I admit, I’m not a music critic. In fact, if you’re the type of person who insists on listening to entire albums from start to finish, spends hours upon hours on Pandora.com, only smokes Lucky Strikes, wears women’s pants (if you’re a dude) or has an iPod full of bands with names that read like captions from an abstract art textbook, you’ll probably consider me a philistine.

If you meet any of the above qualifications, stop reading now and save your angst for more existential dilemmas. You’ll find me downright repulsive. I download single tracks, have my car radio continuously tuned to KISS FM and prefer to smoke Marlboros, which go better with my cowboy boots and gun rack.

Now that we’re clear that I’m absolutely not qualified to discuss popular music at anything approaching an intellectual level, I’m going to discuss popular music at something approaching an intellectual level. Specifically, I’d like to touch on two bands: Wilco and Cake.

Chicago-based Wilco will play at Patten Gym Friday for the A&O Ball. When I first learned that Jeff Tweedy & Co. were going to headline this show, I admit I was disappointed.

Primarily, I had reservations about Wilco on principle. I’d always viewed them as one of those bands that college students say they enjoy because people of wealth and taste (or at least intelligence and taste) like Wilco. I viewed the band as merely an accoutrement that people latched onto to prove that they were more sophisticated than the average Van Halen fan. Whenever I heard talk about something called Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, my inner Holden Caulfield started shrieking “phony!” at the top of his lungs.

In addition, the electronic distortion in between some tracks on YHF made me want to climb the wall every time I heard the album played. But one of my more open-minded friends managed to convince me to give Wilco a second chance.

Although the band hasn’t yet made it onto my Facebook profile under “Favorite Music,” “Heavy Metal Drummer” is steadily climbing the ranks of my most played songs on iTunes. Still, it faces some tough competition in the form of the Dropkick Murphys’ song from “The Departed” soundtrack and a couple of Green Day numbers. Yes, I can feel you judging me.

On the contrary, when I heard the news that Cake will likely, probably, perhaps play on the Lakefill this Dillo Day, I was borderline ecstatic. Cake is awesome. They are funny. They wrote my second-most-favorite song title ever: “Satan is My Motor,” (The No. 1 spot still belongs to “Detachable Penis” by King Missile).

On discovering this life-changing bit of information, I lit a candle and asked for prayers from St. Jude that 1) Cake will perform for sure, and 2) that the band will play in the evening, not at noon, because I won’t be on campus during Dillo morning. OK, maybe that didn’t happen. But I was still extremely happy, giddy, if you will.

Then I heard that people were complaining about Cake. I considered these grumblings the vilest of blasphemies. True, I’m not the Arbiter of All Musical Taste. But I’m usually right 100 percent of the time. And I’m pretty convinced that I’m correct in my untrammeled admiration for the lyrical genius and awe-inspiring brilliance of the musical juggernaut known as Cake. To doubt this band really is to have Satan be your motor.

Perhaps I’m being too harsh. Maybe I’ve attacked the issue of what constitutes good music with a .12 gauge shotgun (or maybe an Express rifle) when a scalpel is better suited to the task. But even through the haze of my journalistic inadequacies, one simple fact shines through with a pure white light: Cake rocks.