Let's all admit to our guilty pleasures. It'll make us feel better.

I have wayyy too many to even list. So many, in fact, that I'm starting to think I have bad taste. Who thinks that they themselves have bad taste?
I'm talking like Ja Rule duets, here. I know it's bad, but...I can't help it...

The Beautiful South

Esp. the first album.

And Blue is the Colour.

I'll get me coat.

Coal Chamber - seriously
and errrrm Whiskeytown.

Guilt is for suckers!

You could revive seventy of these threads and I'd still not mention my deep, carnal and abiding love of Kula Shaker. Oh, whoops!

Surely not the second album?

I have a sick love for 'Hero' by Chad Kroeger, especially the really cheesy quiet bit after the solo. Come to think of it, I like 'How You Remind Me' a lot more than I should as well.

xpost: I haven't heard the second album, but the first has a two or three tracks (Into The Deep, Temple Of Everlasting Light, Hollow Man) which I can honestly say are superb. My statement of carnal lust was an exaggeration, however, and, moreover, Passantino bait.

HANDS UP ONE SINGLE PERSON SURPRISED BY LOUIS JAGGER'S LOVING NAZI SHAKER?

What is a guilty pleasure anyway?

I quite like some of the hits by Spice Girls and some of hits Max Martin wrote for Britney Spears. I also like a lot of Stock/Aitken/Waterman works from the late 80s.

In my world, these are all obviously very guilty pleasures, as people with a proper taste in music aren't expected to like the kind of stuff that is put together by professional songwriters/producers aimed exclusively at the teenybopper market regardless of whether the writer likes that kind of music himself or no.

But for a lot of people on ILM, it seems that is the kind of music they are supposed to like while a "canonical" rock album by a very serious 70s rock group may be considered a guilty pleasure.

OMG I called Justin Timb a "guilty pleasure" in 2002, oh ILM, how you've grown

http://www.ftrain.com/trope-guilty-pleasure.html

Friday, January 12, 2007
Trope

By Paul Ford

I occasionally read a web essay or a newspaper article where a man—so far, always a man—owns up to the “guilty pleasures”
on his iPod. You've seen this too? Kelly Clarkson, let's say. Or a song by Maroon 5.

The structure of the argument:

I, the author, am an extraordinarily intelligent and cool person;

But I do listen to music that is considered to be shit;

However, this music (pick one):

is actually good, and you, dear reader, are too much of a snob too enjoy it; or

is not actually good, but despite my impeccable taste I deign to listen to it for amusement.

In either case I am awesome.

Deerhoof.

Over and over editors commission this story. Over and over I read myself into a froth, sketching a mental picture of the essayist
as a scruffy fucksimper who suffers from chronic index-finger-swelling brought on by speed-dialing through all the music he
shat onto his 500G jizz-hued iPod. After he gmails his guilty-pleasure opus to his editbot, who will rewrite it into a charticle,
he heads to the bar to meet a friend and pulls the pod from his pocket. “Bro,” he says to the friend, “you'll never believe
how much Devendra Banhart I have on this thing. All of the Devendra in the world.” He touches the cool white control disc,
swirling his finger teasingly, and his friend nods wide-eyed at the flashing list of songs—until finally they reach the end
of the Devendra listing and wander into Devo, and then, consumed, they run to the bathroom and passionately tug each other's
beards—“rejoicing in the hands,” it's called—until they both reach mutual, musical ecstasy and cry out from the sweetness.

But Justin Timberlake is not a guilty pleasure. Putting oven cleaner in your daughter's Similac is a guilty pleasure, or smearing birdseed on your
balls and visiting an aviary. Having a thing for Sting's lutework—

athletes with rap singles!

Probably Coldplay.

Nelly Furtado's Maneater...that hi-hat...

Hm, quite obviously there was a time when this certain LP was a kinda quilty pleasure of mine (tho I hardly thought in such terms 20 years ago), for the simple reason that a couple of my bestest friends truly hated it with vengange, but now I really just like it a lot: Ian Anderson's Walk Into Light. Haa!

fuck a guilty pleasure.

Heheh, yeh!

probably most 'real' goth that i'm into. that's mostly just the sisters of mercy and a couple of bands on the projekt label. or, actually, i don't really feel guilty about any of it, because i believe in all artists i actually take the time to listen to, but i do recognise that these artists are uncool or unacceptable or whatever.

