Guilty Pleasures

Now that I'm spending more time commuting, I'm also spending more time with the iPod that I've liberated from my mother. (She never used it.) I filled it with lots of my favorite musicians, who are all acceptable and borderline cool, like The Mountain Goats and Dar Williams and Okkervil River and the Magnetic Fields and Passion Pit and Lady Gaga. But sometimes I just have to listen to something that is purely pleasurable and barely respectable. Like, the other day, this dude on the street was all, "Hey, baby" or whatever to me. That moment was so out of sync with what I was listening to ("Be Our Guest" from Beauty & the Beast) that it was almost magical.

So here are some guilty pleasures I listen to when I feel that familiar New York City subway cynicism crawl over me. ("Why is it so hot on the 59th Street 4/5 express platform? What just dripped on me? Why did I wear such stupid shoes?")


I guess Michael Jackson's vocals in the chorus make this song somewhat more legitimate, but just barely. Pretty much all the lines are my favorite, but I particularly enjoy, "All I want is to be left alooone / in my average home / but why do I always feel / like I'm in the Twilight Zone?" I think it's the delivery. Also, Rockwell is a terrible actor in this music video.



Again, a feat of songwriting. (No sarcasm.) I love this song. I like how they rhyme "the future is littered with prizes" with "the point that I must emphasize is." Disney's Golden Age!



I had this song on a cassette circa 1997. It's like a delicious, high-pitched bug in your brain. I couldn't find the original video, unfortunately.



I like country music, even the cheesy stuff, but this is pretty gosh-darn cheesy. And sort of a terrible message. But it's a classic and I think what I like most about it is the over-the-top theatricality. She really drives it home with that tremor in her voice. When I listened to the song in the past, I always imagined her with some huge hairdo, belting it out on the stage. Well, I was right about the hairdo, but this video is just sort of sad.



Oh, this song is just awful. But it's catchy and it reminds me of my equally-awful Belarusian fake-boyfriend, who played it for me the last time I saw him. It translates to "You Have the Sweetest Ass in the World."