The Music Bucket: Guilty Pleasures

Download the Guilty Pleasures Mix (.zip file)

I think the title of this month’s oft-delayed, much-anticipated mix says it all.  I have been accused, in the past, of only giving airtime to my more obscure musical loves, and cultivating a decidedly anti-mainstream bias.  All I can say is that you don’t know obscure musical loves until you get a peek into the NYC hipster scene.  There are people here who only listen to bands that are so underground that the band members themselves don’t know they’re in a band.  So here are some of the things I listen to when I think no one is listening.  (Also, in case my double-posting today ends up burying my rant about the new EEPB masthead, please scroll down and read it after this post)

1. Believe – Cher: Joseph has a saying for doing the hardest thing first. He calls it “eating the frog”. This presupposes that you are at a primarily edible buffet of options and, in the case of this mix, it might be hard to discern the true frog. But admitting I love this song is it. I feel horribly ashamed for the deep, deep feelings of personal triumph that ‘Believe’ evokes in me. It’s like my own personal ‘I Will Survive’. Sigh.

2. Neverending Story (Cover Version) – The Canadians: This cover is, if anything, even sparklier than the original. More humiliating than liking the song is the fact that it makes me imagine I’m riding on the back of a giant, furry, not un-phallic dragon who talks like James Earl Jones. No one wants that.

3. 100 Years – Five For Fighting: My “mist-up” percentage for this song is about 75%, and there’s a totally befuddling 20% possibility of actual tears. But only when it comes on the radio unexpectedly. Go figure.

4. Irreplacable – Beyonce: Never since Steve Miller has anyone more felicitously rhymed a word with itself, c.f. “I could have another you in a minute/matter of fact he’ll be here in a minute.” There’s something totally genius about this – she’s saying “I could replace you right now,” and then decides that not harsh enough and says, “Actually, I forgot, I already ordered your replacement,”. Then, in a strange volt-face, she backs off and claims the replacement won’t be there until the next day…  Go hard, Beyonce, or go home.

5. Escape – Enrique Iglesias: This song was the anthem of the “cool guys” clique that formed on a trip to Spain I led years ago, and so the awesomeness of the song gets mixed up with the awesomeness of knowing this was the chink in the armor of feigned indifference they wore into the daily battle of teenager-dom.

6. I’d Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That) – Meatloaf: Forget trying to figure out what “that” is. Semantics are a total red herring. This song is so amazingly anthemic that it works even if you substitute: “But I won’t do crack” or “I won’t screw cats” or even “I’d do anything for love/but fight Chow Young Fat”.

7. Chasing Cars – Snow Patrol: One would think that if you are going to have embarrassingly generic lyrics like: “We’ll do it all/Everything/On our own/We don’t need/Anything/Or anyone” which build to the rousing conclusion: “I don’t know where/Confused about how as well/Just know that these things/Will never change for us at all”, then you should sing those words quickly, or maybe mumble them…but Snow Patrol draws them out like it is a dictation exam. I think this song works by just piling on the mistakes and coming up with a “six negatives make a positive” sort of gold.

8. Aicha – Khaled: This song is not necessarily embarrassing because it is cheesy, etc…but because I thought I was so cool for having discovered it first among my friends. The fact that I pimped out Aicha in order to gain some vague music cred makes me feel dirty.

9. Baila Morena – Zucchero: Probably the least widely known song on this mix. It was HUGE in Spain about 5 years ago. The guilty part of this song is a rather complex notion to convey – brace yourselves. The chorus, as I understand it, is: “Baila/Baila morena/sotto cuestar una piena/under the moonlight”. “Baila morena” means “Dance, you brunette” and I have no idea what “sotto cuestar una piena” means, (or even if that is a decent approximation of the Italian) BUT to me it sounds like the Spanish “solo cuesta una pierna”, which means “it will only cost you one leg.”  Soooo, I love a song which, to me, means:

Dance, brunette
You’ll only lose one leg
Under the moonlight

Macabre at best.

10/11/12. Walk On Water/Ray Of Light (Natasha Bedingfield Cover)/Take Me To The Clouds Above: My disco triumvirate. And a sneaky way to smuggle U2 into this mix.

13/14. Major Tom/I’ve Gotta Get A Message To You: Why is it that you can love acapella all you want, as long as you are a college student, but the instant you graduate it becomes a shameful secret? The only person in the known universe to successfully resist the temptation to repudiate acapella is Ben Folds…who is putting out an album in April of his stuff sung by college acapella groups. No joke.

15. Me – Paula Cole: As many of you know, I have a soft spot for chanteuses. This extends even to the degree that I accept without hesitation or qualification lines like “It’s me who beats me up”. This is not one of those songs that I belt out whenever it comes on the radio, but I stop and actually listen to the lyrics every single time.

Thanks for letting me get those off my chest. I expect brisk traffic in the comments field. If you’ve read this far, you owe it to me to leave one or two of your own guilty pleasures below ↓.