The staff of Mother Jones is, once again, rounding up the heroes and monsters of the past year. Importantly, this is a completely non-exhaustive and subjective list, giving our reporters a chance to write about something that brought joy or discontent. Enjoy.

Modern kids’ songs, the stuff of literal torture, are in lockstep with the AI slop that defines the current era of crushing, synthetic sameness. They suck. So you can imagine my surprise, amid a technicolor migraine brought on by the tyranny of “Daddy Finger” one morning, when the algorithm threw out a familiar voice. With equal parts amusement and skepticism, I asked my husband, “Is this the dude from…Fall……………Out Boy?”

I have zero affection for Fall Out Boy. If anything, I’m certain I thought I was above this music; that’s what idiot teens on the verge of escaping the suburbs think. But I’m back in the ’burbs and have discovered something surprising.

Indeed, the voice belonged to none other than Patrick Stump, singing the theme song of a TV series beloved by my 3-year-old son, Spidey and His Amazing Friends. And there was Stump again on the vocals of every other song that followed. “Spin, Spin, Spin,” “Trace-E Shake,” “Time to Spidey Save the Day,” and so forth. Over the course of the soundtrack, I found myself tickled, even intrigued to hear where Stump would take Team Spidey. And after weeks of marathon listening—at home, in the car, on vacation—my sanity remains strangely intact.

Which isn’t to say that I enjoyed the music. Given a choice between silence and Spidey, the former will always be more appealing. Nor do I have an iota of affection for Fall Out Boy, the band that made Stump famous in the early aughts. If anything, I’m certain I thought I was above this music because that’s what idiot teens on the verge of escaping the suburbs think. But exactly 20 years after leaving the ’burbs, I’m back, toddler in tow, understanding that in each of the songs on Spidey and His Amazing Friends, one quality separates Stump from nearly everyone else in the genre: Stump cares. At times, you can even detect passion, as Stump fully commits to the cheer, “Go, webs, go! Go, webs, go! Go, webs go!” He confers on each song the same gusto of younger, noughtier days.

I was suspicious, though. Why would any self-respecting musician do this? Sure, he probably has children to impress. (Two of them, in fact.) But that still didn’t explain his involvement, at least to my satisfaction. That’s when a more shameful curiosity took hold: The guy must really need a paycheck, huh? What else could justify lyrics about shooting “thwips” to web up Zola than a nice Disney paycheck?

But after a few more clicks into my research, it became clear that my thinking was misguided, cruel even. It turns out Stump is quite wealthy, and more importantly, the guy could not have been more enthusiastic to participate in the project. As he told Billboard in 2021:

“Composing and writing all of the music for the series has been incredible because I am such a big Spidey fan,” Stump says. “The theme song for Spidey and His Amazing Friends, you couldn’t pull me away from the studio after I recorded it because I just wanted to add more stuff. I was just so excited. There’s a certain frenetic energy to Spidey—and the webs swinging—that I just wanted to put into it. So it was all of those things sped up and made overexcited, because that’s how I was feeling.”

Now here is a man, similar in age to the adults forced to listen along, showcasing what it means to pivot with grace. To evolve—yes, maybe to lesser forms!—but with the same big ideas you carried when life brimmed with more promise. To still have fun with it, even at the outset of middle age, when life dulls to the logistics of school pickups and a mortgage.

The truth is that my attempts to reckon with why an erstwhile radio fixture was now slinging Spidey songs say a lot more about me than anything else. At 37, I have settled into a comfortable place with the notion of creative mediocrity. But thankfully, others have figured out the tricky balance of aging and creating—something I now think about every time Spidey makes his way back into our car rides. Will a younger ambition return to me one day? I hope so. Who knew a kids’ song could inspire a grown-up?

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