Guilty (dis)pleasures.

With music (with pop culture in general, really), people sometimes talk about 'guilty pleasures'.  I get the concept, but I'm not altogether comfortable with the implications of it.

Let me lay it out for you:  Music, as incredibly diverse as it is, is a universal thing (assuming one can hear).   Sometimes it's profound, sometimes it's profane, and sometimes it's just something to dance to or to calm you at the end of a long day.   Everyone's taste is shaped - and continually reshaped - by a complicated matrix of peers, personality, memory, marketing (yes, it's true), and a whole lot of je ne sais quoi.   Pieces of music, if they're pleasing to you, find their place somewhere along a continuum that ranges from fleeting fancies to, as the Smiths put it, the songs that saved your life.  It's all very personal and absolutely subjective.

So, having said that: why feel guilty about any music you genuinely like?


Now, granted, I am only human, so I'll admit there are some points on my personal musical map that I don't necessarily trot out when I'm trying to pretend that I'm really cool.   But life is way, WAY too short to feel shame or guilt over the shit you like, folks.    I was going to add some 'true confessions' here, but then decided that even that kind of justifies the idea that there's music you have to 'confess' to liking.

And this wasn't even the main point of this point.

My point was, that although I don't believe in feeling bad about stuff I like, I do sometimes feel something like guilt over things that I don't like, or things that I like well enough but get the impression that I'm supposed to really love and revere.

Like the Beatles.   There, I said it.  Now, I've got no problem with the Beatles.  Their music is pleasant and enjoyable.  I like a little Yellow Submarine as much as the next guy (although not nearly as much as my 3-year-old son).    And I do get their importance in the general scheme of music history, I really do.  But I know so many people - many of whom were not even born when the Beatles parted ways - who are absolutely passionate about them, that I feel like I've missed a memo somewhere.

That's my biggest one, but there are others.  Plenty of acclaimed, accomplished, literate and interesting musicians that I feel I kind of want to like, but don't.  Rather in the same way that I wish I liked melon because it looks so refreshing.  They are the melons of my musical world.    Then there are the ones that well-meaning acquaintances have tried to stuff down my throat like medicine: supposedly good for me on some level, but fundamentally unpalatable.  (Sorry about that, Tori Amos.)

I'm hereby declaring a moratorium on all music related guilt.  Let's just own our tastes (and distastes) and get on with our lives, shall we?

(Unless you like Justin Bieber.  Feel free to keep your guilt about that.)