And We Got Nothing To Be Guilty Of…

Ahh, Barry Gibb and Barbara Streisand singing all about being guilty of being in love. It’s a great song, but it has absolutely nothing to do with this post apart from the title. Just me looking for a lyrical tie as per usual (shrug emoji).

Anyway. I keep hearing this term when it comes to music – ‘guilty pleasure’ – and I have no idea why it’s associated with certain artists to be honest.  You know, someone says “Oh, I like listening to 80’s pop songs, it’s my guilty pleasure“…  But what the hell does it actually mean though? According to the font of all knowledge, Google, it means:

A guilty pleasure is something, such as a film, a television program, a piece of music, or an activity, that one enjoys despite understanding that it is not generally held in high regard, or is seen as unusual or weird.

And a guilty pleasure song apparently is this:

A guilty pleasure song is typically a track that we secretly love, but feel a twinge of guilt or embarrassment about enjoying it. It’s that guilty pleasure we indulge in behind closed doors, singing our hearts out when no one’s watching

Okay. So basically it’s meant to be embarrassing music that other people would think is weird. Thing is, I sing all sorts of songs in my house (behind these so called closed doors), but the only thing I feel embarrassed about is when I get the lyrics wrong or when I can’t hit the high notes as my voice is a bit shit. And I’ll sing along to pretty much anything, nothing is off limits.

But what annoys me the most is when I keep hearing this term attached to bands like Crowded House. You know, the band that has been around for almost 40 years, has won loads of awards and had top ten hits. Yeah, that bunch of losers. I have written many times that I have no guilt about loving them as my all time favourite band or in fact about hiding any of the music that gives me pleasure. And I really don’t know why we are made to feel that our listening choices may be considered as embarrassing or worse still, wrong.

I don’t think it’s the act of listening to the so called ‘un-cool’ music that is actually the problem though, it’s the people who try to shove their opinions down your throat and tell you that you’re wrong who have the issue. But if we actually buy into this so called guilt, we are just letting ourselves down and the opinion shovers win. I recently wrote about music snobs in another article and I think some of that feeds into making people feel bad about their own listening choices and it’s all very unfair.

I keep on saying it (and to be honest I am boring myself with it so I can only guess how you feel), but what you like is up to you and it’s got nothing to do with anyone else. If you want to listen to Black Lace or Russ Abbot singing ‘Atmosphere‘ then that is entirely your choice. I may not listen with you, but actually I do know all the words so it’s can’t be that bloody bad.

I shared on Twitter a while ago a list of bands who I had liked for a long time and some so called ‘music expert’ replied to me to say all of them were boring or pedestrian or some such rubbish. And all because he didn’t like them. But so what? Why do people feel that they can make you feel bad about your music just because it’s not for them? It’s like being bullied over your CD collection.

I googled ‘guilty pleasure music’ to find out what the kids of today consider to be songs that fit this bracket and I sat shaking my head at the results coming up. Apparently it’s tracks like ‘Karma Chameleon‘ by Culture Club, ‘Waiting For A Star To Fall’ by Boy Meets Girl and unbelievably ‘Never Gonna Give You Up‘ by Rick Astley. I mean, come on. Culture Club alone have made a lot of money from their song so who’s laughing now, huh?

Who knows, perhaps I am in the minority as I don’t consider that I have to hide any of the music I listen to from anyone. I have all the albums by The 1975 for fucks sake and I really don’t care what people think about that. My record collection is something that I am immensely proud of and even though it takes up a lot of room in my house I don’t feel the need to stick any of it in a secret cupboard so that no-one else can find it. I like most genres of music and in fact I listened to a lot of garage music in the late 90s early 00s and still love it now. Am I bothered what people think about that? No. When I told someone that I used to go to clubs and listen to garage they thought I was joking. I still have no idea why to this day to be honest as it’s simply music that was around when I went out and some of the tracks are still absolute bangers now.

So, should you ever feel guilty about any of the music you listen to or the artists you support? My answer would be no you should not. And I also think this term of calling some music ‘guilty pleasures’ needs to end. Enjoy whatever you like and jump in feet first and appreciate all the weird and wonderful music that is out there for us to discover. Never let anyone make you feel bad because you have a love of someone who is supposedly uncool. I mean, we can’t all be cool can we? Where would it all end. 

And by the way, the Bee Gees are great :0)