What is a Guilty Pleasure Anyway?
What is a Guilty Pleasure Anyway?
By Dark Juan
Yea, yea, here I go sallying forth on yet another opinion piece for no other reason than my own amusement.
You often hear people blathering on about their musical guilty pleasures – normally from fans of Metal talking about their love of Simon and Garfunkel (‘The Sound of Silence’ is a timeless classic and the original version is far superior to the barrel-chested ego-fest that David Draiman turned it into. I WILL die on this hill so come at me!) or some other equally incongruous choice, normally because they will only listen to the most extreme and depraved Splattercore they can lay their blood-soaked hands on, and normally consider any music under 20,000 beats per minute as a dirge and describe it as a guilty pleasure. This, unsurprisingly, riles me.
I’m going to write it in capital letters so every understands that I am shouting:
THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS A GUILTY PLEASURE!
Music of any sort is not, however, a guilty pleasure. Not a single one of us who follow the One True Faith started out listening to Metal. We all liked stuff before we discovered Metal. For me it was the Pet Shop Boys. I fucking loved the Pet Shop Boys and still do, even though I swapped my vinyl of “Actually” for a tape of “Seventh Son of a Seventh Son” and that is where my parents would tell you that their dear, sweet boy turned into a monster. I contend that it was when I discovered vodka and girls, but that’s another discussion.
Music is an entirely subjective thing, and people like all different kinds of it. I’m not talking about Metal genres, but music in general here. And you know what? That’s fine. I am happy to be played music of forms I would not normally seek out myself because I might just find that gem of a band that I would never have heard had I been left to my own devices. Also, I might revisit the past and listen to some of the music from the 60s and 70s because that is where the bones of Metal are, and also because the 60s, 70s and early 80s is when music as a whole was at its most expansive, varied and interesting – we ran the whole gamut from the end of the doo-wop era, through the crooners and the Rat Pack all the way through to Iron Maiden breaking into the British charts and Thrash exploding all over us like the dwarves in your Snow White porn stash.
I like music as a whole. I get as much out of Charles Berlioz’s “Symphonie Fantastique” as I do from Metal. It doesn’t matter what the music is, it is not a guilty pleasure. It’s just music I like. Take Gerry Rafferty for example. He played in Stealers Wheel and I can’t abide Stealers Wheel, but I fucking love his solo stuff. ‘Night Owl’ is one of the best rock songs ever written. And this is extreme Dad Rock we are talking here, but there is something absolutely irresistible about it, and it is the same for Strawberry Switchblade, or Devo, or even the B-52s and The Cramps. Each of those bands speak to me in the same way that Fange, or Ixion, or Kittie do and I refuse to categorize the music as “lesser” simply because it isn’t heavy or it’s not my favourite genre. Hell, I have been a Metal fan for over thirty years and my top three favourite songs of all time aren’t Metal. Saying that, to save what fleeting shreds of cred I have left they aren’t bubblegum Pop either. But that, right there, is the point. It should not matter what they are. You might love Cattle Decapitation to the point you wear Cattle Decapitation pyjamas when you go to bed and fuck while wearing Cattle Decapitation branded condoms, but you might also love a bit of Dolly Parton. Now, Dolly does straight fucking bangers and she does not fuck about, and it is entirely appropriate that we should love her, but said fan of Cattle Decapitation might consider the angel that is Dolly Parton a guilty pleasure, to which I would respond by exploding with fury. It is totally fine to like a bit of pneumatic bottle-blonde Country and Western as well as Death Metal and they are equal to each other in terms of music. Having a preference for one style of music does NOT preclude the enjoyment of others.
Take me as an example – there are Metal bands I absolutely revere, but there’s the likes of Suicide, and Whitehouse, and Cromagnon, and Sir Lord Baltimore, and Roy Orbison and even fucking Sigue Sigue Sputnik and Pop Will Eat Itself whose music I also derive pleasure from. There’s everything from ‘Carmen Burana’ through to The Berzerker in my collection, and I have my side quests – my love of Goth, and Synthwave, and Industrial and Electronic Pop, and Delia Derbyshire and ABBA and Baccarat and my abiding and long-term adoration of a Roots Jazz band around our way called The Devil’s Jukebox all feature in there, and I am no less a Metal fan for it.
I refuse to say they are guilty pleasures because they aren’t. Being a slaughterman and having a secret hobby making dresses for Barbie dolls might be, but music is music, which leads me to the question of how many people are more concerned with preserving their image than admitting that they get just the same kick out of Kate Bush as they do Blood Incantation.
It’s fine to like both and be upfront about it.
It’s fine to like any music and be up front about it.
Disclaimer: This preview is solely the property of Dark Juan and Ever Metal. It is strictly forbidden to copy any part of this preview, unless you have the strict permission of both parties. Failure to adhere to this will be treated as plagiarism and will be reported to the relevant authorities.
