At 6 we awoke and saw that, contrary to the yelling angry worker’s information, ticket sales were beginning at 6:30 and a line had already formed. By 7 we had tickets booked, although for about 24 hours of travel, since all of the express trains were full. We were jubilant.

As we whipped out our credit cards, the familiar stylings of Marvin Gaye streamed from the loudspeakers: “And when I get that feeling, I want sexual healing.” And we were healed. We danced, sang along, induced stares. But it just made us feel so fine. It was a transcendent moment.

The thing about bad American music is that we like it because it’s bad. I don’t appreciate Marvin Gaye because of the soaring harmonies or intricate rhythm, but because he’s so... sexual. Generally, I find Babs cheesy, but cheesy can be fun. *NSync and Britney Spears are awful, but I know every word.

Because it’s simple, because it’s catchy, this is the music we export in mass quantities. Why should that be surprising? It’s the music we consume in large quantities at home. What we often forget is that despite all the high culture from other countries, they produce their share of bad stuff too. I’m traveling around Europe to sample good food, see fine paintings, and examine classic works of architecture. Even back in the 16th century, before America was a country, I’m sure that for every masterpiece by Michelangelo there were hundreds of campy, tasteless paintings of naked cherubs and grapes.

The Spanish music I heard, interspersed among the American, was pretty awful. And you can only blame so much of it on us. Americans may have liked Billy Ray Cyrus’s “Achy Breaky Heart” back when I was in elementary school, but I don’t think that, after so many years, you can blame us for its current popularity in Spain. At dance clubs in Barcelona you can dance to a new version: “No rompas mi corazón, mi pobre corazón.” “Achy breaky heart” is at least a slightly more novel phrase than “poor heart.”

Yet I am just as susceptible to bad Spanish pop as bad American pop. One of my favorites is a song called “Me Gustas Tú,” whose verses are repetitions of the general phrase “I like [X], I like you,” with X ranging from airplanes to dinner to chestnuts to dreaming.

My reaction in the train station was more than just a yearning for the comforts of home, where everyone speaks English and buying a train ticket isn’t a journey into purgatory. In part it may have been nostalgia; I hadn’t heard most of those songs in years. They were, after all, the bad songs of past decades.