One of the djs on my favorite local radio station does something daily that she calls the no apologies track. It is usually something cheesy, “uncool”, or flat out bad, but for some reason she wants to play it, so she does. Needless to say, it is always amusing to see what she digs up every day on my way home from work.
Is there a song that you love that others find annoying, horrible, or otherwise unlistenable?
What is your no apologies track?
Chumbawumba’s “Tubthumping” and White Town’s “Your Girl”
errr… “Your Woman”
I have a Spice Girls cd left over from the dark ages that I like to bop to every now and again. Also, a compilation CD of “Booty Hits” that is great fun to drive to.
“Baby Got Back” But I actually prefer the brutal metal version by Throwdown or the near-romantic wistful version by Jonathan Coulton. And “The Humpty Dance” is irresistible. Early Michael Jackson usually clears the bar pretty quickly, too.
Cher, “Believe.” Hurts to admit it…
“Up, Up and Away” by Fifth Dimension
“She” – Elvis Costello
“Ben” – Michael Jackson
“If U Seek Amy” Britney
Do I get any forgivness if I say it’s because Penn Jillette turned me on to it?
It’s a pretty consistent experience for people to be offended by something in my music collection. I believe it’s because my tastes are diverse but I might just be blowing sunshine up my ass.
My only guilty pleasure i can think of is The Angry American by Toby Keith. I find the sentiments of the song as offensive as Mr. Keith himself, but I have to be honest, It’s really well done. Only song I have downloaded without paying for.
The Humpty Dance
Crash Test Dummies –
“Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmmâ€
Def Leppard
“Pour Some Sugar on Meâ€
Don McLean
“American Pieâ€
and my very favourite of the “songs everyone else I know hates”;
Scatman John
“Scatmanâ€
Oooh, so many to choose from. Here’s a selection”
Groove Is In the Heart (astronomical!)
Everlasting Love
Iko Iko
Come on Eileen
I Melt with You
There She Goes
“Lollipop (Candyman)” by Aqua. (It’s from the same album that had “Barbie Girl,” just to give you the proper context.) Mostly because a certain group of friends and I have had endless fun writing new lyrics for it: “We are the oilmen / whoa-ho-oh-oh! / Coming from Washington. . . .”
I have heaps of “no apologies” tracks, even though I love the SF punk scene. This will probably get me kicked out of the Skepchicks, but Dolly’s Here You Come Again does it for me. :)
Also, I’m going to see That 80s Hair Band play tonight so… pretty much ANYTHING they do is going to put me beside myself. And I will say, “Self, what are you doing over there?” And my self will say, “dancing to the awesomeness with guiltless abandon.” Because what else is life for, anyway?
@Vengeful Harridan (Elexina): “dancing to the awesomeness with guiltless abandon.â€
Now there’s a Facebook status message.
I think half of the people at my buddies’ recent birthday party breaking into the dance when someone put this on counts.
Yes alcohol was involved.
Everybody sing!
I think I love you
So what am I so afraid of?
I’m afraid that I’m not sure of
A love there is no cure for
I think I love you
Isn’t that what life is made of?
Though it worries me to say
I’ve never felt this way
Doubly embarrassing because I’m a writer and this song has bad grammar. The line should be “A love for which there’s no cure”. Damn you, David Cassidy. Damn you to hell.
Devil Woman, by Cliff Richard. My ultimate guilty pleasure. He lives with a vicar, you know. AND HE’S NOT GAY. No, sirree.
@Steve: You took my “Come on Eileen”, Steve. Damn you! And it was such a dirty title!
I’ll have to make do with these –
Take a good look it now…My heart is so empty. So, so empty.
I know you just don’t love me no more…(Sigh) I’m going to go and kill something in WoW before I get too depressed.
I’m sure I have a bunch, but “Turning Japanese” jumps to mind.
I mostly listen to traditional Irish and Civil War era, so take your pick. Right now I’m listening to an album of Scottish lullabies. Oh, and I love the Leningrad Cowboys.
Joan Jett – I Love Rock n Roll
Inside a very select group of friends, this song makes us all Happy Boys.
But then there is also 18 Wheels on a big rig.
That’d be this one: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbPovgCP5BU
(No, it’s not a rickroll.)
Looking through my MP3 folder labelled ‘shameful’. Let’s place them in Winamp, and see what the randomizer picks.
