Category: shame

Guilty pleasures

There is music we believe we shouldn’t like, but we do.

Between the individual and their peer group there is a negotiation of borders, the mutual drawing of a dotted line around cultural products acceptable to consume. It’s malleable and porous, but it is a boundary.

Shame manifests when we sneak out through one of the gaps. If we don’t self-censor, we self-censure; we envision the ridicule of our peers.

Brought up on punk, XTC’s Andy Partridge secretly fell in love with a delicate folk record, Judee Sill’s “Heart Food” (1973). As he wrote in the liner notes for the album’s 2005 reissue, when no one was around he would listen to it with “almost masturbatory guilt.”

Almost. One doesn’t have to be quite so discreet with forbidden music, listening on headphones or in the car where others can see but not hear.

Such secretive listeners find virtue where vice is imagined; and so some become exhibitionists. They cross the line — maybe with a touch of irony to be safe. Thus I flaunt some of my guilty pleasures:

 

Amy Grant, “Baby Baby” (1991)

Grant wrote it about her actual infant, but passed it off as a song about grownup love, so maybe it’s a little purer than your average. Also the arrangement and instrumentation are unmistakably influenced by one of my most favorite albums, Scritti Politti’s “Cupid & Psyche ’85.”

Gwyneth Paltrow & Huey Lewis, “Cruisin'” (2000)

One of the must’ve been three songs that played in a loop when I worked at the grocery store. It’s the one that wore me down. Didn’t learn until much later that it’s a Smokey Robinson cover. This recording was a No. 1 hit, far outshining the film it came from, “Duets.” Just listen to the song and it’s lovely. Don’t think about the fact it’s being sung by characters who are father and daughter.

 

Taylor Swift, “I Wish You Would” (2014)

Blame my daughter for this one. Through many, many plays of “1989,” this is the track I looked forward to. The chorus is especially potent, with its growling bass, drum cannonade, and synth effects like the clang of swords in a Nintendo game. This song was never released as a single and only charted in Canada. Does falling for a Tay Sway deep cut mean I’ve still got some cred?

Lyrical ADD

kim

I was telling a date in college about my desire to form a band to cover Sonic Youth’s “Tunic (Song for Karen)” (from “Goo,” 1990). Turned out years earlier she’d written a paper about the song. “What about it?” I asked. The pretty-obvious-now-that-I-think-about-it answer was anorexia. The Karen in the title is Karen Carpenter, who struggled with the eating disorder throughout her music career and died at 32.

If I had written a paper about that song, it would have been about the desperate guitar chords and the Morse code bassline. The lyrics, and especially their meaning, probably would not have come up.

And now this blog turns confessional as I admit my blackest shame: I’m not a lyrics person.

My excuse is that there’s so much else to hear. Obviously sometimes a word, phrase, or anthemic chorus will register. But usually my attention gravitates instead to details like recording fidelity, harmonic choices, elements of the rhythm or percussion, or simply the texture of the singer’s voice as opposed to the content of their lyrics. Languageless sound is, to me, an infinitely shinier object.

I know I’m missing out. On a lot. But as soon as I start concentrating on what’s being sung or following along with a lyrics sheet, my in-the-moment enjoyment of the music is squelched.

There are those who prefer instrumental music. For some people a cappella is the thing. There’s a saying that nobody listens to the words in rock songs anyway. But are there listeners out there who hear only the lyrics and deprioritize or even tune out the instruments, the notes?

Does anybody put music and lyrics on truly equal footing?

Coda:

The band that would have covered “Tunic” also would have played The Supremes’ “You Keep Me Hangin’ On” (1966). I always felt there was an aural kinship between the two songs. Perhaps subconsciously I was getting the anorexia message after all. Diana Ross wrote in her autobiography that the stress of working for Berry Gordy led to her eating disorder.