ELO's "Living Thing"
50 Cent
Carter USM
Goldie's "Mother"
The Beatles

Fat Boy Slim

California blondes

confounded otm.

i love classic rock radio. foreigner. tesla. golden earring. bad company. skynyrd. etc.

Is there already a thread for "what song has the highest play count on your iTunes?" I couldn't find one, but I can't find anything anymore.
I figure that anything you play that much much be a guilty pleasure. Mine is "Tommy Blues" by Trees Lounge.

I guess "Trees Lounge" is a movie, and the song is from a soundtrack. It's a burn of a burn of a burn, I never knew its provenance. Just researched.

Evan Lurie. Hmmm. Relative of John Lurie?

Brother!

My function on I Love Music is to proudly represent for those who don't know shit!

dude, it seems like a bunch of these guilty pleasures aren't so guilty. i mean, no offense to anyone, but ... pretty sure Merzbow and Madonna aren't all THAT guilty.

shit like Orange 9mm, Stabbing Westward, or whatever is guilty. but i'm not claiming those. i actually think they are terrible.

guilty?

um ... bad Ibiza trance & Type O Negative's October Rust (when partaking in a lil' northern California green)

see, that's bad, but i'll rep it.

no way, type o is awesome. way ahead of it's time, long before HIM and whatever.

OK fine, I'll step up for The Grey Album for when I'm on the sticky icky.

i kind of like the mars volta. fuck the haters.

MICKEY OTM

we're in this together

'we're in this together' is coincidentally my favourite NIN song, and therefore one of the guiltier pleasures in my collection. the others are generally wankish Brit indie, of the sort absolutely and routinely crucified by the majority of American critics, for instance The Electric Soft Parade, The Cooper Temple Clause (although I have to say, I've heard their new album and it's terrible), and Muse (2nd and 3rd albums ONLY). I'm also quite a fan of a few Dandy Warhols songs, who might as well be British given their clear influences.

Guiltier still: Be Here Now (Oasis' best IMO), The Fiery Furnaces and The Aforementioned Mars Volta.

I am not in the slightest bit guilty for Gomez or Mansun.

Scourage ...

That's the spirit!!!

the beatles

Muse, Louis? I can understand the others, but not Muse.

Well, I say that, but generally they're only guilty pleasures insofar as conventional tastes (and most critics) have spoken out vocally and derisively against those bands. Left to my own devices, I wouldn't feel guilty about ESP, TCTC, Muse's 2nd and 3rd, The Fiery Furnaces, and TMV IN THE SLIGHTEST, because I personally and subjectively view their music as excellent and worthy of praise (you can add Dodgy's excellent 'Free Peace Sweet' to the above list btw).

Music I can recognise as a bit crap and still like, i.e. my REAL guilty pleasures...well, Be Here Now can stay, obviously, but I'd add to them Primal Scream (XTRMNTR, Come Together and Burning Wheel mostly), the occasional Belle And Sebastian track, Black Ghost (a song by G*Y D*D), a (very) small percentage of Sigur Ros, and Talk Talk.

There, now you have my REAL, heartfelt answer to the question, not the bullshitty tastemaker fascist-state one.

Origin Of Symmetry and Absolution are, to these ears, superb albums. What else can I say?

Thanks for that, Louis.

dude doesn't fall in lockstep with the indie gestapo, dude. DEAL WITH IT.

My guilty pleasures:

Abba: Gooey pap but good for a few laughs.
Steely Dan: Ugh I can't help it I like a couple of their songs.
Kraftwerk: Obviously embarassing but I can't help it.

MY GUILTY PLEASURE IS CRAP (WHICH IS WAHT I CALL RAP GET IT) EVERY SONG IS LIKE BLING BLING BUT SOMETIMES TEH BEAT IS PRETTY GOOD

[i]merzbow[/i]

who gets pleasure out of merzbow?

not naturally no, but in some perverted way i might, for real

anyway, my no. 1 album for 2006 was wolf eyes' human animal yet i love 'chasing cars' by snow patrol

oh!

xpost: Me, when extremely drunk (on about 4 cocktails, 2 beers and a shot of absinthe), being driven home at 1 in the morning by my Dad. Stuck on Pulse Demon (quite quietly) and fuck me was it relaxing.