Two and a half months into 2015, I’m kicking off my first installment of ‘What are the Kids Listening To?,’ wherein I feature ten songs ranking high on Billboard’s Hot 100.

A glance at the chart reveals that the music business is a lot like the movie business, in that the first quarter of the year is sloooow. Most of the songs atop the Hot 100 are from 2014.

It makes sense, more or less, for the movie industry to work that way. Big budget blockbusters hold out for summer, when kids are out of school, and prestige films wait for fall, to better their chances during awards season.

But why wouldn’t popular music come out year round? Maybe hit-makers covet that ‘Song of the Summer’ designation so prefer to time their releases just right.

At any rate, featuring the highest ten tracks on Billboard’s Hot 100 that have not been on the blog already will take me pretty deep into the countdown. But I’m making an exception for the song sitting atop the chart.

I have to offer a mea culpa for leaving ‘Uptown Funk’ off of my year-end best songs list. I guess the best way to describe my experience with the song at the time was that I had heard it but I hadn’t yet heard it.

I’m not sure when that changed, exactly. Maybe during a recent wedding reception, when the track had the entire congregation jumping on the dance floor like mad fools. Or maybe it was watching my youngest daughter listen to it over headphones after I uploaded the track to her iPod.

Anyway, it finally got me. Should have been a top ten song on my 2014 chart… maybe even top five. I welcome all ‘I told you so’s.’