Is It A Guilty Pleasure If You Don’t Feel Guilty?

The Fast Food Rockers
“Burger Dance”

A similar and perhaps easier case can be made for the European “summerhits” that pop up overseas on a yearly basis. Dance or disco songs exist to deliver a beat to the dance floor, a strut to your stride. They’re good at what they do, and I can’t find any guilt in that. “Summerhits” are even less intellectual. These songs barely have lyrics to speak of, and the words present are too fluffy to hang any weighty meaning on. Who can accuse “Burger Dance” of being pretentious as it encourages the listener to sing along with “The Pizza Hut, the Pizza Hut, Kentucky Fried Chicken and the Pizza Hut, McDonald’s, McDonald’s, Kentucky Fried Chicken and the Pizza Hut?” In the U.S., we all remember the Macarena—it only existed to amuse and maybe provide an excuse to line dance at weddings, and at that it excelled. Songs like that still come out in Europe every year, and they’re all equally pithy. Nobody cares what they’re about; they just want to jump around and have something to shout on the dance floor.

Dirty Blues

One of my favorite genres is Dirty Blues, which consists of blues songs primarily from the 30s and 40s with risqué subjects that were couched in lyrics with just enough double-entendre to avoid trouble from the law. Titles include “Get ‘Em From The Peanut Man (Hot Nuts)” and “The Hottest Stuff In Town,” which is of course about a coal salesman. Is it An Historical Record of the Black Man’s Life and Experiences during those times? No, and it’s not meant to be. It’s titillating and sometimes clever innuendo intended to amuse, backed by period blues instrumentation. Interestingly, the songs are frequently more innocent than a lot of the current hits. There’s no inner voice cautioning me not to play these songs for other people—I want them to enjoy the naughty fun, too.

That’s not to say that I don’t have guilty pleasures. There are songs and genres that I do hesitate to play when others are around. In most cases the reason is that the material itself is offensive, as with gangsta rap or shock-rock bands like The Mentors. I don’t agree with the sentiments in their song “Get Up And Die” any more than I sympathize with the protagonist in the film A Clockwork Orange, of course, but that doesn’t preclude my enjoyment of either. On the other hand, I’m not going to ask my houseguests if they’d like to listen to “I Wanna Spank You” after dinner.

Having a guilty pleasure is fun; if it weren’t, it would just be guilt. We all have our personal treasures that we hesitate to share with others, and that keeps us unique. Guilt, like pleasure, depends greatly on the mind of the listener and how he perceives things. Although current attitudes towards trends or types of music can contribute toward one’s feelings of guilt, ultimately the burden of the guilty pleasure rests with the individual.

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