{"id":1776,"date":"2007-12-28T05:36:28","date_gmt":"2007-12-28T10:36:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1776"},"modified":"2007-12-24T00:38:10","modified_gmt":"2007-12-24T05:38:10","slug":"guilty-pleasures","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/?p=1776","title":{"rendered":"Guilty Pleasures"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m pretty up front about music I love, and music I can&#8217;t stand.<\/p>\n<p>But really, any music that&#8217;s got <em>something <\/em>that grabs me in the liver can rock my musical world &#8211; hence, there&#8217;s a third category; music done by artists that I <em>should  <\/em>detest, but I just can&#8217;t help it, I love it anyway.  It&#8217;s usually got a hook to it that makes me feel all minty, but whatever, its&#8217; all good.<\/p>\n<p>Just&#8230;guilty.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong><em>Rocky Mountain High, <\/em>John Denver<\/strong> &#8211; Not to say I&#8217;m a huge John Denver fan, but&#8230;oh, who am I kidding?  I taught myself to play guitar from John Denver records.  And while most of his stuff has fallen out of my conscience over the years, <a href=\"http:\/\/youtube.com\/watch?v=aWU8XWksg_0\">I still love this song<\/a>; partly because it&#8217;s not a bad tune, and partly because the album for which it was the title cut featured one really good acoustic band, including Mike Taylor on the guitar &#8211; and Mike Taylor could <em>play<\/em> that thing.<\/li>\n<li><strong><em>Cry<\/em>, Mandy Moore<\/strong> &#8211; The worst thing about being in my mid-forties is the realization that I&#8217;ll probably never get a shot at nailing Mandy Moore (motto:  &#8220;<em>80% less embarassing than Britney, more PG-rated than Christina Aguilera<\/em>&#8220;).  But &#8220;<a href=\"http:\/\/youtube.com\/watch?v=3WA7I_iHXXM\">Cry&#8221; has a  really, really cool hoo<\/a>k (especially the roll out of the bridge), it&#8217;s from a very underrated movie (that would have been less underrated, perhaps, if they&#8217;d hacked out the stupid &#8220;terminal illness&#8221; stuff), and I just like it, and I don&#8217;t care <em>what <\/em>you think.<\/li>\n<li><strong><em>Kids in America, <\/em>Kim Wilde\/Lem\/New Radicals<\/strong> &#8211; Oh, shut up.  <a href=\"http:\/\/youtube.com\/watch?v=-hWZqllm3mQ\">You know you love it<\/a>.  It&#8217;s that moment just before English synth-pop tipped over the edge from desperately un-funky to desperately un-fun.  (And I love both the covers, including the <a href=\"http:\/\/youtube.com\/watch?v=91WgM6dNLTE\">New Radicals<\/a>&#8216; thrashy cover, if only because it helps answer the question &#8220;whatever happened to <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/New_Radicals\">Danielle Brisebois<\/a>&#8220;)<\/li>\n<li><strong><em>Do You Sleep, <\/em>Lisa Loeb<\/strong> &#8211; Lisa Loeb, during her razor-thin heyday maybe ten years ago, was the Sarah Vowell of pop music. No, that&#8217;s not a good thing.  <a href=\"http:\/\/youtube.com\/watch?v=AHYEeIQ8vY4&#038;feature=related\">But I always liked this song<\/a>; I chalk it up to the background vocal part.  It doesn&#8217;t take much, sometimes, for me to rationalize my way into liking something.  (And since we&#8217;re talking <a href=\"http:\/\/youtube.com\/watch?v=PS1CVhxMCMA\">hooks<\/a>&#8230;).  But I still want to break horn-rimmed glasses worn for ironic purposes on basic principle, so I&#8217;m still OK.<\/li>\n<li><strong><em>If She Knew What She Wants, <\/em>Bangles<\/strong> &#8211; Let&#8217;s get one thing straight; there was nothing guilty about the pleasure of the Bangles&#8217; debut album, 1984&#8217;s <em>All Over The Place<\/em>.  It was chock full of really great stuff,and I&#8217;ll beat the crap out of anyone who wants to argue it.  