It's always nice to be pleasantly surprised by someone

We all form opinions about people, some quicker than others. We jump to conclusions and often, if we're not completely wrong, we at least learn there is more to the story than we knew.

I'm not completely unaware of pop culture, but at age 64, I do find myself falling prey to the old saying that as we age, first we lose track of who's who in music, then of who's who on television and finally who's who in the movies.

In 2013 for the first time, I saw the cover of People magazine's "Sexiest Man on Earth" issue and had no idea who the guy was.

As it turns out, the guy is a pop singer, but even after I learned that, I realized I had never heard of his group, Maroon 5.

I'm certainly no expert on 21st century pop music. I've found a couple of groups I like, including one called Spock's Brain. But most of my "new music" consists of finding people who have been around for a while that I wasn't aware of.

Since I'm not a hermit, I was always aware of Miley Cyrus, although hardly in a positive way. I knew about her wholesome image as Hannah Montana and I was also aware of her unsightly efforts to shed that image as she got older.

Miley 2013

It culminated in her freak-show performance at the 2013 Video Music Awards, one that earned her all the publicity she could ever want.

But it pretty much wiped out any semblance of classiness that had gone along with her younger days. She appeared to be at least starting down that unfortunate road traveled by young female stars like Britney Spears and Lindsay Lohan before her.

Where could she go from her "twerking" performance? I certainly couldn't say, but the music she was making wasn't anything that the world couldn't live without.

Something strange happened, though. When I was writing about the late Pete Seeger earlier in the week, I came across a performance of "Forever Young" he had done for an Amnesty International project honoring the music of Bob Dylan.

It was a four-CD set with 76 different songs by an amazingly eclectic roster of artists, artists who made names for themselves as far back as the 1930s and as recently as only yesterday.

I have only listened to some of it, but imagine how surprised I was to find Miley Cyrus on Disc Two, with a Dylan song titled "You're Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go." And imagine how much more surprised I was to see that it was really good.



I don't think Miley is going to become a folk singer, so I don't know how many more songs there will be like this one. But one thing is evident from it. There's more to her than I thought there was, and that's always nice to realize.