Milli Vanilli – I’m Gonna Miss You
Air Supply – Making Love out of Nothing at All
Nelly Furtado – Forca (I can explain this one. It was from the atmosphere of seeing it performed at the Grey Cup halftime show a few years back. The other ones are impossible to explain)
Donna Lewis – I’ll Love You Always Forever
Wham – Freedom
Charlie Daniels- Devil Went Down to Georgia
Micheal Jackson- Thriller
50 Cent- In Da Club
there are many more. many many more.
“Eye in the Sky” The Alan Parsons Project.
I HATE the Pina Colada Song, but dammit, it always makes me cry. Oh and “Shiny Shiny” by Haysi Fantayzee and “Belly of the Whale” by Burning Sensations.
The Current got on my bad list because MPR was threatening to stop progress on the light-rail. Before that, I used to listen to the Current all the time (did you ever hear the Facemelter podcast?…speaking of guilty pleasure music). I was a Radio K producer/DJ not terribly long ago, so I’m partial to the K, however.
Land Down Under and REM’s What The Frequency, Kenneth? are guilty pleasures.
AC/DC. As in, everything by AC/DC, and I include “Big Balls” and “Whole Lotta Rosie” in that.
God, that’s so cathartic.
Oh, also “Band of Gold,” which is the most icky weird sexist pop song to have passed through a radio after “You’re Having My Baby.” Yep, a song about a newlywed’s impotence/possible closeted homosexuality/inablility to pork new wife, but baby, you’ll just wait for him, that not-puttin’-out dog. But, the song ROCKS, and Sheila Payne just rips it-
“Don’t you know I wait in the darkness of my lonely room,
Filled with sadness, filled with gloom.
Hoping you’ll walk back through that door
And love me like you tried before.”
THAT”S SO WRONG.
Pretty much anything by the late Gram Parsons. None of my friends can stand him, They think he’s too whiney, too country, too lightweight.
Sheesh.
Styx.
I admit it, I like Styx.
What’s wrong with me?
@tiger kitty:
tiger kitty, joan jett never requires an apology.
(says the AC/DC fan)
@Cleon: If you were to ask me that question, I would say “Nothing at all!”
I’m more than capable of rocking out to a song like “Love is a Battlefield” in a completely non-ironic fashion. And it was a long time ago when I lost the ability to differentiate between what other people consider “good” and “bad” music (particularly when it comes to heavy metal). Fortunately, I can listen to my J.R.R. Tolkien inspired death metal in my own car without bugging my roommates. If they were riding with me, I would probably change cds to something a bit easier on the ears though. I’m not completely unaware that most people would find that sort of music ridiculous, I suppose : )
@Cleon: If you’re over 30: it’s because you’re old and “The Best of Times” still makes you want to get drunk under the bleachers.
If you’re under 30: it’s because an older person in your life played “The Best of Times” every time he was drunk and talked about the time he touched a naked breast under the bleachers.
I’m 31. Borderline. :P
(Everything I do) I do it for you, by Bryan Adams (from the Kevin Costner Robin Hood movie). I can’t believe I’m admitting that one.
And Eye of the Tiger. :) I have to turn that one up and sing at the top of my lungs. We sang it in chorus in middle school. I love that it’s in Rock Band, so I can belt it into a microphone.
@Cleon: “Borderline.”
For a minute there I thought you meant the Madonna song.
heh, “Bohemian Rhapsody” by Queen
….and i sing along with the entire thing….
Come to think of it, maybe that’s what they hate.
@mrthumbtack: <— Love the name!
I love “I Want It That Way” by the Backstreet Boys. I can crank that sucker to full blast and dance around like I’m on stage. I’m not apologizing for it, but I’d also appreciate it if you didn’t tell anyone.
@Cleon: No apologies are required for Styx. Styx rocks.
“Frankenstein” by the Edgar Winter Group
Better on Youtube so you can see all the different instruments Winter plays (including messing with an amplifier just to get weird sounds).
@mrthumbtack: You *never* have to apologize for “Bohemian Rhapsody” – that’s a classic!
@phlebas: That was totally at the top of my list.
I have a serious thing for 70s heartthrobs. In additon to the above, I also love Heartbeat (It’s a Love Beat) by Tony DeFranco & the DeFranco Family and Teen Dream by Shaun Cassidy.
@MathMike: funnily enough, the morning show i listen to (on a different local radio station) has a “happy boy” segment, in which they tell a joke or cute story, and that is the theme song.
