No guilty pleasures

borderpolice said:

well, i guess i'm a pop fashist, but i'm not terrified "of anything that might signify authenticity or 'proper music'", it's just that rockist apologia is especially given to bogus rationalisations

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Your not that sort of pop fascist then - there seem to be people who would deny that She Loves You is a great tune because the Beatles wrote their own songs and writing your own songs smacks of rockism.

Yeah, rockism is bollox but a lot of people seem to have got stuck on the idea that once you've realised this you have to go crazy on its exact negation...

The definition of a guilty pleasure is a song that you start off only enjoying when you're drunk and then you come to love when you're sober.

I always liked "you're not alone" and not in a guilty way... its a good song, cheesy, but not too cheesy, an anthem, sure, not "tasteful", but who give a toss about that? I still think a large element of the "poptimist" project is a kind of perverse negotiation, and that eventually they will inevitably (having lapped up 80s hair-metal, production line pop, Yacht Rock, MOR, etc etc- all with their own merits and demerits of course...) have to come back, perversely, once everyone else has moved on, to corporate indie... there's an element to poptimism that deliberately ignores the inherent "pop" inside what is very much the most popular music of now... blanded out indie rock. For the cognoscenti to laud that... now that would be impressively perverse... and given the fact that some of them now are loving say Phil Collins, not an impossible trajectory...

What if you don't drink at all?

Ned said:

The definition of a guilty pleasure is a song that you start off only enjoying when you're drunk and then you come to love when you're sober.

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I think of it more as music that doesn't make into your iPod that you take out in public, but you play in the privacy of your own home and jam to...only to press the STOP button immeadiately whenever you get a phone call, company or the UPS man shows up to deliver a package...like, say a huge Mobb Deep fan who plays "Entourage" by Omarion, "Young Girl" by Pharrell Williams, and "Me and U" by Cassie, but turns that shit off IMMEDIATELY because they thought they heard some one knocking at the door (this example man sound absurd to some but you'd be surprised). I remember someone being shocked that I had so many Jazz records at home "because I was so into Hip Hop"...she wasn't too bright...and I NEVER saw her silly ass again. One.

Sure, there's plenty of music which I wouldn't feel comfortable playing in front of certain people, but that doesn't mean I feel guilty about liking those pieces of music, merely that I might not want to justify my taste to others... Its simply boring and doesn't achieve anything for the most part... the idea of "guilt" I think is interesting because it implies something internalised, like a musical conscience... which implies a conception of a "big other" (I used to have something like this- terrifyingly it was some kind of meta-NME journalist, but he's long gone now... haha)

Don't 'guilty pleasures' often directly relate to suppression of emotions or sentiments linked to said songs?

Having said that, there are still loads of things that remain 'guilty' and will probably do so for a long time- Blacklace, Benny Hill, the Sex Pistols (punk purist obscurism means that you're likely to get sneered at by the staff in MVE if you purchase that £1 copy of 'Never Mind the Bollocks' ; the Ronnie Biggs 12" is probably suitably post-ironic though), the 'Chicken Tonight' advert theme, Andrew Lloyd Webber, Cliff Richard, etc.

I think the idea of cognitive dissonance that Gek mentioned above is key here - not necessarily just dissonance between different elements in a track and how you perceive them, but also in the different channels that music is perceived and the different ways that these perceptions relate to elements of the self. So the feeling of guilt arises as the mind attempts to resolve this dissonance.

If you try and construct your sense of self around your tastes, then dissonance occurs when you experience pleasure (maybe purely aesthetic, nostalgic, social, physical, the pleasure that you can get just from discovering the historical importance of a piece of music etc ...) when listening to music that conflicts with your tastes as you like to perceive them.

Personally I relish this dissonance for reasons that people have suggested above - and it can be aesthetically stimulating too, you can hear things in different ways and judge them according to different standards. Plus the music that I love the most if often stuff that has provoked in me strong feelings of dissonance when I've initally encountered it.

Anyway, you don't need to ascribe value to the object that provides pleasure, you can ascribe value to the experience that you have with that object. Although now this is starting to sound like a theory of polymorphous perversity for sound.

FWIW I'm rather partial to a spot of hair metal every now and then or or :slanted:

Hey Geek-Opel...

Do you really KNOW WHY you like what you like? If so then I could program a music computer with the proper modes, chords, rhythms, textures and pump out Gek-Music all day and you'd be happy as a clam... don't think so...

Music operates in a place not accessible with our reasoning minds. Remember Zappa and "dancing about architecture".

