I find it strange how some bands have now been tagged as having Guilty Pleasure tracks,in this list are Fleetwood Mac,Counting Crows ,Madness,Madonna and Billy Joel…who decides this stuff??!
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Markg says
For what it’s worth I think Achy Breaky Heart is the definitive track on this list!I have also seen lists with ELO and the Doobie Brothers on ,don’t know how…!
ivan says
A guilty pleasure is what the NME would have been terribly sniffy about when you were 15.
A guilty pleasure is probably what’d go down a storm at the NME staff party when you were 30.
fentonsteve says
Not so much what as who defines a guilty pleasure.
Someone who wouldn’t know fun if it came and slapped them in the face, that’s who.
I love Abba. Not cool enough for you? I don’t care. Get over it!
JustB says
I don’t bust this line out too often but I honestly think people who don’t like ABBA don’t really like popular music. If anything can be said to be the pinnacle of pop music, ABBA are it. Their genius – yeah I said it – is in making real sophistication sound easy. That’s why they’re easy for cloth-ears types with all the “right” opinions to dismiss: they’re so incredibly catchy that surely they must be 2 chord wonders, right? Wrong.
SOS is their finest hour and is absolutely jaw-dropping. The Beatles never came close to it. Yeah – I said that too.
Hawkfall says
I agree with Bob. Abba Gold is the best Greatest Hits album out there. I think people who don’t like Abba should have the word “wazzock” written on the cover of their Maths jotter.
Vincent says
Proud Wazzock. They went downhill after “Waterloo”, so it can be said I prefer their early stuff.
count jim moriarty says
Nonsense. The best example ever of that rare thing, a group that got better and better as they went on. Each album was better than its predecessor.
metal mickey says
Up for this – final album “The Visitors” is superb (especially if you skip “Two for the Price of One”), the title track is one of my favourite songs by anyone…
seanioio says
Some more love form The Visitors from me! Stormer of a track that one
minibreakfast says
Mine and Mr Breakfast’s musical tastes seldom overlap, but on Saturday we spent a fun couple of hours driving around the countryside visiting charity shops, soundtracked by ABBA’s Gold comp. There was singing along and grins a mile wide.
Anyone who genuinely thinks ABBA are a “guilty pleasure” is a complete wally.
Moose the Mooche says
Amen on SOS. It’s epic (and I don’t just mean the label)
I’ve been listening to some of their biggies on the first decent pair of headphones I’ve had for 20 plus years… their stuff is so beautifully produced. A real treat for the ears .
Stephen G says
Doesn’t everyone – Rock Boffins and “civilians” alike – acknowledge the genius of Abba these days?
Lodestone of Wrongness says
Old man shuffles in. “Never liked Abba, never will. Comparing them to The Beatles is foolishness, inverted snobbery and just plain wrong. Have you listened to the lyrics of Fernando? Mind you, I thought the film Mama Mia was proper fun (guilty pleasure even) and I may indeed watch it again tonight whilst sipping a bottle of wine as the sun goes down over Dubrovnik”. Shakes his head and shuffles off
Stephen G says
Well you’re right about Fernando. Chiquitita too. Yes and “Thank you for the music” too. Ok, there were highs and lows!
minibreakfast says
Fernando’s great, you silly beggar. GREAT.
JustB says
Exactly. So’s Chiquitita.
(And I’m not sure the Beatles are the band to press into service if lyrics are going to be the hill you want to die on, Lodey.)
It’s not inverted snobbery, whatever that means. I’m not bothered about the sodding Beatles, and ABBA mean far more to me – no irony, no po-mo – than the Beatles ever will.
Lodestone of Wrongness says
Wow! Fernando is GREAT! Ah well, the world lives and thrives on different opinions and tastes ( but Fernando may well be the WORST song ever recorded and that is a stone-cold fact only to be disputed by my Great Uncle Ned who was as batty as he was wrong)
fentonsteve says
Until you’ve stood in an orange and brown bri-nylon shirt at a sweaty Bjorn Again gig and done a Mexican wave while you bellow the lyrics of Fernando, you haven’t lived.
retropath2 says
Wazzock? Yes? Wally? You call? Abba is shite and shite is Abba. Was then, is now. And I have seen Thank you for the Music or whatever that shit film about the ozzie journalist failing to see them until the surprise ending is. Twice. Once in 1975 in Birmingham and again, in Cork, 2 years later. I think that gives me sufficient authority.
