Guilty Pleasures: What Are You Hiding?

Don’t kid yourself. Deep inside your iTunes library, there’s a guilty pleasure hiding out just waiting to get their number pulled during shuffle play. It will blare out of your computer in all its glory and depending on who else is in hearing distance, your reply will display glowing pride or dismissive shamefulness.

“Oh, how did that get in there? Maybe (insert wife or kid name here) added it on?”

Your excuses might get you out of it this time but you know you won’t delete it from your music library.

Even if you have a small music collection, the odds are you have some guilty pleasure songs. It’s not your fault. With the current state of the music industry, it seems that bands are coming out a dime a dozen with their songs worth about the same amount. Half the songs on the radio will be the last hit these artists will ever have. It’s no wonder why the “buy one song” ITMS model is working. People don’t want the other 9 songs on the album recorded to fill out an album.

A guilty pleasure does not necessarily mean one hit wonder or radio airplay. Sure, the Macarena and Mambo #5 certainly qualify. But so does the McKenzie Brothers and Geddy Lee doing Take Off! My definition of a guilty pleasure song is something you love so much you put it on your iPod but would be embarrassed if someone saw it on there. Guilty pleasures usually carry along some emotional baggage. It was a song that you heard when you were happy. Or when you were sad. Or when you just couldn’t stop until you got enough.

Your music does not define you but it does give bystanders insight into what you are about. And your library should have your music—warts and all. Why shouldn’t you have a few guilty pleasures in your music library? Here’s a shortlist of mine (with emotional baggage):

Young MC Bust A Move— In the early 90’s I did wanna zoom zoom zoom in the boom boom. I didn’t touch that and I collaborated and listened. But in the end I wanted to Bust a Move. Correction: I still want to Bust a Move.

New Kids on the Block Please Don’t Go Girl — Hormones can do strange things to your barometer of good music but that was MY time as a 7th grader and no one can take my first slow dance away from me.

Wham Careless Whisper — Officially the first song I sang in the shower in its entirety. Yes, that includes every word and me making strange falsetto sounds to mimic every note of the saxophone. Believe me, it sounded great.

Annie Soundtrack Something was Missing — You, the savvy fellow Annie lover, knows that this song only appeared in the 1977 broadway version of the soundtrack not the 1982 movie version. It did appear on the 1999 TV version but no one watched that version anyways.The world was Daddy Warbucks’ oyster, but where was his pearl? It was the red head with the grimey dog of course!

Ok. Confess! What are the guilty pleasures found in your music library?