Let's poll the Quietus 50 "Guilty Pleasures" list

Walker Brothers??!!??

I'm going for "Josephine". I like both those Simply Red songs.

As is usual with this type of thing, many of these entries provoke the 'what's guilty about Gina G?!' reaction in me. Big fan of a number of these.

Like, part of me wants to vote for the song I like best, the other half wants to vote for the one I feel most 'guilty' about liking.

Do I vote for Flock of Seagulls or Boney M cos I think they're genuinely great songs or do I vote for Kula Shaker or Baha Men because they're songs lots of people raise their eyebrows (or choke in disgust at) which I think are 'alright actually'?

The Walker Brothers one is pretty WTF - always thought of that one as one of their best songs and among the best of his overall work. If something off of Stretch had been chosen then, yeah...

"Shout"????? wtf

Scarlet Fantastic - 'No Memory'

^ good god i love this song! they were previously in swans way of 'soul train' fame which i also love to death, but this is not retro like that at all, this one thrusts woozily toward a bold plastic future

also love the songs by flock of seagulls, tears forth ears, chris rea, waterboys and mike oldfield

all of these songs are full-stop great:

Hall & Oates - 'Method Of Modern Love'
Carly Rae Jepsen - 'Call Me Maybe'
Wham! – 'Last Christmas'
Alice DeeJay - 'Better Off Alone'
Level 42 - 'Something About You'
Gina G – 'Ooh Ah!... Just a Little Bit'
Bran Van 3000 - 'Drinking In L.A.'
Tears For Fears - 'Shout'
PM Dawn - 'Looking Through Patient Eyes'
Phil Collins - 'Against All Odds'
Clarence Carter - 'Strokin''
Haddaway - 'What Is Love?'
George Michael - 'Careless Whisper'
Simply Red - 'Holding Back The Years'
Status Quo - 'Marguerita Time'

I think there are at most 10 songs here that combine earworminess with cringe factor well enough to be an actual guilty pleasure

I mean, I guess Gerardo never actually made it to the UK?

Boney M - 'Rasputin'
Wham! – 'Last Christmas'
Gina G – 'Ooh Ah!... Just a Little Bit'
Bran Van 3000 - 'Drinking In L.A.'
Baha Men - 'Who Let The Dogs Out'
Aqua - 'Doctor Jones'
Baccara - 'Yes Sir I Can Boogie'
Haddaway - 'What Is Love?'
George Michael - 'Careless Whisper'
Mike Oldfield - 'Moonlight Shadow'
Lime - 'Guilty'

All these are great, not sure why I should feel guilty about them?

Mine that I know:

Hall & Oates - 'Method Of Modern Love' (can't recall it but i like everything i've heard by H&O)
Carly Rae Jepsen - 'Call Me Maybe'
Boney M - 'Rasputin'
Wham! – 'Last Christmas'
A Flock Of Seagulls - 'Wishing (If I Had A Photograph Of You)'
Simply Red - 'Stars'
Alice DeeJay - 'Better Off Alone'
Kula Shaker - 'Tattva'
Bran Van 3000 - 'Drinking In L.A.'
Tears For Fears - 'Shout'
Walker Brothers - 'No Regrets'
Baha Men - 'Who Let The Dogs Out'
Phil Collins - 'Against All Odds'
Baccara - 'Yes Sir I Can Boogie'
Haddaway - 'What Is Love?'
Enya - 'Caribbean Blue'
George Michael - 'Careless Whisper'
Simply Red - 'Holding Back The Years'

Actually if you combine the ones I like with the ones I haven't heard or don't recall, that's most of the list. More interesting to do the ones I don't like...

Reading the entries for those, Tears For Fears are chosen for being considered geeky, that Walker Brothers track for being good in an era of Scott Walker considered worthless by too many.

