Five Wide Fullbacks: The Music Edition

Welcome to another edition of Five Wide Fullbacks, a weekly series that strives for excellence every Friday morning. Today, 5WF is still in offseason mode as game week is still 10 days away.

But when you're in offseason mode, there's still plenty of interesting topics to talk about and right now we're going to talk about a favorite of many: music.

5 questions.

5 answers.

1. What's the most annoying aspect to modern pop music?

This is easy, it's seemingly every artists' penchant to repeat themselves. Listen to your garden variety pop music radio station and you'll hear at least half of the songs using a repetitive word, or phrase, as part of a hook, chorus, or generally catchy part of the tune.

In some ways, this tactic has always been a part of producing songs, but it's been on steroids for many years. I don't know when it exactly started but I'm pretty sure Rihanna's 2007 song "Umbrella" was a big factor.

"Under my umbrella, ELLA, ELLA, EH, EH."

Actually, I'm pretty sure Rihanna can't write or collaborative on a song without using this repetitive device. Have you heard her new single "Where Have You Been"? The hook is the same phrase repeated, uninterrupted, 5 times in a row.

Ditto for Katy Perry, she can't help but revert to this strategy on every single she's released.

What about Flo Rida's new single "Whistle"? Yup, 'whistle baby' is repeated in the very first line and then throughout the entire song as a main hook.

Cher Lloyd's strange song "Want U Back" is another culprit with the 'So I went and walked away, way, way' and repeating the title in the chorus.

Even someone a little more distinguished and mature like Usher can't help it in his new single "Scream" where half the song is literally the refrain 'ooh baby, baby."

Most of pop music is a large dump of suck anyway, but can't we do better, etter, etter?

2. Enough of the garbage out there, what's your favorite band right now?

Well, over the past however many months in one of our 12 million email threads our OFD staff writes to each other, Mouth was always mentioning the Black Keys and how awesome they were bringing back real blues rock music. I'll admit, I was skeptical at first.

I couldn't see the attraction to a two-piece band and I was sure I'd get sick of them very quickly.

But damn is this band awesome.

I've kicked myself for not listening to them sooner, but I kind of like being able to pour over 7 albums worth of material---most of which rocks. Plus, they were so underground and under-appreciated for such a long time that I probably would have gone hipster on them and resented their growing musical boundaries with Danger Mouse, and seethed at their new found fame.

I was a little late to the party, but I made it. I'd also like to mention that the Black Keys have a lot of songs that are simply fun to play on guitar, and any time a band pulls that off it's a big bonus.

3. Speaking of guitar, if money was no matter which electric guitar would you purchase right now?

Gosh, that's tough.

Well, I currently own a Gretsch Pro Jet which was a moderately nice first electric guitar to buy. I did things the right way, learned on a friend's acoustic, before getting my own electric. It's a comfortable guitar, very smooth and playable, but it is pretty limited with its tone and range. Think early 60's rock or rock-a-billy music---that's what this baby was meant for.

I've never had any desire to buy a Fender Stratocaster or Gibson Les Paul (you'll notice my Gretsch has a very similar body), while the so-called metal guitars made by ESP, Ibanez, and others offer me little excitement.

I'd be positively giddy about buying any of the following guitars:

Fender Telecaster Deluxe 1973 (three-tone sunburst)

Gibson ES 137 (cherry burst)

Rickenbacker 360 (blue)

Gibson ES 330 with Bigsby (sunbusrt)

4. OK, back to football. Most minds will agree that the USC and Oklahoma games are the toughest on the upcoming schedule, but there has been a lot of debate over the third toughest. In this article from January you had Michigan at No.3---are you sticking with the Wolverines?

Yes I am. Stanford and Michigan State can plead their case, but I probably wouldn't find it convincing.

Both the Cardinal and Spartans have a better defense than Michigan, but they don't have Denard Robinson and their offenses lost a lot of production from 2011. Both those clubs have thrived on balance offensively and they could be in for a rude awakening after each graduated perhaps their finest quarterbacks in school history.

Plus, we know what happens when Notre Dame plays Michigan. That weird voodoo alone is worth like a couple All-Americans or something like that. I'll stick with the Wolverines as the third toughest game, under the lights at home.

5. Shouldn't we be getting close to a starting quarterback announcement? Is that happening any time soon?

Brian Kelly told us not to hold our breath on the decision, and he's also strongly hinted (with the "It's going to take all 20-something practices") that this could be a Hopping on the Plane to Ireland, I Guess I Should Tell the Quarterback Who is Starting move, but if it's anything like last year the decision is coming soon.

Last year we had an Open Thread for the QB decision from Kelly on August 22nd, only 12 days away from the opener against South Florida.

As of today, we are 14 days away from the opener in Ireland, and 12 days away from the team boarding their flight across the Atlantic Ocean.

I would expect an announcement some time between today and next Tuesday.