in, it’s pop. When I’m driving and I need to not lose my mind in traffic, it’s pop. It’s not background music for me. It’s medicine. It’s the soundtrack that makes my brain work the way it’s supposed to.

So no. I will not be apologizing for my Spotify Wrapped. I will not be switching to something more age-appropriate. I will not be pretending that I listen to anything other than what I listen to.

I am a forty-five-year-old man. My most played artist is Taylor Swift. The pop princesses have my whole heart and I’m keeping it that way.

Stay loud, stay unapologetic, and listen to whatever makes your brain light up.