Fall Out Boy: In addition to the glorious advent of the burrito, we now have a new reason to salute Hispanic culture: In Mexico City of late, roving bands of teens have taken to beating the crap out of emo kids. Sure, it's wrong to salute open violence, but c'mon, is there a more worthy target of abuse than whiny suburban nancy boys squeezed into sperm-count-reducing girl pants?

Didn't think so. Perhaps because the emo set is so odious, I gave Fall Out Boy flack by osmosis, by being the most visible face of that scene, even though, truth be told, they're more of a straight-up pop band than anything else -- and a pretty good one at that. Their second full-length disc, "From Under the Cork Tree," is full of equally bratty and bittersweet anthems for the lovable loser in all of us.

Seriously, if this band didn't exist, John Hughes would have invented them already.

Britney Spears: Britney's so easy to poke ... fun of. Where did you think I was going with that one? I'd tell you to get your mind out of the gutter, but if you did that, you wouldn't be spending your time here with me.

Get past Brit-Brit's minefield of a personal life and her spotty first couple of albums, and her recent works are pure pop cotton candy. Spears' latest disc, the electro-fied steam bath "Blackout," is a great, ballad-free dance floor workout that, like her legal woes, never seems to relent.

Dio: With his big ol' wizard sleeves and penchant for singing about mystic wolves, Dio is a geyser of heavy metal punch lines. But after having caught him fronting Black Sabbath a couple of times last year, the joke's clearly on me.

Go see Ozzy Osbourne try and blather through the Sabbath canon, flapping his arms up and down like a wounded waterfowl, and then check out this guy, whose voice is still a powerful, pristine instrument. There's no comparing the two: Ozzy needs to retire, while Dio is still so metal, the dude burps lug nuts.

Coldplay: Initially hated this band because of its flushable first single, "Yellow," which still sounds like a bad Dave Matthews Band outtake to me, the kind of gooey, maudlin pabulum that's the audio equivalent of one of those cerebellum-deadening Matthew McConaughey romantic "comedies."

But it's hard to deny the band's second album, the grand "A Rush of Blood to the Head," a sweeping, sentimental disc that could soften even the most hardened of cynics and/or skulls -- like mine.

Jason Bracelin's "Sounding Off" column appears on Tuesdays. Contact him at 702-383-0476 or e-mail him at jbracelin@ reviewjournal.com.