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I'm a piano player who has studied jazz and classical music. I was a teenager in the 70's.
My guilty pleasures are the 80's hair band Ratt- "Love will keep us together" by the Captain and Tennille- Ray Conniff's Christmas
Album and the virtuoso easy listening pianist
Roger Williams (esp. Brahms Hungarian Dance)

And sorry guys - but ELP are musical geniuses- case closed- if you are embarassed by them you are wrong. I don't want to talk about it any more.

I have to register my agreement with Jack... I was a little blown away to hear the idea of "guilty musical pleasures" banded around so uncritically during Soundcheck today. Often, the distinctions we draw between things we should/should not enjoy map onto deeply classed, racialized and gendered assumptions about social value and creativity. But always, these distinctions map onto our deeply held assumptions about who we are/want to be and who we are not/don't want to be seen as. Music has been, is, and probably always will be a pole for identity, and as the discussant who expounded the virtues of "Catholic pleasures" recognized, that kind of identification can make possible some fun-because-illicit pleasures. However, I think it's also important to recognize that what underlies that pleasure is a social dynamic that is, at its core, neurotic; at its best, playful; at its worst, divisive, normalizing and personally limiting.

I'm not alone...

Lime
Babe We're Gonna Love Tonight

Billy Ocean
Caribbean Queen

SOUNDCHECK SAYS: Hey Jack -- Yep, today is an encore edition of Soundcheck. But here in the Soundcheck office, we're eagerly reading your comments. Great stuff! Keep 'em coming!

any of the time-life music infomercial albums. The John Denver one almost makes me weepy...

Mine:

Ballad of the Green Beret - Sgt. Barry Saddler

The Model - Kraftwerk

Genie in a Bottle - Cristina Aguilera

Right Down the Line - Gerry Rafferty (they even put it to anime on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHbshERgRsA)

Oh and yes, I agree on 'Ice Ice Baby' and 'Little Miss Can't Be Wrong'

I have two to admit:

A 6 month obsession with Guns N Roses Use Your Illusion 1 & 11. And I once knew Miss Saigon by heart. Sigh, I'm embarrassed to say I still have them.

Billy Ocean rocks!

Wow, John, I had no idea that ELP was something to confess. I'm not embarrassed about never "coming to my senses" about them.

I think my dirty secret, though, is the five Monkee albums I collected by the time I was 12. Luckily, by the time I was about 14 I got over them.

pick one:

-journey- don't stop believin!

-james taylor- i blame my dad who is the worlds biggest fan

-any 80's hair band- white snake, poison etc i will sing these songs OUTLOUD- 'pour some sugar on me!'

michael jackson- uhm the good years?

theme song from rocky for running/exercise- gets me going every time

LFO-- Summer Girls

"I like girls that wear Abercrombie and Fitch.."

'Nuff said.

Is this an "encore" show? Because they just quoted someone named Jeff who made a comment about indie rock pretensions. Which is what it basically comes down to.

I'm grateful to have discovered great indie rock in my 20s, but good lord I can't stand stupid indie rock attitudes. Such elitism for so little. I'm sorry but a lot of crappy bands play to 5 people in a crappy basement for a reason. They just stink.

C&C Music Factory would be my dirty secret...especially so after they were busted for lip syncing and using other performers to do the actual singing.

Gonna Make You Sweat!

Jack, true say!

"if i feel it, i feel it
if i dont, I dont..." ~ Dead Prez

spin doctors, "Little Miss Can't Be Wrong"

ughhhh....

thank god we age

Wham! My friends and I STILL play Wham when we are having some drinks and do our best 80's dances.

...oh my god. "Hush" by Paula Abdul (or whatever). Guilty as charged.

i love les miserables! i know all the words.

I wouldn't ever say liking The Comedian Harmonists is an embarrassment. I love their "Little Green Cactus!" I have both volumes of their hits.

How about Lime, from the height of the disco movement? One of my sister's favorites.

Doesn't this all fall in the category of so-called "guilty pleasures" that places artificial divisions between what one person likes versus another?

I grew up listening to Rush. I also listen to Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin, Cat Power, The Clash, Sleater-Kinney, The Who and others on my iPod. Heck, I have some Helen Kane in there also.

Get over it. We all like things. It's only artificial media divisions that make pleasures "guilty".

Oh, far too many to recount -- and I still have a soft spot for many of them. Of course, there's Barry Manilow, but I will never give him up.

My most cringe-inducing albums -- but, yes, they're now on a special playlist for occasional nostalgia rotation on my iPod even these days -- would be the Mitch Miller sing-along albums and (even worse) the Ray Conniff Singers. At the time, as a kid, it was just music I could sing along to with my family on car trips. Nowadays, I pull these out for the memories and their kitschy, early 1960s enthusiasm.

When they came out I actually thought Pearl Jam's 10 was a better album than Nirvana's Nevermind. Yikes!

My musical dirty secret is that I have several Elvis Presley Gospel Albums in my collection. What is odd is that I'm a 40ish year old, African-American man who has no business in the world with Elvis Presley gospel albums. But, they belonged to my grandma and passed on to me when she died. Of course I have listened to them and I rather like them...but, is it that I like Elvis singing gospel ("How Great Thou Art...et al.) or do listening to the albums remind me of Grandma and something that she loved...hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. But trust me, these albums are now hidden in the back of my closet!

I love Yma Sumac's "Mambo" CD. Her range is awesome. Add her growls, snarls and other exotic noises and well, I don't want to say it's an acquired taste, but I don't know many people who appreciate it like I do.