Guilty Pleasures

'Guilty Pleasures' was a lucrative idea of a man called Sean Rowley, whose musical claim to fame is that he is on the cover of 'What's the Story (Morning Glory)'. It started off as a slot on his radio show, and became a couple of compilation albums and a very successful club night.

The original focus of it was on seemingly cheesy but actually really good hits from the 70s, and then (in the scond compilation) the80s - kind of discarded gems there ought to be no shame in liking. And ... the Compilation albums are indeed very good, with some cracking pop songs on them (you've probably heard a lot of them on adverts in the last few years). And I've been to a 'Guilty Pleasures' night in some form a few times, and the first time I thought it was great. But, to be honest, the next couple of times there was not that much to distinguish it from the standard horror-cheesy disco I'd fled from at the infamous St Andrews University Megabop or Clapham Inferno's. I don't think there was 'Macarena', but there might have been ...

But the thing is, in the gentrification/hipsterfication of Guilty Pleasures, the very concept of actual guilty pleasures changed. Not that it ever really should have been, but now it would not be the slightest bit shameful to admit to liking a Hall & Oates track or a Carpenters track or ,for example, 'Afternoon Delight'. In a sense, that's a positive effect of the movement, which reflects the download generation as well. Anyone can like anything, it is very hard to live in one's own self-imposed musical ghetto now. If a song makes you feel good even a tiny bit, it doesn't cost much to your pocket or your pride to own it and listen to it, even if just once.

So, "Guilty Pleasures" really are not guilty pleasures. And 'Guilty Pleasures' seems, from my recent experience, to have become something which is not much of a pleasure at all. I mean, I'm not going to pretend I like 'Wannabe' just because that's what cool people do these days.

So what is an actual guilty pleasure? A song or a band you actually realise at the bottom of your being you actually quite like, but would genuinely be a bit embarrassed to reveal. Now, perhaps you have to have a certain sensibility and self-consciousness to acknoweldge this at all, but perhaps, even for the most liberated and carefree music-lover, or even for someone with not the slightest awareness of what might be considered "good" or "bad", there is still a little shameful corner in their tastezone.

I've had a good think about it and there are various aspects of this for me - so here comes the big confession of my Guilt ... Well, to start with, there are songs from the shows I've a soft spot for - Cats, Les Miserables, whatever - there are certain circles i might be a little reticent about admitting I like some of those, but to be honest, I have a certain bullish prid in ite - likewise with Streisand, Manilow or the Carpenters.

I suppose one aspect that lets someone off the hook with their taste is liking something, not as such ironically, but at least at one remove - "I enjoy this song, it makes me feel jolly, but it doesn't involve me emotionally in the way that my actual favourite music does".

And likewise with pop hits - it may be that I don't really like anything of the Spice Girls, but i'll freely admit liking the odd Girls Aloud song or Sugababes or Rihanna etc - gosh, it's almost uncool not to. On the other hand, I actually really admire those people who still have absolutely no tolerance for liking anything but a certain quality/genre of music or film - of not budging to enjoy anything "mainstream". Though I do think it's a little bit like a Classical Music aficionado who still links that all pop music is inherently inferior.
I sometimes get called a music snob, but, you know, i've met real music snobs and, to them, I'd be an absolute mainstream philistine.

So, ok, I still haven't got to the bottom of my actual guilty pleasures, the things I'm genuinely ashamed of quite liking, and I rather think this is a bit subtler. There is, first of all, guilt in the sense of being a little wary of revealing I like something to certain other people, but then there's an even more intricate guilt where I've almost lied to myself. So, it's time to admit something I never thought I'd admit, I didn't realise was true until recently, and something that will destroy me before a jury of my peers. Right, here goes ... I quite like 'The Day We Caught the Train' by Ocean Colour Scene ...

Phew. That took some writing. Now here's the thing. Some of you might be thinking "Well, of course you do, what's odd about that? You like Paul Weller, you like Oasis, that's exactly the kind of lumpen Hollyoaks-man-rock you do like". But no! Ocean Colour Scene were anathema, the whipping boys of all right-thinking people, just like the Stereophonics, Skunk Anansie or Feeder - there's that line in everyone's music taste where "close to what I like but not quite what I like" is the worst thing of all. And, to be fair, I was young and impressionable back then, perhaps it was the tastemakers that made me dislike Ocean Colour Scene.