Just enjoy what you enjoy. It's better to have Music grab You than the other way round...

Troy said:

Do you really KNOW WHY you like what you like? If so then I could program a music computer with the proper modes, chords, rhythms, textures and pump out Gek-Music all day and you'd be happy as a clam... don't think so...

Music operates in a place not accessible with our reasoning minds. Remember Zappa and "dancing about architecture".

Just enjoy what you enjoy. It's better to have Music grab You than the other way round...

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Um, I disagree. This issue has been done to death here and many other places, but essentially, no, it is not all subjective. Your tastes aren't magic, they are strongly affected by a variety of social and personal factors which can be spoken about in specific enough terms to make the discussion useful. The human mind isn't a complete mystery.

borderpolice said:

(1) using music as a launching pad to talk about something else

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surely this can be convincing. its certainly more worthwhile a way to examine and discuss music than technical jargon, which most people won't understand.

@Troy- You are correct that overstating even a subjective-objective basis for enjoyment (ie- this particular sequence of technical musical facets will likely be deemed "good" by a given individual) is a gross-oversimplification, and that there is still a considerable degree of contextual stuff that is key, but actually I would love to programme such as the generative system you jokingly describe... in the time being I will content myself with having to write the bloody stuff myself...

After thinking about this... I think I need to back off my position a bit.

To state that music is completely mysterious means...

a) that trying to explain and defend my own tastes would make me a hypocrite,

and

b) any attempt at music-making myself would be pointless, for what would I base my decisions on?

And anyways I do concede that many others probably know more about the inner workings of music than I do.

I don't see the point of bands being completely retro, I mean it smacks of defeatism doesn't it? I think there are people (probably not me!) that could defend that future-looking position as modernism or a dialectic or whatever....

mms said:

it affects people enough to invest time and energy in it so there is depth there surely?

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I don't think so. people are a lot more sheep-like than we'd like to believe.

just went to an atrocious indie-rock concert 2 nights ago (dragged there by some girl) to see the Swiss band The Sounds. and I realised that it is very simple, like a coloring book for todlers - if you color the grass green, and the sky blue, and the house brown - people will invest in it emotionally (and it follows, more importantly to some, economically).

(image of giant herds of retro-glam uniformed 20-somethings in asymetrical haircuts singing along, word for word, some with tears in eyes, to these insubstantial, vapid, pretentious, un-original BULLSHIT songs)

I can see the rec execs: what's hot right now? 80s. but people still like their rock'n'roll don't they? they sure do. and exotic locales are good, right? yes they certainly are. OK, let's do the Sounds.

incidentally the girl who dragged me there works for the label which signed them (Geffen), and she completely affirmed my bleak, cynical point of view - except it's not bleak or cynical to her - this is naturlly the way things are done, isn't it?

except it's not bleak or cynical to her - this is naturlly the way things are done, isn't it?

Yeah, man. Everybody knows that the Justins And Xtinas of this world are the cheesy sheep music. The real, deep, serious stuff is produced by four or five fellas with guitar, bass and drums. (And maybe a girl on bass.)

swears said:

Yeah, man. Everybody knows that the Justins And Xtinas of this world are the cheesy sheep music. The real, deep, serious stuff is produced by four or five fellas with guitar, bass and drums. (And maybe a girl on bass.)

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you are putting words in my mouth. words I don't believe in and would not say. besides, the band I was talking about, the Sounds, is four or five fellas with guitars, bass, drums, and synth, with a girl on lead vocals.

@ Confucius: Hey don't diss the follicle asymmetry... However... I simply don't get simplistic emotionalism... I know 80% of people love it (friends of mine too) but its just so utterly tiresome (its all about ambiguity and emotional complexity as far as songs go for me...) but still: Surely for a record Executive to be hiring these types of acts now is suicidal, the market is glutted with them, most are already failing. This is little better than the latter days of britpop, when anything with a Ray Davies rip and a union jack festooned Gibson got a contract- IE: the usual Major label thing of following a trend till it implodes in their money-hungry faces. If I was a major label A&R I would be attempting to break something with a real Unique Selling Point right now, the market would be open for such a thing...

confucius said:

you are putting words in my mouth. words I don't believe in and would not say. besides, the band I was talking about, the Sounds, is four or five fellas with guitars, bass, drums, and synth, with a girl on lead vocals.

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No, I was making fun of the girl's attitudes, not yours. I'm agreeing with you.
Rellllaaaaaxxxx