We watched a little bit of the Grammys last night. I’m embarrassed to say that it was only the second time I’d purposely seen part of the Grammys — the first time being last year.

The Grammys have always confused me. Song of the Year, Record the Year, Album of the Year? (Here are the differences.)

Plus, I’ve never been all that knowledgeable about pop music. Take an artist, a title, and how a song sounds: I often only know, at most, two out of three. I could tell you who sings a song but I have no idea what the song sounds like, or I know who sings a particular song but I don’t know the name of it, or I know the name of a song but I have no idea who sings it. This is true of tons of songs from the ’70s and ’80s that I’ve been hearing since I was a kid.

For instance: last week on Glee, they performed “Silly Love Songs” by Wings. The only part of the song I knew was an excerpt from a song medley in Moulin Rouge. Or at least I thought that was the only part I knew. When they got to the chorus (“I… love… you…”) I realized, “Oh! This is THAT song? I love that song!” And yet I had no idea what it was called or that it was sung by Paul McCartney and Wings.

I don’t know why this is the case. It’s probably because I never watched much MTV growing up.

There are also lots of songs that I first encountered by hearing them sung by college a capella groups. I’d hear an a capella version of a song over and over — by seeing the group perform it often or buy owning the album –and then one day I’d hear the original song on the radio, and it would sound so weird with instruments.

Today my knowledge of pop music comes mainly from two places: Saturday Night Live and Glee. Honestly I don’t think I’d know who Katy Perry was otherwise.

At least these days I have the excuse of being over 35.