Funnily enough, perhaps I'm still impressionable. It's actually Bradley Wiggins who has made me rethink, god (mod) bless' im. Not in wanting to slavishly follow what the beloved Wiggo likes, but it was just his description of how, initially, it was OCS who got him into the whole mod thing, who gave him the sense of something to believe in, some sense of community, that made me think "OK, i'm not a mod myself, that was never what The Jam was about for me, but what is so wrong and different about this band?" And I remembered what I actually felt when I listened to them, and I recognised the uncertainty, the fact I was kind of forcing myself to find something to not like about them. Hence, they are a REAL guilty pleasure.

Perhaps, also, there's something in the idea that we can be embarrassed to like something that is really heartfelt and po-faced and emotive - I also sometimes feel a twinge of guilt at liking something like 'Life Becoming a Landslide' by the Manic Street Preachers, as if it reveals too much about myself. Likewise, a band like Del Amitri or Gene [I saw Martin Rossiter from Gene, in a gig, quell the cheering crowd and introduce a song with 'OK, this one's serious' and, honestly, I felt embarrassed for him ...]

I'm not saying I'm going to start listening to Ocean Colour Scene 24/7, anything but, but you know what, they were OK. They were hard done by. I, along with others, was snobbish towards them. There, I've said it.

My friend Michael and I used to play this game ( inaround 2004) where we'd say "My favourite song in the world is ..." and then come up with some song, which, to our mind, couldn't possibly be anyone's favourite song, but it was really, really specific, it had to be a certain kind of mid-to-late 90s British song. It was fun, it's hard to know what we were mocking, if anything. Some examples I recall

Ready to Go - Republica, What Do I Do Now? - Sleeper, Being Brave - Menswear, Only the Strongest Will Survive - Hurricane #1

And when we introduced the game to other people, if they veered slightly off from what we thought [we seemed to be pretty much of like mind ourselves, though on the odd occasion we both picked songs the other genuinely liked], for example if they said, for example, 'Two Princes' by the Spin Doctors, or 'Alright' by Supergrass or 'Yellow' by Coldplay (all of these songs not applying to the narrow criteria of the game for disparate reasons] it just wouldn't be right. There was such shared-knowledge cliqueyness in that, it's strange, but that's the thing about taste, isn't it? It is self-conscious, and there are just little lines between things we like and things we don't, and it's not necessarily always dishonest or unkind.

And we define ourselves by our musical enemies - mine, say, have included, at different levels, U2, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Madonna down to the sheer awfulness of Westlife - so it can be confusing if said "enemies" do something we actually, in some ways, quite like, as the first three mentioned there have definitely done [as i'll almost certainly get to in other posts].

But what if Westlife had done something I'd liked? Was that possible? Well, yes, of course, a tune is a tune, at some moment, in some context, i could indeed be swayed or moved by something of this most ghastly of bands. It hasn't happened yet with them, but it's happened with other bands who were almost as much hated at sompe point, like Take That, say ...

To me, it's a big journey of letting go and un-self-consciousness (which has its ups and downs), which will eventually end up with there being no guilty pleasures at all, and may end up, who knows, with me crying along to 'Flying Without Wings' or doing the Macarena.

Anyway, here is a little GUILTY PLEASURES compilation, taking in mind everything I've said about different kinds of guilt. Enjoy! Enjoy!

I Write the Songs - Barry Manilow
You're the Best - Joe Esposito
Friday Night - The Darkness
Somewhere Only We Know - Keane
Complicated - Avril Lavigne
Getting Jiggy With It - Will Smith
Too Young To Die - Jamiroquai
What a Fool Believes - The Doobie Brothers
A Thousand Trees - The Stereophonics
The Day We Caught The Train - Ocean Colour Scene

It's a Hard Life - Queen
You Win Again - The Bee Gees
You Make My Dreams - Hall and Oates
I Miss You - Blink 182
This Year's Love - David Gray
Nothing Ever Happens - Del Amitri
Sometimes - Erasure
Bring Him Home - not Hugh Jackman but actually the guy who plays the Bishop in the film ...
I'm so Lonely - Cast
I've Had the Time of My Life - Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes

Quell your hard heart, there's nothing there I'm ashamed of ... not really ... apart from Keane, and David Gray, and ... no, nothing