@mrthumbtack: that is perhaps my favorite song ever. it’s completely cheesy, totally hammy, and utterly fantastic. i love it.
@Steve:
You haven’t had to apologize for listening to Come on Eileen until it’s nearly cost you a marriage and your clean criminal record… as it has mine. Otherwise, there’s nothing to say but, “not us! no not us! we are far too young and clever!”
in no particular order:
I Am A Real American (theme song from Hulk Hogan, off of the cheesy WWF vinyl from the 1980’s)
Voulez Vous Danser by Ace Of Base
Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go by Wham!
China Cat Sunflower by The Grateful Dead.
Let’s see… I have no issue with Maddona songs, which is rather bothersome I suppose, I own the Spice Girls’ first album as well as Tal Bachman’s and White Town’s album with the previously mentioned song. I’ll make no apologies for them. The rest of my music collection I would look at you funny if you required an apology for it.
@Imrryr:
I think I would have no problem listening to Tolkien inspired death metal. Says the guy with Tyr (Viking Metal), Alestorm (Scottish Pirate Metal), Heidevolk (Pagan Folk Metal) and Primordial (Celtic Metal) on his current mp3 cd and iPod.
@LOLkate:
ACK it’s “MichAEl”! Sorry it happens to be my first name and I get slightly irritated when it gets misspelled. Also, why would “The Devil Went Down to Georgia” be consider either A) a guilty pleasure or B) something you had to apologize for? Last I checked that was considered a classic and a great no one would deny as being so unless they are weird. Who ever is making you apologize for liking it should automatically be forced to apologize for not liking it.
I pose a question… suppose hypothetically you have someone who belives themselves to be a slight skeptic who though when pressed says that some things cannot be explained and points out that in the last 100 years there have been leaps and bounds and much of what we now know comes through that. From this he would state that maybe something is there but hasn’t been discovered yet I ask how this should be answered without getting myself killed (as he is quite a bit stronger then I am) and keeping a friendship. BTW mine is Savior by Rise Against or Pump It by the Black Eyed Peas
This is somewhat of a strange “no apologies” song because I don’t play it so much as like singing it a lot.
It’s “The Song that never ends because it goes on and on my friend. Some people started singing it not knowing what it was, and they just kept on singing it just because it is the song that never ends. It goes on and on my friend…”
I would like to clarify I doubt he will kill me but it might result in physicial harm to me
Dead Milkmen, Bitchin’ Camaro
Probably ‘Japanese Boy’ by Aneka and ‘It’s beginning to look a lot like fishmen…’ (based on ‘Shadow Over Innsmouth’ by H.P. Lovecraft)
Sorry, the second link got eaten (probably by the fishmen). This is the correct one.
@Steve: Damn, I totally should have used that last night! ‘Cause, you know, I did. Also got hit on by an 18-year-old, but I think I’ll put that in the plus category. Unless he was dared. In which case, “I’m gonna knock you out!” ‘Cause, you know, mama said.
@carr2d2: Then a fine station it is!
At every one of our friends’ wedding receptions we sit the bride and the groom down in the middle of the dance floor and sing that song to them.
@Elyse: “nearly cost you a marriage and your clean criminal record… as it has mine”
OK, you can’t just leave it at that. You have to tell the story now.
Usually in a thread like this somebody eventually gets around to ABBA. But I warn you. The HOLY TETRAGRAMMATON–the ALPHA and the BETA, the BETA and the ALPHA–will not be mocked! ABBAism doesn’t have a Hell yet, but I’d watch my step.
@mikespeir: Dancing Queen. Enough said.
big pimpin’- jay-z
Anything that shows up on Sirius 70’s “Jukebox from Hell.”
Some of Warren Zevon’s songs like “Roland, the Headless Thompson Gunner,” or “Werewolves of London.”
Ernie’s “Rubber Duckie” (I hate it, but I love watching others hate it more!)
Terry Jacks’s “Seasons in the Sun”
All 1950’s era “teen death” rock Like “Leader of the Pack”
Abba, in general
I can relate to “Bohemian Rhapsody,” too.
@Merkuto: I love that song. Actually I just love the Dead Milkmen. “Punk Rock Girl”, “I dream of Jesus”(which is not available anywhere due to it being on an album that is no longer being published :( ), “The Thing that only eats Hippies”, etc, etc.
