30 Day Song Challenge -- Day 13

Day 13: A song that is a guilty pleasure.

It's a bit tough to be honest on this one, you know? I mean, if it's a true guilty pleasure, then it's a song I really wouldn't want anyone else to know I like, right? A song that I'd have to start explaining to a passenger in my car if it came up on a random iPod shuffle.

I need to actually care that it's not "cool" to like the song. I don't care that a fair number of music critics have been bagging on Huey Lewis and the News over the years, and have pronounced "The Heart of Rock and Roll" one of the worst/cheesiest songs/videos ever. I still like it.

I also don't think it counts when everyone was under the mass delusion of a song's spell for a period of time. I mean, everybody liked "Mambo No. 5" for a couple months there, so I don't feel especially "guilty" about still liking it today.

Dig deeper...

Maybe this will suffice:



That's 3 Small Words, ostensibly by Josie and the Pussycats. A few years back, they made a blink-and-you-missed-it film version of the cartoon Josie and the Pussycats. So first, I have to suck up the embarrassment and admit to seeing it. Then, I have to suck up the embarrassment of admitting I actually quite liked it. (So sue me. It was a scathing commentary on manufactured pop culture, and made me laugh a lot.)

Then I have to suck up the embarrassment of admitting that I really dug the music -- the crafted-to-sound-just-like-mainstream-bubblegum-pop soundtrack of "the Pussycats," whose lead vocals weren't even actually provided in the film by "Josie," Rachel Leigh Cook. Then I have to confess that I actually bought the soundtrack, love virtually every song on it, and start air drumming almost every time this track comes on in my car.

If that's not a guilty pleasure, then I must not have one.