KDH says
You saw a 1977 film in 1975? And you hated it so much you went twice? Sufficient authority indeed! 🙂
fentonsteve says
The point is that Guilty Pleasures as a concept is a crock of shite and, until such a time as the Taste Police can come round and stop me playing what I like, I don’t care what anyone else thinks.
I like Abba and Bert Jansch and Lou Reed. Get over it.
Moose the Mooche says
I hate the Beatles. Mind you, Across the Universe was a great film…
walker1 says
Criticising the lyrics of a “pop” record is shooting fish in a barrel. Especially lyrics written (and sung) in your second language
JustB says
Nah, Stephen – you still get a lot of the ABBA-were-shite contingent around. They remind me of the Disco Sucks crowd.
Stephen G says
Is there still a Disco Sucks crowd? Unbelievable.
Listening recently to one of those Seventies collections that you get, it struck me that of all the many genres of that decade, the one that has aged best, the one that still sounds fresh, is disco.
JustB says
“Is there still a Disco Sucks crowd?”
Not as far as I know, I just meant the ABBA-bashers remind me of them. 🙂
Totally agree about disco, btw.
Sewer Robot says
I think there is a third path with ABBA, which is the one I walk. While I think I can appreciate all the craft and it makes complete sense to me that their tunes make a fantastic musical, their work does very little for me – kinda like jazz or Mozart, I have, I hope, enough nous to see there’s objective merit to a lot of it and there are bits here and there I find irresistible (I do own Knowing Me, Knowing You) but, for the most part, I’d sooner leave it than take it. I feel this is quite a way from “ABBA were shite” dissmissiveness…
ganglesprocket says
I prefer Dancing Queen to SOS.
JustB says
Dancing Queen is, of course, incredible – but I think it’s just too well-worn for my ears to hear it unjadedly these days.
minibreakfast says
I blame Muriel’s Wedding. That film was responsible for widespread ABBA fatigue in the ’90s.
JustB says
Thit’s tirrible Muriel.
minibreakfast says
Get yerself back to Pauper’s Pit, I mean Porpoise Spit.
ganglesprocket says
Muriel’s Wedding I loved! Mind you I’ve only seen it once and remember being taken aback by how dark it was… Even ABBA sounded dark…
Moose the Mooche says
Some of Abba’s biggest songs are incredibly bleak. SOS is practically a suicide note.
See also those nutty boys Madness… eg. Grey Day, a jolly ditty anout clinical depression etc.
metal mickey says
See also The Carpenters, especially Goodbye To Love, CF
All the years of useless searching finally reached an end
Loneliness and empty days will be my only friend
From this day love is forgotten
I’ll go on as best I can
Gatz says
Hurrah! Grumpy rock bore points to me! Much as I adore a lot of Abba, Dancing Queen is utter pish. Cheesy pish, to mix metaphors in a particularly disgusting way. Spurred on by this thread I revisited Abba Gold, ready loaded on the iPod, on the walk home from work but could take more than the opening vpbars of DQ. Phew. If you need me I’ll be be correcting the data tags on my Elvis Costello b sides.
Tiggerlion says
Up!
A favourite of DJs desperate to fill a floor, when Dancing Queen starts, people raise their arms in exultation, shriek and rise, as one, to dance. The clue is in the title. Once up and gyrating, people suddenly realise that the rhythm is impossible to dance to. There is no groove, there is no funk, there is no four to the floor and no two-step. All you can do is wave your arms in the air and sway. After three minutes of embarrassment, you are exhausted and take the first opportunity to sit down, even if the next tune up is Groove Is In The Heart.
