FEATURE:
Sunshine Underground
PHOTO CREDIT: @thanospal/Unsplash
No Regrets: Embracing the Musical ‘Guilty Pleasures’
___________
I can’t remember when…
PHOTO CREDIT: @alicemoore/Unsplash
I last covered this subject, but I have been digging deeper into music now than ever before. I am not sure whether it is lockdown or something that has compelled me to look more closely at the wider music world. In examining and investigating something away from my usual rotation, I am wondering whether one can actually have a guilty pleasure. I think all music is subjective, but I guess there are reasons why we ignore certain music and have our own tastes. Whilst we cannot all embrace everything; I have always been pretty reserved when it comes to exploring too far from my comforting sounds and personal favourites. I have always been a fan of 1980s Pop, but I have been listening back to a lot of early Lisa Stansfield, and I have been checking out Amy Grant, Tiffany and a bit of the early Spandau Ballet stuff too. Some might say that these are all excellent artists, but there are others that claim (these artists) are more suitable for certain people – a slightly older listener, perhaps! I am in my thirties, but I have been loving a lot of Pop and New Romantic music. I have seen a lot of other people sharing some of the music they have been listening to during lockdown, and there is this feeling from some that it is a bit of a guilty pleasure. I didn’t think I would get hooked on Robbie Williams, but I have checked out his 1998 album, I've Been Expecting You. There are some great tunes on there – like No Regrets and Strong -, but it is not an album that I would normally play; some might see Williams’ music as a guilty pleasure.
I have also been all over the place and checked back on artists like Simply Red – can’t beat a bit of Mick Hucknall -, and I became reacquainted with some of Kylie Minogue’s early output. I guess a lot of this increased curiosity is down to needing something upbeat and comforting. A lot of music, especially today’s music, is quite downbeat or lacks real spark. Many of us are using this hard time to dip back in a nostalgic way and find something inspiring in the music we grew up around. I have been doing that, of course, but there are songs in my current YouTube and Spotify histories that I think are less of a response to the lockdown and more to do with broadening my horizons. Maybe I am listening to more cheesy music, but I have been snobbish in the past. From listening to more Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift to older hits from Hue & Cry and Deacon Blue, I have been embracing so much more than before. I would argue that Deacon Blue are a pretty cool act, but they are a fantastic band in my view. The fact of the matter is that I have not opened my arms to every piece of music I previously considered a bit uncool and unworthy – there will always been songs that I will not touch, regardless of what is happening in the world! There are some who have compiled an article of guilty pleasure songs, and I have listened to everyone from New Kids on the Block and 2 Unlimited over the past few weeks.
Others might say that words like ‘guilty pleasure’ can be shameful and make it seem like certain artists are not worth listening to. All music, to an extent, is worth checking out, and I wonder whether we need to appraise that term. Perhaps music we consider ‘guilty pleasures’ feed back to childhood and how music often divided as well as joined people. During the 1990s, me and my friends followed particular bands and what we considered hip in the charts. Anything that was considered a bit twee, uncool or whatever was marginalised. Granted, there were some songs back then that I never listened to because of how others might perceive me – Whigfield’s Saturday Night is one such song that I have now come to love. I do think there is such a thing as ‘bad music’ and I do not agree that we should all embrace everything; that all music is fantastic. I do feel like our early experiences of music as a social tool follow us through adulthood. Most of the people I know would agree there are songs that they avoid because it is not their thing, or they feel a little embarrassed listening to it. I just read an article extolling the virtues of Carly Rae Jepsen’s Call Me Maybe. This is a song that I would not normally take a look at but, now, I have been getting into it and also following a line to her peers. I think the guilty pleasures tag might need to be readdressed, but I can understand why we all exclude certain music or consider other tracks a bit hard to love. It has been good finding new appreciation for songs and artists I overlooked for a long time and, at a time when we are using music to give us strength, this has been…
A great revelation.