The list is actually about music that should not be considered guilty pleasures. But I don't think Tears For Fears are maligned enough to be on the list. GUILT FREE it says.

djp, get in on this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0nOb5h0JU8

The writeup of Kula Shaker is brilliant and so so true.

glad everybody's picked up on the idea behind this list

Bit odd calling this a 'guilty pleasures' list when the whole point of the write-up is that the idea of the guilty pleasure is stupid.

Still.

I have much love for 'Yes Sir I Can Boogie' but really this comes down to a head-on war between 'Rasputin' and 'No Regrets', both of which are completely outstanding records.

rolling my eyes like crazy at some of the notions of "uncool" people appear to carry around with them. really hard to pick one of these songs tho, my initial shortlist is probly about 15 long

so this list is basically "let's list our favorite songs"

Voted for Bran Van 3000 - for a while that was what my life was like. Except I wasn't in LA. Or a screenwriter. But I was a heavy drinker who couldn't get any work done.

We were listening to Drinking In LA the other day and I was stricken with what a strange tune it was - the verse is pretty much just radio chatter and feedback and the chorus just floats around (and is kind of hard to sing along to if you want to get the metre exactly right).

Wrong Scooter song.

which one would you have chosen?

Either The Logical Song or Nessaja.

checking out a flock of seagulls album, sounds like a less glum comsat angels? could get into this

Either The Logical Song or Nessaja.

Fire, Weekend, We Are The Greatest all substantially better, though Nessaja is pretty great.

Harder, Faster, Scooter also in the mix.

based on (a) pretty much the entirety of the discourse generated by this list so far and (b) the title of this thread, I think it's safe to say that the idea of 'guilty pleasures' isn't going away any time soon

More's the pity

oh totally

thing is, even ppl who are at pains to decry the whole concept have it completely ingrained in their way of thinking in the first place

All the same, I think the concept shifts and changes. Even on ILM there are songs/acts Lily Allen, Cocorosie, Robin Thicke that get frowned upon by consensus.

cool is a stupidly shifting set of power games, sure. don't think going "god i hope nobody finds out i like the Walker Brothers" is really addressing it tho

would make more sense if it were the midge ure version of no regrets

Had to go with A Thousand Miles. I can't resist that type of calculated and clinically bittersweet singer/songwriter pop pap that was huge around the turn of the millennium, and A Thousand Miles perfects the form. Second place only to Torn in terms of embarrassingly eliciting emotions it doesn't earn.

Shouts also go out to: Call Me Maybe, Better Off Alone, System Addict and You're the Voice.

Stranglehold must be on here because of Nugent's political shenanagins, but that song fucking rocks.

it's between "Shout" and "Against All Odds" for me

The Waterboys?

At first I thought the list was pretty pointless, guilty pleasures and all, and then I was like 'Wow, somebody likes Korn!'.
Wham! – 'Last Christmas'. Too bad the XX cover of this is so wooden.
A Flock Of Seagulls - 'Wishing (If I Had A Photograph Of You)'. Love this so much, kept hoping it would pop up on a KROQ poll.
still it comes down to Hanson 'MMMbop' v. Phil Collins 'Against All Odds'.

plenty of people like Korn. Maybe not from that era though.

Surprised they didn't choose this Oldfield track:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KGa_eV3KH-c

Yeah, I feel like the only guilty pleasures I actually have any guilt or weirdness about are artists who seem to be tremendously horrible people like Gary Glitter, John Philips, R. Kelly, or Ted Nugent.

Boney M "Rasputin" and it's not particularly close.

... Rolf Harris (xp)

Either The Logical Song or Nessaja.

those were their biggest hits but IMO neither of them are all that good. "I'm Raving" is way more shameless too

m.e.t.h.o.d. is the song on this list that makes me happiest, by far

bran van also this list sucks and is stupid

fuck it.
i'm dropping a vote on the kula shaker track.
i love it.
no guilt necessary.
(there are a lot of tracks on this list i really like, but tattva i really love .. )

Nine tracks here I really, unreservedly, unironically, unguiltily like, FWIW they are:

Hall & Oates - 'Method of Modern Love'
Wham! – 'Last Christmas'
Vanessa Carlton - 'A Thousand Miles'
Phil Collins - 'Against All Odds'
Barbra Streisand & Barry Gibb - 'Guilty'
Enya - 'Caribbean Blue'
Chris Rea - 'Josephine'
Five Star - 'System Addict'
Mike Oldfield - 'Moonlight Shadow'

Almost went for 'System Addict', but then I saw 'Josephine', so, with seven (count 'em!) different versions in my iTunes I guess it has to be that!