Dancing Queen is the blight of the disco.
(Otherwise, I love Abba.)
metal mickey says
Interestingly (I think), DQ was originally written as a ballad, until it was noticed that it fitted nicely over the rhythm track of George McCrae’s “Rock Your Baby”, a big worldwide hit while Bjorn & Benny were in the midst of writing the song…
Gary says
Take A Chance On Me is their best single, so it is.
Black Type says
No. The Winner Takes It All is the winner, and takes it all. Brutally magnificent.
JustB says
It’s not like there’s a shortage of contenders.
retropath2 says
O you young hipsters, regaining the past as your own, eh? Schoolkids, say I, know yer place.
JustB says
And those songs aren’t guilty pleasures. They’re really good songs, almost every one. Rock Lobster?! Mmmbop?! Livin On A Prayer?! Anyone who can’t hear what’s great about those needs to go back to their folk club, pull on their chunky arran sweater, get a warm pint of Sweaty Scroteherd down their neck and have a very serious think about getting over the fact that none of the girls liked them in school.
Moose the Mooche says
It doesn’t stop there. Madness are on this list. And White Wedding… fuck sake. When I was 11 I proved scientifically that you can win friends and influence people with a decently enthusiastic impersonation of ver Idol.
That record by Four Women With Ideologically Acceptable Hair is still shite though.
minibreakfast says
Fucking ‘Vogue’ is on the list, for goodness sake! It’s just silly. There are no ‘guilty’ pleasures when it comes to music (unless you’re playing xylophone on the ribs of a dead bunny, or something, and only then if it was killed specifically for music-making).
Stephen G says
Hmm, the 4blondes is a popular one round our hoose. Apart from the bit when she does the Omigods.
Peanuts Molloy says
“Anyone who can’t hear what’s great about those needs to go back to their folk club, pull on their chunky arran sweater, get a warm pint of Sweaty Scroteherd down their neck and have a very serious think about getting over the fact that none of the girls liked them in school.”
There’s two sets of people on this site: those who are old enough to remember what is was like to be 16 in 1967, starved of music on the TV and radio, who were able to drink their first underage pints in upstairs rooms listening to Alex Campbell, Allan Taylor, Harvey Andrews, Bernard Wrigley and so many others, and those who aren’t. Very few of us wore arran sweaters. And we had girlfriends. I suspect @retropath2 was amongst us and Disser Bob wasn’t! Live music, in yer face, with girls and guitars; in 1967. It was fucken’ fantastic.
Some decades on there is absolutely no reason why you can’t like both of these, equally:
You can’t compile a list of “guilty pleasures” . . . remember, one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor! The list in the OP is a bloody Spotify list, generated by an algorithm or somesuch, of upbeat singles by acts who are chart rather than album / OGWT friendly . . . take a look at the charts when Waterloo was number 1:
http://www.officialcharts.com/charts/singles-chart/19740428/7501/
Abba were not “cool” then but over the years they, like Tom Jones, Dolly Parton, Pet Clark, Leonard Cohen, The Carpenters and so many others, have passed through their “naff” years to arrive, fully reprocessed to a younger generation as . . . whatever.
I like Abba; I love the Beatles. It’s a generation thing – you had to be there. I was, you weren’t!
JustB says
Very true. I’m not dissing the Beatles at all – they just don’t mean much to me and I think ABBA are better. Just one of those things, innit. On the Beatles, it’s not that I dislike them or anything. I just don’t care about them much one way or the other. I’m sure it was incredible being around in the 60s, and if I had been I’m sure they’d be far more important to me.
My arran sweater post was meant to be a silly OTT joke at the expense of the sort of people who reckon ABBA are “cheesy” or whatever. Unconnected to the Beatles thing. Of course it’s totally possible to like both. 🙂
fentonsteve says
I’m a bit older than Bob, born the year the Fabs split. My folks had ‘Love Me Do’ on 7″ and ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ on LP. So my real introduction was via the 1987 ‘It was 20 years ago today’ campaign.