But <em>Different Light<\/em> was a little different; loaded with covers and  beating us over the head with Susanna Hoffs (not that there&#8217;s anything wrong with that), it was an obvious play for Top40 wuv (not that there&#8217;s anything wrong with <em>that<\/em>, either).  But th<a href=\"http:\/\/youtube.com\/watch?v=HjQ76vqwYMk\">is song had the most gorgeous hook<\/a> of the 1980&#8217;s, so all is totally forgiven.<\/li>\n<li><strong><em>This Woman&#8217;s Work, <\/em>Kate Bush <\/strong>&#8211; Kate Bush is usually just&#8230;too&#8230;<em>weird <\/em>for me. She&#8217;s an acquired taste that I&#8217;ve tried, oh lord I&#8217;ve tried, to acquire, over and over again.  And I enjoy her stuff, in the same way that I enjoy Rachmaninoff piano concertos; &#8220;how the <em>hell<\/em> do they do that?&#8221; Oh, she&#8217;s musically interesting, and, um, interesting otherwise as well, but most of her music I can take or leave.  And yet <a href=\"http:\/\/youtube.com\/watch?v=Hm901CXujEg\">this one absolutely shreds me<\/a>.  Every damn time.  Even when it was in that stupid Kevin Bacon movie.<\/li>\n<li><em>She Said, She Said, <\/em>The Beatles &#8211; Time for a shameful declaration; I&#8217;ve never been a huge Beatles fan.  I don&#8217;t care for anything after <em>Sergeant Pepper, <\/em>to be perfectly honest.<\/li>\n<li><strong><em>But I Do Love You, <\/em>LeAnn Rimes<\/strong> &#8211; Do I even have to say it?<\/li>\n<li><strong><em>A Long December, <\/em>Counting Crows<\/strong> &#8211; Adam Duritz has always bugged the bejeebers out of me.  <a href=\"http:\/\/youtube.com\/watch?v=PNF1a-ZG1uc\">But this song has always ripped me up from the inside out<\/a> &#8211; never more than this past year.<\/li>\n<li><em><strong>She Said, She Said, <\/strong><\/em><strong>The Beatles &#8211; <\/strong>Here&#8217;s a surprising revelation; I&#8217;ve never been a yuuuge Beatles fan. Oh, I like lots of their stuff, don&#8217;t worry &#8211; although most of their stuff after <em>Sergeant Pepper<\/em> honestly bores me stiff.   Really.  It just doesn&#8217;t grab me.  &#8216;Strooth.  But <a href=\"http:\/\/youtube.com\/watch?v=UhBrevk7IRo\">this song just totally hypnotizes me<\/a>.  And that&#8217;s a good thing.<\/li>\n<li><em><strong>Boulevard of Broken Dreams, <\/strong><\/em><strong>Hanoi Rocks &#8211; <\/strong>Ok, n<a href=\"http:\/\/youtube.com\/watch?v=WV3cnQOrpdg\">othing remotely guilty about it<\/a>.  No, wait; they&#8217;re from Finland.Hm.Nope.  Still not guilty.<\/li>\n<li><strong><em>You Really Had Me Going, <\/em>Holly Dun<\/strong>n &#8211; Holly Dunn, the queen of <a href=\"http:\/\/youtube.com\/watch?v=w3r9RGq9Ivk\">twangy honky-tonk country<\/a> back before twang was cool again, was saving country-western from the &#8220;Crossover-Pop&#8221; nightmare of the seventies and early eighties when Garth Brooks was still greasing palms in Nashville.  Her disappearance is proof positive that the country music business is just plain stupid.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I&#8217;m pretty up front about music I love, and music I can&#8217;t stand. But really, any music that&#8217;s got something that grabs me in the liver can rock my musical world &#8211; hence, there&#8217;s a third category; music done by artists that I should detest, but I just can&#8217;t help it, I love it anyway. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[14],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1776","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1776","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1776"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1776\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1776"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1776"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.shotinthedark.info\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1776"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}