(Is listening to 'You're the Voice' ever a pleasure, though, guilty or not!)

i really hate moonlight shadow.

the rest of the album is brilliant though.

i guess its a simple case of a simple easy on the ear pop tune being overplayed on the radio ..

in all, what one considers to be a guilty pleasure might change according to which peers you're with and how they might perceive you. I might play down (or even deliberately play up, depending) my love of pop and house when I'm hanging with my TRV KVLT metal friends. Other times I'd maybe not want to be blasting the Deiphago album for fear of a lot of 'You like this?!' looks.

xp NickB and dog latin are both correct, I think the previous two posts were just me trying to work my way up to admitting I like 'The Day We Caught the Train'.
(though the upper-class white men bands most hated on ilm are the ones that adopt some bogus hoary-handed sons of toil/ordinary guy blokeishness, Mumford, Frank Turner etc)

My only real guilty pleasures, i.e. ones that actually make me feel guilty of listening to them, are songs with questionable lyrical content...

that's a good point. applies to lots of dancehall i like.

I feel embarrassed when listening to free jazz or experimental music in front of other people

this too! i was recently booked to play a "jazz" set at the opening of a friend's bar & restaurant. the brief was to play whatever i liked but after starting with albert ayler and sonny sharrock and palpably sensing the discomfort everyone there was feeling listening to this music, i couldn't bear it any more and the "guilt" made me relieved i had also brought "kind of blue".

lol come on Ayler at a restaurant opening i think i wd've gone in a bit less abrasive than that

well, it was this one which always seems like pop music to my ears -

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIwY_hC7Xso

My only real guilty pleasures, i.e. ones that actually make me feel guilty of listening to them, are songs with questionable lyrical content…

Because 70 percent if not more of rock songs qualify, it's best not to worry unduly about this, or else do what I do and nominate Bernard Sumner as best rock lyricist.

the guy asking for bells just wanted a whisky

My only real guilty pleasures, i.e. ones that actually make me feel guilty of listening to them, are songs with questionable lyrical content…

Because 70 percent if not more of rock songs qualify, it's best not to worry unduly about this, or else do what I do and nominate Bernard Sumner as best rock lyricist.

Well I don't listen to rock, and the genres I listen to the most are probably techno and dance music, jazz, and classical, so I don't really have to face this problem that often. But when I do, I always feel guilty.

XXXXetcP: To be fair to Joel McIver who wrote the entry on Shame, his readers (i.e. of his books on bands like Cannibal Corpse, Death, Obituary, Slayer, Sepultura and his magazine 'Bass Player' - he wasn't referring to the Quietus as he doesn't write for us that often) almost certainly will be appalled by him choosing a Robbie William/Gary Barlow ballad.

And Mea Culpa: I didn't commission this feature but as the editor of the site I should have gotten a few of the writers to explain their choices in the context of the lengthy online debate on guilty pleasures there has already been. For example we had a big discussion in the office about the inclusion of Scott Walker (it was included because of the period it came out in not the song itself) and Hall & Oates (we're all aware of the Brooklyn hipster/Oneohtrix PN view of the duo but considered Method to have come out in a pretty un-rediscovered period for the pair) - but for some reason none of this discussion filtered down into what the writers were saying. There was a list of five songs we really wanted to bump (including Katy Perry) but we simply didn't get enough suggestions back.

In retrospect it wasn't a great idea but heck, no one died.

