NEWS: EDITORIAL: Guilty Pleasures

Do you sing along to it in the car, but only if the windows are up (and you turn it down at stoplights, pretending to stare straight ahead)? Do you put it on and dance around the house, but only when nobody's home? If it came up in conversation with, say, a friend who thinks he knows everything about music would you conveniently omit your love for it at the risk of having to endure his scorn?

We all indulge a few guilty pleasures; things we know are wrong but can't quite bring ourselves to give up, like Little Debbie snack cakes or reality tv. Lest you think I go about these things all willy-nilly here are a few things that qualify an album for Guilty Pleasure status in my book:

Good Band, Bad Album
The Rolling Stones have “Bridges to Babylon.” REM has “Monster.” The best of them put out a stinker now and then, but like the sickening sweetness of spoiling fruit, these albums pull you in even as they push you, revolting, away.

Say Cheese
Even the worst cynic has a bit of cheese in his heart.  We should occasionally embrace our inner corndogs, let the hokey out of the pokey, free the cheese-ball within… even if it’s just to purge those latent tendencies.

Identity & Sexual Politics 101
Society expects us to listen to music made by people with whom we share race, gender and sexuality. White kids who listen to hip-hop are wannabees, girls into heavy metal are sluts, and guys who listen to Madonna dance remixes are gay... or so we've been told. Reaching beyond this box in any direction is healthy, but it still tends to occur where other people can't see you Vogue.

Genre Hopping
We can say we like all kinds of music and be telling the truth, but when it comes to laying money down most tastes run about as wide as Brian Setzer’s necktie. At some point we naturally discover our genres of choice – mine are bombastic pseudo-intellectual nasal white male indie-pop, mid-tempo urban provincial alt-country, and more recently hairy weirdo math punk. It feels refreshing and a little naughty to step outside the norm once in a while - call it headphone tourism.

Everybody Hates You
Consensus rules, even for free thinkers. If the world agrees that an album sucks but you still like it, it is automatically a guilty pleasure whether you perceive the shame heaped upon you or not. The reverse also applies; albums which receive critical acclaim may not qualify for guilty pleasure status. Terrible albums that everyone still seems to love can go either way.

To Remember
The nostalgia factor runs high in most guilty pleasures, from old B-movies to comfort foods the way mom used to make. There is no better way to revisit the good old days, and the bad ones too, than reveling in the music we associate with them - even when that music hasn't aged as well as we have.

To Forget
Music as a form of escapism, an oasis away from the tedious, artless world. Like liquid Drano for your mind, it doesn't taste so good but it erases whatever was there before so you can start over.


You had to see this coming... don't miss a deeply revealing brand new list 22 Guilty Pleasures now available for your ridicule.