Guilty Pleasures

[mippy.livejournal.com]

I was looking att he latest issue of Q yesterday int he library and reading through their list of '50 Guiltiest Pleasures'. And it got me to thinking - is the idea of a 'guilty pleasure' inherently rockist? Most of the songs I 'like but shouldn't like' are songs I wouldn't normally listen to except because of association/nostalgic reasons because they're a bit rubbish. But not liking ELO's Living Thing just because the rock canon doesn't like them? And don't even get me started on Macarthur Park...

So does poptimism recognise the concept of the guilty pleasure, or - as it should be - music is music and whether it's the gaspings of a tortured soul or the wall of sound rebuilt in Duplo, what matters is whether it's ANY GOOD AT ALL?

There should be a poll on this, maybe, but I don't have the issue to hand.

Comments

[mippy.livejournal.com]

I have a few things that I know I shouldn't like, but do...

* Just The Way You are - Milky
* Lean on Me - Red Box
* Trip To Trumpton - some faceless dance people whose names I can't remember
* Words - FR David
* and wrongmos would say Prefab Sprout, but they are wrongmos.

Thing is, this article had Baker Street in it, and naff as it generally is, that record's got a heart, and an aching one at that. It makes it work as pop music, y'know?

[byebyepride.livejournal.com]

Why on earth shouldn't you like Red Box? Or Trip to Trumpton? Or Prefab Sprout?

If I were k-punk I might try and think something up about 'the other' and how we have internalised social voices in our head which say 'that's a bit lame' or 'only X sort of people like Y music' or 'you ought to be more cutting edge' or 'you ought to be more pop / less indie' or whatever. But I think for me it's more about setting wierd little rules for myself which I feel bad about breaking e.g. at some point I have said 'you should leave your comfort zone and try new things!'

[i.e. I would like to be an autonomous (setting the law for myself) rather than a heteronomous (receiving the law from outside) creature. Whether that's possible would have to remain in question i.e. can I tell when I am thinking for myself rather than doing something I've picked up from elsewhere? (Perhaps I can't, but I can try and prove it by insisting on it to myself, and feeling bad?)]

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

Now I need to listen to some Red Box!

[mippy.livejournal.com]

Why does this not surprise me. Oh, I know. Because you're almost as much in the nineteen-eighties as I am, m'boy.

[mippy.livejournal.com]

LIES! I have Karel Fialka on my mp3 player, although mainly because it was a massive in-joke between me and someone else for about a year.

Hey girl! Move a little...closer...

[mippy.livejournal.com]

EVERYONE needs to listen to some Red Box.

[mippy.livejournal.com]

Well, you shouldn't! But there's a kind of unspoken naffness to it, something that would make me a little reluctant to mention it to people at parties (that is, if I went to the kind of parties where people had heard of Prefab Sprout...)

I think the idea of 'being indie' or 'being pop' etc.etc. loses currency after the age of seventeen. And occasionally I realise I don't listen to enough rap, or enough girlie pop, things like that, and then wonder if I'd be listenign to broaden my horizons or out of the same impulse that gets people to force-feed themselves vegetables they wouldn't normally eat. OK, that's perhaps a bad analogy - both vegetables and pop are good for you.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

if I went to the kind of parties where people had heard of Prefab Sprout

I bet if you sang the Jumping Frog song at them they'd know it.

[mippy.livejournal.com]

They really wouldn't. I hang out with a lot of people into light opera, or, if in London, Bright Eyes.

[sbp.livejournal.com]

I won a cassette of Jordan the Comeback when it was released back in, looks like 1990, and I really like that one. Plus I was familiar with some of their earlier stuff.

I tend not to hang with the light opera crowd. But I have a lot of friends who are into singing choral music and so on.

[mippy.livejournal.com]

I have a lot of friends back Up North whom I love dearly but we really don't have much in common, culturally speaking. also, there's a lot of heavy christianity going on...mind you, Paddy McAloon did go to a seminary...

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

URBAN HYPE! They are amazing!!!!

[mippy.livejournal.com]

YES! That's them. Did they do anything else?

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Not really. (http://www.discogs.com/release/149124)

[freakytigger.livejournal.com]

But why do you "know you shouldnt like" them? Because they're bad?

My problem with "guilty pleasures" isn't really in the idea that ppl should admit all their pleasures upfront - no point in dictating *how* people like their music after all - it's in the ring-fencing of a certain type of pop by this 'approach' and also in the implied hierarchy of 'non-guilty pleasures', i.e. people who talk about guilty pleasures tend to have REALLY REALLY BORING 'actual' taste.

[mippy.livejournal.com]

I think it's more that I feel they're good, but that the appeal is probably lost on others, so it;s a bit hard to convey. Perhaps.

And yes, you're right - boringly tasteful taste.

[blue-russian.livejournal.com]

the funny thing, though, is that because the 'guilt' is totally personal, by definition there shouldn't be a "guilty pleasures canon." the disco or 80s pop or whatever that I lived through and though was incredibly uncool but may now love, is something that people in their 20s come to without social associations (well, with totally different ones anyway). how or why would the feel any guilt?

i also think is one of the reasons i enjoy listening to "foreign" music: i come at it totally without preconceptions.

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

I agree. Case study: I think I probably love Las Ketchup because I was quite isolated from 'Asereje' in the way that most of the populace clearly weren't, and as such never wrote them off as Holiday One Hit Wonders. Hence my utter joy at them entering Eurovision for Spain this year!

[mippy.livejournal.com]

I quite like it too, because I missed out on it being everywhere.

Other side of it: I like The Good Life by NPG precisely because it WAS everywhere at the time, and now sounds like spring '98 bottled.

[mippy.livejournal.com]

Yeah, I'd agree with this. I know people who are twenty-five and like Level 42. I know they;'re supposed to be naff, but that's because I spend too much time with my head stuck in books.

[braisedbywolves.livejournal.com]

Any aesthetic that doesn't include Trip To Trumpton is completely worthless.

[jel-bugle.livejournal.com]

What ever happened to Milky? I liked that song too.