Guilty Pleasures (Music)

There’s music you like which you can defend critically and there’s music you just like for no reason at all. Then there’s music you’re ashamed to admit you like, with or without reason. Here are some in my shame-list. Since I cannot bring myself to rank them, I’ll just list them down in no particular order.

• All By Myself by Eric Carmen
Forget about the Celine Dion version, the original is one of the favorite tunes played while men in skimpy underwear gyrate onstage to it. (Their favorite artist though is Bon Jovi, hands-down.) When that pause comes and then the drum beats that Thug!-dug!-dug! Dum! and he goes, “All byyy myyy-se-e-eeelf! Don’t wanna live all byyy myyy-self anyyymore!” I go gaga inside.

• I Will Always Love You by Whitney Houston
Forget about Dolly Parton’s original, this re-make blasts that little country ditty out of the radio. And like All By Myself, the money moment comes towards the end… when the song pauses, there’s a singular drum beat, and then that uber-famous wail: “And aaaaayyy-I-ayyyy…!” and, well, you know the rest.

• Groovy Kind Of Love by Phil Collins
At first I found the rearrangement interesting: he took the song’s 60s hippie, drug-induced feel and morphed it into an irony-filled 90s tune, at once hopeful and mournful at the same time. But the more I heard it, the more it dawned on me that this is just one lazy song. Still, whenever I hear it on the radio, I can’t switch the dial. Perhaps it’s because I like mashing the lyrics of this song with a Dee-Lite ditty: “Wouldn’t you agree / Baby you and me / Gotta groove is in the heart….”

• Making Love Out Of Nothing At All by Air Supply
Okay, any song written and produced by Jim Steinman begs to be included in this list. But I have to admit that the songs Total Eclipse of the Heart and Read ‘Em and Weep work because the bombastic arrangement fits both Bonnie Tyler and Barry Manilow. Those two I can defend… kinda.

It’s All Coming Back To Me Now, while fitting for screeching Celine, is just too silly lyrically; even more so with Meatloaf’s the-title-is-as-silly-as-the-song I Will Do Anything For Love (But I Won’t Do That). Besides I don’t like listening to those two. But Air Supply just begs for a heartfelt sing-along inside the safe confines of your car while on a lonely rainy drive.

And still speaking of Air Supply….

• All Out of Love by Air Supply
Maybe it’s that 12+ seconds-long held note in the end. Maybe because it’s their first number 1 Billboard hit. (Their first hit Lost In Love I like too, but not that much.) Maybe… oh heck, whatever.

• Any Electric Light Orchestra song, especially Midnight Blue but with the exception of Don’t Bring Me Down
“I will love you tonight / And I will stay by your side / Loving you / I’m feeling midnight blue.” It’s the official anthem of “chi-mini-mini-mayni-mays” (domestic helpers) everywhere in the Philippines. Wow.

What are your musical guilty pleasures?