Real Actual Guilty Pleasures

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

More a mid-week topic this. I mentioned elsewhere (wrt Merritt and zip-a-dee-doo-dah) that it has only just occurred to me that there really is a category of "Guilty Pleasures" - just not the latest gutless variation on "so bad its good". There can be music you really like, but for some reason the song is actually morally wrong or tainted. And not in the indie ("S club Juniors that's so wrong") or mirror-indie ("all indie boys can't sing they should all die"*) sense. The only good example I can think of right now is

Gary Glitter.

I love you love. Leader. SMASHing, real fun songs. Sung by a man with a twisted brane of badness cubed. (Of course there is a whole vein of pa3d0 british pop which we can take as read here.) But what else is there? Anybody here enjoy fascist/nazi/racialist music? dancehall homophobia i suppose. wot sa u?


(* naming no names, cos we're done with that, right?)

Comments

[jauntyalan.livejournal.com]

it's true at the point you can feel guilty about liking a song. How can you feel guilty about liking a song? the song hasn't done anything. even bad words you can argue are not in themselves guilt inducing. tho obv a good ol-singalong song that calls for you to "throw the jew down the well" should, but that's already going that bit further into getting YOU to say something, well meant or not.

so where can the guilt be imported into a song? (another way of recasting my initial question) from the people involved in its creation was my initial answer, and was wondering about other ways.

[dubdobdee.livejournal.com]

"if you like this song you are one of us"
vs
"to be one of us you must agree with us"

music is NOT belief-sticky, which words (even songwords) are: so the second -- however much assumed or hoped for by some -- fails (personally i am inclined to argue that its NECESSARY failure is one of the reasons music is socially useful: its ability to create gatherings that aren't POSITION-based...)