Don't Feel Bad About Things You Love
There's No Such Thing as a Guilty Pleasure
One of my favorite albums is Eve 6's second, Horrorscope.
I think it's worth people learning about how strong Eve 6 is as a band and how strong of a songwriter Max Collins is. The band was barely out of high school when their self-titled was released, and were barely in their 20s when Horrorscope was released.
"Promise," the second track off of Horrorscope is superficially a really fun pop rock song. 2000 was a particularly saturated year for sickeningly catchy radio rock songs. Everclear's Songs from an American Movie Vol. One came out. Green Day's Warning.
Back to "Promise". It's bouncy. Guitar-forward. Kind of just fun party music. But the lyrics are really literate, and the most interesting part is how Collins has to sing. Each verse seems to be sung from one breath with a flurry of syllables, and rhymed words falling in the middle of lines rather than at the end as might be common. It has a hip-hop fluidity of slanted rhymes and persistent alliteration.
Anyway, I listen to this album probably every few months. Every time I end up thinking that Eve 6 is one of my "guilty pleasure" bands. And I've started to think about how stupid I feel thinking something like that.
The term guilty pleasure is a really rude way to say to myself that I shouldn't value something I love because it may not have some pretentious artistic integrity.
The other day I was watching an episode of the podcast "Quit Your Band While You Still Can" with Taylor Madison and Jake Clarke from Webbed Wing / Superheaven. Sam and Matty from Pony were on, and at some point they started talking about Lit. Taylor was explaining how A Place in the Sun is a sincerely good album, "My Own Worst Enemy" being the worst on the album and that is currently nearing 300,000,000 listens on Spotify. But while he was explaining this, I was thinking here's this guy who I think has a lot of artistic integrity, is a G-R-E-A-T song writer, and traffics in music of the kind that NPR critics would like. And he's not ashamed of liking what some people might think is a corny album.
When people ask you to name your guilty pleasure bands, what they're sort of asking is which bands are you embarrassed to listen to in front of your friends. Friends that are probably shitty to you for loving something. Friends who if you ask if they like country music say something like "old country, like Johnny Cash." All of Miranda Lambert's Revolution is better than Johnny Cash's body of work.
Send me a strongly worded email.
No one should feel guilty for loving whatever music brings them joy. I will ride for Taylor Swift's "We Are Never Getting Back Together" until I die.
We can argue music in terms of mechanics. When production feels flat and lifeless. How a band or artist may have worked through their album sequencing.
But after all, you like your kind of music, I like mine, and neither of us should feel guilty about it.
If you want to continue the discussion, send me an email or put it through the snail mail
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