Abba were around for my nipper to pre-teen years and they were the cream of the crop, as my 7″ singles box will attest. I didn’t care then if they were considered naff, and I don’t care now.
The Sex Pistols considered S.O.S. good enough to nick for Pretty Vacant.
Stephen G says
Good point but can’t see the link between SOS and Pretty Vacant?
fentonsteve says
Guitarists of the Afterword might like to step in here to provide more details, but the two songs share chords.
Moose the Mooche says
Fade PV in at the point where the synthesizer comes in after the “when you’re gone…” bit.
Vincent says
“Guilty Pleasures” is a way of people who are hogtied by received ideas of “taste” or “hip” allowing themselves to like what they actually like through irony. My earliest experience of it was when people started putting all the “before the Fall” (metaphorically and literally) stuff the NME disapproved of to the back of their record collections. Mix culture knocks this on the head, and rightfully so. The taste Police can get stuffed. I have a mixture of hip, cheese, cheesy hip, hippy cheese, classic, and downright shit music. I’m not proud.
Incidentally, a late entry for the AW motto could be “before the Fall”. It means “Before punk”; “and be for The Fall”.e
minibreakfast says
Bloody rock bores. Just yesterday I had some bloke on Twitter (it’s always a bloke) ask me if I really intended to play some of my “cheesier” finds or was it just “all about the hunt?”. I’m not sure which ones he referring to really, as I’d just posted the the fruits of the morning’s car boots: Duck Rock, an Everlys album, something by the Dudley Moore Trio, and a BBC LP of music and dialogue from Indiana Jones and the Temple Of Doom. A mixed bag, but hardly ‘cheese’.
Moose the Mooche says
I’ve got Duck Rock vinly. It’s a brilliant album. Brought hip-hop and township jive to the masses… there’s nothing like it.
davebigpicture says
It’s on Spotify too. That’s my soundtrack for a “fun” drive to glamorous downtown Slough this afternoon.
MC Escher says
I’ve been listening to it a lot recently too. Great album.
Stephen G says
I think the “guilty pleasure” thing always did mean “stuff which is a bit uncool but is actually quite good”, rather than suggesting you should actually be ashamed.
However…
A couple of examples of “genuine ” guilty pleasures (i.e. stuff I feel a bit conflicted about liking)
– Boxing – exciting to watch but … people are hurting each other. Badly.
– The Spectator – I enjoy the writing but really hate the politics
I’m sure there are other examples…
Carl says
I’m with you on The Spectator.
Kaisfatdad says
A guilty pleasure is surely something one does in the privacy of one’s home but would not want other people to know about. Listening to this rather good playlist is a 1000 miles away from that.
Dressing up in frilly ladies underwear, eating a ginormous box of chocs and listening to Demi’s Roussos’s Greatest Hits, Barry Manilow and Mr Blobby: now that’s a guilty pleasure.
Not that I have tried it of course!
Rigid Digit says
A Guilty Pleasure suggests deriving enjoyment from something you’re not supposed to.
Sounds like a perversion to me.
Wh ythe guilt? If you enjoy a particular piece of music, what’s the problem with admitting it?
I;ll happily say I believe that Tony Peluso’s guitar solo on “Goodbye To Love” is one of the greatest ever committed to tape.
But because it is a song by The Carpenters, I need to hind behind the “yes I like it – it’s a guilty pleasure” tag.
No you don’t – its a great piece of music.
So what if The Carpenters are generally considered to be a bit Middle Of The Road (and therefore, according to the right-on taste dictating media “a bit naff”
Stephen G says
Love the Carpenters, no one sings a song like Karen Carpenter does. Apart from the Big O, possibly the most distinctive voice in popular music?
Kaisfatdad says
I confess. Back in the day I was too cool for the Carpenters. And then one afternoon I heard this…
I became a fan on the spot.
(To be a little fairer to my younger self, they did used to do some very cheesy, show-bizzy TV shows.)
Vincent says
I’ll raise the debate: give me The Carpenters over Abba, any day. Now THEY had tunes, not Euro-pap.