That’s a tough question. Most likely the worst is “MacArthur Park” by Richard Harris. I’ll even admit that he can’t sing and some of the lyrics are hard to beat for strangeness.
@QuestionAuthority: “Abba, in general”
Blasphemy!
I will crank Ace of Base and Abba (I love Dancing Queen, btw) but the worst thing I will crank all the way up in my car? We Didn’t Start The Fire.
Made worse by the fact that I was born the year that song came out.
@Croobie:
Made even worse by you mentioning that you were born the year it came out.
GERROFF ME LAWN!
@Croobie: the more important question: do you know all the words to “we didn’t start the fire”?
@Croobie: Please feel free to replace that song with this one:
Its the end of the…
Or as we know it
Damn, screwed the first:
There’s a lot of 80’s (and other) cheese joyfully polluting my ipod:
Shiny Shiny – Haysi Fantaysee
I Eat Cannibal – Total Coelo
3 songs from the Xanadu movie soundtrack
Curly Shuffle
World Destruction – Time Zone
Boom Boom Boom – Paul Lekakis…
Freedom (George Micheals)
Barbie Girl (Aqua)
Spice up your life (Spice Girls)
Believe (Cher)
Boys in the hood (Dynamite Hack)
I know the song is considered a joke, but to be honest I kinda sorta like Dahler Mehndi’s “Tunak Tunak Tun” [video]. Can’t do the dance though.
I’m not sure I could be friends with anyone who couldn’t rock out to Queen and Ac/Dc.
@killyosaur42: I salute your musical tastes, sir. I like what I’ve heard so far from this band Heidevolk. They also might bring me one step closer to realizing my dream of finding at least one good metal band from every nation in Europe.
@carr2d2: I do!! Actually, I know two separate sets of lyrics: the words I figured out when I was in seventh grade (“start with a homicide, children of the little mind”) and the actual lyrics I learned when I finally saw the damn liner notes.
I love Aqua. They’re just so over-the-top ridiculous and they make me happy. Could any other band come up with the genius of, “You’re my favorite flower when I’m intimate with you”?
Rammstein- so bad and yet so entertaining. Especially their song that translates to “You smell so good” – lots of fun to play in the car while singing along operatically.
@Steve: What? Those songs are fine! Tubthumping, on the other hand…
@ChaoSkeptic: I LOVE “Eye in the Sky”. Hm…
@Tim3P0: China Cat? Pshhht, no shame in that… I Like “France”. Yeah, for real, and a lot.
I like Rush pretty ok, too. It started out in high school, as a way to irritate my friends who would always try to change the station, then turned into genuine like at some point.
What, no Diamondheads here? Or am I the only one gutsy enough to admit it? There are about 1800 songs on my iPod at the moment. Some 300 of them (perhaps more; I haven’t counted in a while) are by His Neilness. I think they ALL count as “guilty pleasures.”
By the way, regarding the “We Didn’t Start the Fire” vs. “The End of the World As We Know It” discussion above: Try “Done Too Soon” by Neil Diamond. He beat them both.
@whitebird: Well, I like them and I’m sure many would agree but there seem to be a few people whom I count as friends who would strongly disagree, especially on St Patrick’s Day when I crank up “Come On Eileen”. I mean, you have to, right?
@Laura W: Did you know Neil Diamond wrote “I’m a Believer”? I’ve never heard him sing it but I can just imagine.
@ Steve
Of course I knew Neil Diamond wrote “I’m a Believer!” *scoffs*
My sisters, who are much older than I, raised me on His Neilness. His smoky baritone was ubiquitous in our house — when my Dad wasn’t playing his Tony Bennett 78’s, that is. “Song Sung Blue” was probably the first song I ever knew by heart. “I Left My Heart in San Francisco” was no doubt the second.
Yep, I was raised by nerds.
Neil Diamond sings “I’m a Believer” at all his concerts.
After Pulp Fiction came out and “Girl, You’ll Be A Woman Soon” got visible, he started singing that at his concerts too.
“Walking on Sunshine” by Katrina and the Waves.
I could go on, but I’ve already said too much.
@MiddleMan:
That’s on my mp3 player too. Along with Walk the Dinosaur by Was Not Was.
Both of which are on the hour-long fake radio station loop played where I work. Somehow I’m not sick of it yet.
Submitted for your approval, Garfunkel and Oates with “Worst Song Medley.”
Love is All Around (Mary Tyler Moore theme) by Husker Du.