announcement

A short announcement: I’m going to merge my various blogging efforts. If you head on over to Cresting the Words, you’ll find lots of stuff on writing, some other post where I complain about various things, my own writing which is more in the shape of word pictures, posts on photography and travelling coming up, and yes, finally, also new and more regular music content. Just up, for example, some reminiscing about Paul Simon and his wonderful Graceland concert in Zimbabwe in 1987.

Hope you’ll head over. See you there!

Advertisement

guilty pleasures

Everyone has them. I’m sure you do. I most certainly have them – those songs that I feel I shouldn’t like… yet for some reason I just really like them anyway.

Those are the songs you sing along to when they come up on the radio without thinking and the other people in the car look at you in a funny way. The ones that you start dancing about to enthusiastically, just as everybody else is leaving the dancing area. The ones you lightly skim over or try to explain away when looking through your music collection with a friend.

I’m sure these songs are all wildly different for each of us, and the reasons why you feel you ‘should’ not like them are quite varied – they are kitsch, the lyrics are awful, you don’t like the singer/band, the song is not considered cool – whatever the reasons are (and often they are a multiple of those and similar reasons!), you still like that song.

Maybe you grew up with it and you have positive childhood memories? Maybe the melody just hits a sweet spot in your emotions? Whatever the reason, what I want to tell you is this: It’s alright. Do not be afraid. You are in good company. Let’s be brave and not bother about those ‘shoulds’ or ‘shouldn’ts’ and just ‘fess up to songs that might not fit into our perceptions of what we are supposed to like, but that give us happiness anyway. ‘Cause that’s what music’s all about, isn’t it?

You can listen to my guilty pleasures right here:

And now it’s your turn. Step up to the mark! What are your guilty music pleasures?