My brother just sent me a link to One Hundred Albums You Should Remove from Your Collection Immediately. I'm proud to say I only own 2 of the top 25 albums, but I'm not telling you which ones. I'm not that proud.

My brother is one of those little brats who repeat their little MP3! MP3! mantras and buy iPods and roll their eyes when I say "but CD has better sound quality!" as they happily download emo band after emo band on their parents' fat broadband cable connection. I stood my higher ground. That's stealing! I dutifully bought a lot of CDs which I listened to once or twice and then put away forever, because, quite frankly, they were bad albums.

I have to say, I'm coming around. As I was purging my CD collection last week, getting a pile of stuff to sell at Amoeba, I finally began to understand the purpose of the MP3. The MP3 was invented as a way to store and listen to single songs when the rest of the album sucks. Why pay for and keep a whole CD when you can only listen to two of the songs while the rest make you want to stick an icepick into your eardrum to stop the pain? Rip the ones you like, ditch the CD. They're also useful for songs you sort of like but are embarrassed to own and would never, ever pay for. Songs like the Nike commercial Elvis remix of "A Little Less Conversation," or the Minnie Ripperton cover of the Doors' "Light My Fire". This is the only explanation I can find for why I couldn't find any copies of, say, Bach's Suites for Unaccompanied Cello on Limewire but I had no problem finding 5,000 copies of the new Britney Spears single. Granted, this did not stop me from spending 10 hours straight looking for stuff like, oh, Minnie Ripperton's cover of "Light My Fire" (featuring Jose Feliciano. No shit.)

The RIAA should stop whining. They have nothing to worry about. They just have to stop banking on singles from talentless one-hit artists and start putting out some decent albums. I went to Amoeba, and with my hard-earned trade-in credit I bought Suba:Tributo and Verve Remixed, both of which were very good listening, all the way through.