I actually wanted to follow it up with a top 40 of actual guilty pleasures including, say, 'Meet The G That Killed Me' by Public Enemy or 'Guilty Of Being White' by Minor Threat or 'Wolf's Lair Abyss' by Mayhem for example but I can't be arsed now.

^ that rarest of things, a free jazz joke.(xp)

Maybe I'm too old for this concept, but there's nothing I like I'm guilty or embarrassed about, my musical tastes are an open book.

Hall & Oates (we're all aware of the Brooklyn hipster/Oneohtrix PN view of the duo but considered Method to have come out in a pretty un-rediscovered period for the pair)

This is quibbling, J0hn, but it's on the same album as "Out of Touch," for which lots of people have massive love.

I was going to contribute an Animal Collective song to the Quietus list but I was away on hols so didn't have time. Again, some might say there's no guilt in AC but I feel like they're the one band I've found myself defending again and again this last decade.

i think a lot of the criticism of AC is just a counterbalance to the acclaim heaped on them - i don't think the net result equals a consensus of disapproval

true, but isn't that the case with a majority of guilty pleasures, i.e. you are made to feel guilty for enjoying something crassly popular like U2 or Arcade Fire or Rednex or what have you?

Yeah, I feel like the only guilty pleasures I actually have any guilt or weirdness about are artists who seem to be tremendously horrible people like Gary Glitter, John Philips, R. Kelly, or Ted Nugent.

Strongly agree with this; James Brown has become a guilty pleasure for me.

i have a tiny twinge of guilt about loving "rock n roll pt 2" by gary glitter. i once played it as the last track at a benefit gig for save the children. the whole room stopped in horror for a second and then went mad to it. i have a feeling glasgow is one of the very few places i could have got away with that.

sometimes in december i get 'christmas rock'n'roll' stuck in my head and then feel guilty for sort of wishing they still played it as it's not the worst christmas glam song by any means.

Balls to all that, I'm out and proud as a GG fan!

^^ I took that to mean GG Allin, who may be a guilty pleasure all his own (not mine.)

i like lots of these. "stranglehold" is the only one i feel guilty about for obvious reasons, but i don't think it's my favorite one here. that hanson song is truly terrible.

Wut? I would honestly rank MMMBop in the top 10 of the ones I know on this list.

I think I've only ever listened to Gary Glitter on headphones for fear of what impression the neighbors would get, that is probably more of a shameful pleasure than a guilty pleasure, though

(for me personally, I mean)

They still play Rock N Roll PT 2 at gigantic sports events, I kind of doubt your neighbours would think you're a kiddy-diddler if you rocked out to some Gary.

there's something of a UK/US divide on this matter aiui

Yeah probably - I bet a lot of N Americans just think of R&Rpt2 as "that hockey game song" and have no clue who Glitter is.

Brits I'd imagine are much more aware of his story and background. Not directly related, but that Brass Eye Paedogeddon special had a a pretty great spoof of pervy glam rock in it called "Playground Bangaround" years before the Glitter story came out, I think.

The Hey Song

Because 70 percent if not more of rock songs qualify, it's best not to worry unduly about this, or else do what I do and nominate Bernard Sumner as best rock lyricist.

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Wednesday, August 6, 2014 5:30 AM (5 hours ago)

you mean questionable in a "well, everthing is questionable when you come right down to it" sense? cuz otherwise 70 percent if not more of this sentence is ridiculous bullshit.

agree w/ lyrical content as guiltifyer (or flat out i-can't-listen-to-thisifier). stones "brown sugar", rundgren's "slut". i like public enemy, i like "sophisticated bitch" - except for the part that consists of words.

Oh, that "Stranglehold", not the UK Subs then

the part about Bernard SUmner is the 30 percent that's not bullshitk, presumably

I only pay attention to lyrics when they stand out, and if the politcs bother me it's my job to figure out how the words and music interact.

Reading this thread, I'm a bit confused about what constitutes a guilty pleasure. Is it that you'll deny liking the song when confronted about it, or is it a song that you'll defend even when most of your friends hate it?

