I don’t normally describe things I like as “guilty pleasures,” because I’ve never seen any particular need for guilt over enjoying (say) fun, frivolous, dumb pop on its own terms. “Womanizer” is not a Terry Riley piece or even an Ian Curtis song, and it’s not trying to be. It’s trying to get you to bob your head and shake your ass a bit, and if it accomplishes that modest goal, great, it’s successful (if unambitious) art. Mostly, I feel like the expression is a badge of insecurity people drag out when they feel the need to signal a winking superiority to their own tastes. But I finally did feel my first twinge of it a couple days ago when I chanced upon the video for “Walk on the Ocean” from Toad the Wet Sprocket’s Fear—an album I had in pretty constant rotation around age 13, but haven’t heard in at least a decade. By all rights, this song really ought to be a failure on its own terms. It aims for poignant and hits mawkish dead on the bullseye. The vocals come off as a kind of constipated struggle to squeeze out some simulacrum of sincerity. It oscillates between the kind of bland, uninspired guitar-strumming that should come in a brown paper wrapper stamped “early-90s alt-rock” in big black block letters and ham-handed soundtrack strings. As far as I can tell, it has no redeeming features on any level. And I still can’t stop myself from singing along.
My First Guilty Pleasure
August 12th, 2009 · 11 Comments
Tags: Art & Culture
11 responses so far ↓
1 Ewe // Aug 12, 2009 at 1:05 pm
I never thought of “guilty pleasure” as a contested concept. For most people, it’s like their nose: it’s just a fact.
There’s a simple rule-of-thumb for something being a guilty pleasure: Would you be embarrassed if your friends saw that CD/track in your collection/iPod?
For instance, if I were in the car and a buddy were looking through my iPod and saw Steal my Sunshine or (say) Total Eclipse of the Heart, there’s nothing you can due to mitigate involuntary embarrassment, complete with a reddened face and burning ears.
2 squirrel // Aug 12, 2009 at 3:16 pm
Take heart, Julian, your song does have one redeeming feature: Nostalgia. It may not be good, but it reminds you of good feelings from long ago. Everybody deeply loved something at age 13 that has hasn’t held up well over time. Six words: “All right, stop. Collaborate and listen.”
The defense rests, your honor.
3 Kent // Aug 12, 2009 at 3:41 pm
Julian, the song is used to great effect in this Stella video
http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1609556
4 Emily // Aug 12, 2009 at 4:57 pm
“I’ve never seen any particular need for guilt over enjoying (say) fun, frivolous, dumb pop on its own terms.”
I agree with you, yet sometimes I still can’t help a red face (especially in certain company) over certain things that I like. Guess the rest of us just aren’t as evolved. 😉
Interesting…so if a song is fun, frivolous and dumb but doesn’t aspire to more, that’s ok, but if it’s that way in spite of itself, that’s not ok? I mean, in judging artistic merit that makes sense, as there are few things more painful than something that’s obviously trying too hard. Still, I can see where you might be able to enjoy “Walk on the Ocean” as something cheesily fun because that’s your experience of it, even if you don’t think it’s the intent. (Not because I found myself kind of bopping along to it…no…my face is the same color it was before, why do you ask?) But then you have nostalgia as an excuse, so you hardly even have grounds for guilt. Pff.
5 digamma // Aug 12, 2009 at 5:10 pm
“Would you be embarrassed if your friends saw that CD/track in your collection/iPod?”
Then they aren’t my friends.
6 Neil the Ethical Werewolf // Aug 12, 2009 at 9:53 pm
Maybe we could say that guilty pleasures involve a combination of these two things: being confident in an aesthetic value system according to which something is bad, and still having a positive aesthetic response to it. Seems like the sort of thing that happens fairly often.
7 Jefferson // Aug 12, 2009 at 10:11 pm
Thanks, Kent. Spot on.
8 Laure // Aug 12, 2009 at 10:30 pm
Good Lord. That’s so guilty I might change my stance on capital punishment.
9 Barry // Aug 13, 2009 at 4:27 pm
Don’t worry about guilty pleasures; life’s too short to restrict to Officially Cool things.
BTW – ‘Total Eclipse of the Heart’ is still good, it just depends on the mood.
I came across TtWS when I was in my late 30’s (‘All I Want’), and enjoyed ‘Walk on the Ocean’. It’s amazingly deliberately schmaltzy, but it works, and that’s what counts.
10 RickRussellTX // Aug 16, 2009 at 12:17 am
No regrets. I loved Renegade when I was in third grade, and it’s STILL AWESOME, as amply proved by a href=”http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ciXyuNae5No”>Chris Daughtry.
11 RickRussellTX // Aug 16, 2009 at 12:19 am
Lemme try that again… No regrets. I loved Renegade when I was in third grade, and it’s STILL AWESOME, as amply proved by Chris Daughtry.