Moving past my regrettable self-reference in the third person, those are, indeed, harrowing words for a music reporter to reveal publicly, cringeworthy and eminently mockable as they may be, but there they are.
At the risk of incurring yet further scorn, I will double down: I regret nothing.
The first album I ever owned was Bon Jovi’s “New Jersey,” a now-gloriously dated cassette tape that was the prized centerpiece of a birthday haul all the way back in 1988.