Some people are making fun of John McCain for managing to insert another reference to his illustrious war record into an interview about music, but it is relevant, and his claim of music appreciation stagnation sounds eerily familiar.

Speaking to Walter Isaacson at the Aspen Institute in Colorado on Thursday, McCain found himself explaining a recent interview with Blender Magazine in which he selected ABBA’s 1976 track “Dancing Queen” as his favorite song.

“What were you thinking?,” Isaacson asked him, looking incredulous.

“If there is anything I am lacking in, I’ve got to tell you, it is taste in music and art and other great things in life,” McCain joked. “I’ve got to say that a lot of my taste in music stopped about the time I impacted a surface-to-air missile with my own airplane and never caught up again.”

Lieutenant Commander McCain was held as a prisoner of war from October 26, 1967 to March 14, 1973. Like being in a time machine, everything halted for him during those years. Children did not grow, seasons did not change; the man was held in hellish stasis.

Arthur, who loves and listens to music from the 50’s that I’ve never heard of, has long claimed that all those years on submarines is what stunted his development. When he’d finally come up for air after 3 or more months under water, different groups were playing on the radio… then he’d submerge again.

By the time he was discharged from the Navy, the music groups weren’t the only change… the entire tone of popular music was extremely different. There was no slow transition from one style to another and then another… thus, he stayed with what he knew and loved.

I imagine the same is true for McCain.