I’m a big music fan, and I’ve realized something about my taste in music. I’m a big hardcore (Not like screaming and yelling hardcore, but like Has-a-meaning, really-well-played hardcore, like tool), and punk (hate the sex pistols) and, ska (love the aquabats, kicked ASS in concert), and indie (Pavement is my favorite band) and just general music.
I’m mostly anti-pop shtuff, just because it’s too formulaic, and I grow tired of a section b section type music. But every once in a while… well, let me show you some examples of this stuff I just love. Some of it is really cheesy shit, too… most of it is sentimental. But I love it, all of it.
(Thiss is just the stuff I’ve dled… there’s more…)
Cardigans - Lovefool
Chris Isaak - Wicked Game
Dexy’s Midnight Runners - Come On Eileen
French Affair - My Heart Goes Boom (I should be shot for loving this…)
George Michael - Freedom
Goldie - Inner City Life
Haddaway - What Is Love?
Madonna - Don’t Tell Me, Ray Of Light
Milkcan - All the music from Umjammer Lammy
Neil Diamond - Sweet Caroline
Nena - 99 Luft Balloons
Orgy - Fiction (Dreams In Digital) Normally, I hate orgy… but…
Pete Droge - If You Don’t Love Me (I’ll Kill Myself)
Powerpuff Girls - Love Makes The World Go Round
Primitive Radio Gods - Standing outside a broken telephone booth with change in my hand
Proclaimers - I would walk 500 miles
Reef - Place Your Hands
Semisonic - Closing Time, FNT
Sheryl Crow - All I wanna do
Men At Work - Safety Dance
Soft Cell - Tainted Love
Sting - Desert Rose
Xavier Naidoo - Sie Sieht Mich Nicht
This is the short version too, I cut some out because I thought they were debatable…
I LIKE most of that list…I mean, really enjoy…
I don’t cut out many genres of music because I can usually find even a few gems in every genre.
Of course, I get teased because I absolutely adore Billy Joel music.
My secret musical shame?
I am a huge 70’s & 80’s cheese-pop one-hit-wonder fan. I love it. I can’t get enough. “Come on Eileen” is one of my all-time favorite songs. I even have the album. On vinyl.
Men at Work rules. I saw them in concert twice. Loved them.
Neil Diamond? Yep. Not a one-hit-wonder, but he’s great, with the exception of the positively loathesome “Turn On Your Heartlight.” Gaaaaaaaack. “Sweet Caroline,” on the other hand, is a great sing-along tune, especially full blast in your car (oh come on. You know you’ve done it).
…actually… I use to be a hardcore thrash metal/Death metal freakazoid… when Chris Isaacs “Wicked Game” came out I loved it… I secretly bought the cassette. My Best Friend and fellow Metal freak found it in my car and gave me hell and freaked out on me until I grabbed it and put it under the wheel of my car and peeled out on it.
I will never be ashamed again, however! “What I like is what I like, you what you like or what?”
Tell yourself that over and over!
Actually, it was Men Without Hats.
Men at Work definately ruled though.
For me though nothing brings shame like my affection for Poison and especially the song “Skinny Bop Bop”. And anyone who doesn’t cry during “Every Rose Has Its Thorns” doesn’t have a soul. Or at least not one that’s hair sprayed 6 inches high and covered with makeup.
Several items on your list are guilty pleasures of mine as well. While I’ve always tended a bit more toward the power pop/pub rock/neo-psychedelia side of the punk/new wave/alternative spectrum, I do have this fascination (you should pardon the pun you don’t yet know I’ve made) with 80s Euro-synth-pop. Obviously, Soft Cell’s “Tainted Love” is on my list (it seems to be on everyone’s), as is Naked Eyes’ “Always Something There To Remind Me”, a bunch of stuff by the Human League, etc.
I also have this thing for western swing (Bob Wills, etc.), and for norteño, both of which are really strange given my other musical tastes and my feelings about Texas in general.
