Guilty Pleasures

Everyone one has them. Those tracks on your iPod you really don’t want anyone to know you have. The songs you only listen to when no one’s around to catch snippets of it coming from your headphones.

Me? I’m honest about the crappy music I just cannot get enough of. Disco? Check. Stupid modern Country? Oh hell yes. One hit wonders from ’60s-’90s? Yup!

There are times when I need AFI or the Pumpkins of My Chem. I could be having a shitty day, I might just need a pretty boy to sing to me about sexin’. Whatever the case, I need my gold standards.

Other days, I just need to listen to something of little consequence that makes me giggle or smile. Sometimes I just need background noise!

So, in no particular order, some of my top guilty pleasures.

‘When I Grow Up’ by The Pussycat Dolls: I know, I know. The shame, the horror, the bad dye jobs. I can’t help it! Everytime this song comes on the radio, I want to giggle like a teenager. Even though the Interwebz have said different, I still sing the line as ‘When I grow up ….. I wanna have boobies’ and you can’t stop me!

‘Online’ by Brad Paisley: I first heard this song while at my brother’s house. I was planning on ignoring it until it got to the line, ‘I head down to my basement bedroom and fire up my mac.’ The whole thing is one great big bundle of cute. Bonus, for me at least, is the marching band playing along with the song at the end. I’m a geek and love marching bands! Mr. Paisley is six kinds of adorable, too.

‘Blinded by the Light’ by Manfred Mann: I am well aware that The Boss originally sings the line ‘revved up like a deuce.’ I prefer to sing it ‘wrapped up like a douche.’ This song is LOOOOOOONG, too. Which is nice because it comes on and I know I don’t have to change the station for at least another 10 minutes.

‘I wanna be a Rock Star’ by Nickelback: It’s Nickelback. They’re awful, horrible and everything that is wrong with music today. BUT, this song is oozing with so much cliched cheese that I simply cannot help myself. I told a coworker that Nickelback and its ilk are essentially the microwave burritos of music. It’s bad for you, but sometimes you just have to have it, even though you know you’re going to hate yourself for it later. What seals the ‘junk food of modern music’ title is the voice overlude that states ‘I’ll have the quesadilla, ha ha.’ Trust me, that sick feeling goes away quickly.

‘It’s a Beautiful Life’ by Ace of Base: I’m really not ashamed of my love for Ace of Base. Just try to tell me they weren’t the ABBA of the ’90s! But other people, well, they just don’t understand, so I have to remain quiet about my love for those little Swedish merry makers. This is a really good song to have on the treadmill. The rest of their catalog is fabulous too so fuck the haters!!

‘Touch it’ by Monifah: If you have to be told what this song is about, you should probably not be on the Internet during Freshman English, just sayin’. While Prince did sex songs that were nasty, his had a little something that still made them complex and interesting. This does not. This is pretty damn overt. And sometimes, well, that’s just what you need.

‘Where do you go’ by No Mercy: This always makes me think of well-groomed latino men roaming around Miami in really tacky suits. And also, ‘Night at the Roxbury.’ It is quite a cute little dance song, so I don’t feel too bad about having it on there. The fact that whenever I hit shuffle, it almost ALWAYS comes on after I play a Rancid song, well, that’s just hilarious.

This was by no means an exhaustive list. My iPod currently has around 4,000 songs, so there are plenty of absolute doozies. Milli Vanilli, anyone?