Example:

- No, I swear I didn't download this song. It was on one of those Starbucks gift cards. First time hearing it. I'll be erasing it when I get home.

- Yes, I know they sound like eunuchs reading Hallmark cards, but the I really enjoyed the last Coldplay album.

If it's the former I don't think I've ever denied listening and loving a song in my life. (Although I'm a woman so I guess it's harder for men to admit they like a dumb, pop song with no balls?). If it's the later I think I'm constantly in the position of defending some of my music taste in social gatherings and such.

i've always figured guilty pleasure are songs you like while "knowing you shouldn't". like, you have some sense that the song is bad, stupid, offensive, uncool or whatever, but just can't help the way you feel when it touches you. depends on insecurity to some extent, that idea that our tastes are up for public judgment and might be found wanting if we too-enthusiastically embrace the wrong things.

i have the sense that for most, the guilt only exists when admitting our pleasure to others. we don't feel the twinge when, say, listening alone or on headphones, but it kicks in hard when someone else notices that we've listened to the bodyguard soundtrack 20 times so far this week, tears of helpless rapture caught glistening in our beard hairs. like right as if.

I will admit to being embarrassed after discovering I'd signed on to Rdio or one of those streaming things through Facebook, and it automatically posted a status update to FB every time my kids played a new song one afternoon, which was basically just Party Rock by LMFAO every three and a half minutes for two hours

"depends on insecurity to some extent, that idea that our tastes are up for public judgment and might be found wanting if we too-enthusiastically embrace the wrong things."

it has nothing to do with insecurity, because taste *is* up for public judgment. it's entirely public judgment. the very fact that anyone can conceive of lists of "guilty pleasures" and have them every time be more or less the same thing is proof of this.

xpost - see http://playground.last.fm/unwanted

i've always figured guilty pleasure are songs you like while "knowing you shouldn't".

which is why the concept has never made sense to me

it has nothing to do with insecurity, because taste *is* up for public judgment. it's entirely public judgment. the very fact that anyone can conceive of lists of "guilty pleasures" and have them every time be more or less the same thing is proof of this.

― katherine, Wednesday, August 6, 2014 12:36 PM (25 minutes ago)

i'm not sure i understand. we are often (i'd day typically) most insecure about things that really *are* up for public judgment: our appearance, professional skill, reputation, etc. and the nature of the "guilty pleasure" varies from subculture to subculture, though every era coughs up a handful of go-to awfulness memes: coldplay, nickleback, whatever. anti-bacon.

because calling it "insecurity" implies it's entirely on you, as if there aren't hundreds of people ready to tell you that your taste is shit and you are by extension a shit person for having it

I was really hoping this list was numbered. "Method of Modern Love" would have been an amazing #1.

oh, no, i didn't mean to imply that the insecurity was unwarranted. paranoia is a form of awareness.

xp

what you're saying is so true, katherine, that i take all the harrumphing itt about being beyond silly taste-guilt w/ a HUGE grain of salt.

U2 is probably the most uncool shit i listen to but i think they're entirely defensible once you get past bono's posturing and edge's real estate dealings. and bono once helped get my mom out of a dangerous crowd crush during the vertigo tour, so he's alright with me.

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

"A Thousand Miles" is just purdy IIRC why is it a guilty pleasure

http://wpcontent.answcdn.com/wikipedia/en/thumb/6/62/Barbra-streisand-guilty-album.jpg/220px-Barbra-streisand-guilty-album.jpg

lol@it being remixed on that old Young Money v1.0 mixtape tho (back in ancient pre-Drake/Nicki days)

"Shout"????? wtf

― Star Gentle Uterus (DJP), Tuesday, August 5, 2014 1:18 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Yeah, I was gonna say! Since when!?

Stephen Holden gave the Streisand/Gibb record 5 stars in the 1983 New Rolling Stone Record Guide.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

Doctor Jones robbed