Markg says
I didn’t think for one minute they came into this category,surely her voice is a thing of profound beauty…..can reduce me to tears tbh,probably more so since YouTube clips show her looking sad very often….this one especially.
Markg says
Uncle Wheaty says
The Carpenters Gold collection is up there with ABBA as a must have compilation. i LOVE IT.
Bread were good as well!
Uncle Wheaty says
Rigid Digit says
Guitar Man would be my default choice
Uncle Wheaty says
Agreed.
retropath2 says
Carpenters now, is it, one guitar solo and they’re suddenly hip…. Sings, you people……
Markg says
Great to see hilarious comments ….still waiting for somebody to contradict my Achy Breaky Heart comment,although Ace of Bass also came to mind. The more i looked at this list the more bizarre it seems…Sinead OConnor,George Michael and Hall and Oates ? I found the image conjured up by Kaisfatdad a powerful one,heres hoping i sleep well tonight..
minibreakfast says
I can’t stand Achy Breaky Heart, but if I liked it I wouldn’t feel guilty or embarrassed.
JustB says
I can’t blame Billy for Achy Breaky Heart because without him, Miley would never have dropped Dead Petz.
retropath2 says
Achy breaky? “I wouldn’t feel guilty or embarrassed.” Me neither, I’d be dead by my own hand. Someone needs to give this youngsters a bit of a talking to.
Sewer Robot says
Dead Petz is triffic indeed, but you’re setting a dangerous precedent there Bob – what if one of Bono’s offspring or Liam Gallagher’s nipper was to knock out a decent record? Would we have to absolve the parents of all their crimes against pop? As my old mate Lord Denning used to say That’s one Appalling Vista, Soul Sista..”
Markg says
Stephen G says
That’s a great playlist! Some genuine classics in there.
Markg says
Gonna put up my own ten tracks just picked in last few minutes….whats yours??
Markg says
Peanuts Molloy says
My rant is a bit lost, out of context, up there . . . I meant it to be a response to @disappointmentbob so here it is again:
“Anyone who can’t hear what’s great about those needs to go back to their folk club, pull on their chunky arran sweater, get a warm pint of Sweaty Scroteherd down their neck and have a very serious think about getting over the fact that none of the girls liked them in school.”
There’s two sets of people on this site: those who are old enough to remember what is was like to be 16 in 1967, starved of music on the TV and radio, who were able to drink their first underage pints in upstairs rooms listening to Alex Campbell, Allan Taylor, Harvey Andrews, Bernard Wrigley and so many others, and those who aren’t. Very few of us wore arran sweaters. And we had girlfriends. I suspect @retropath2 was amongst us and Disser Bob wasn’t! Live music, in yer face, with girls and guitars; in 1967. It was fucken’ fantastic.
Some decades on there is absolutely no reason why you can’t like both of these, equally:
You can’t compile a list of “guilty pleasures” . . . remember, one man’s ceiling is another man’s floor! The list in the OP is a bloody Spotify list, generated by an algorithm or somesuch, of upbeat singles by acts who are chart rather than album / OGWT friendly . . . take a look at the charts when Waterloo was number 1:
http://www.officialcharts.com/charts/singles-chart/19740428/7501/
Abba were not “cool” then but over the years they, like Tom Jones, Dolly Parton, Pet Clark, Leonard Cohen, The Carpenters and so many others, have passed through their “naff” years to arrive, fully reprocessed to a younger generation as . . . whatever.
I like Abba; I love the Beatles. It’s a generation thing – you had to be there. I was, you weren’t!
bricameron says
Cor blimey!
JustB says
See above for response – esp re. the fact that the Beatles post and the arran sweater post weren’t connected! 🙂
I realise that things that strike me as funny – or at least vaguely amusing – don’t always translate, but the tone I was going for was silly OTT ribbing of nobody in particular: more a sort of made-up straw man for dubiously comic purposes. I do actually envy you the 60s thing a little, despite not being bothered about a lot of the actual music: it must’ve been ace. And perhaps people of my kids’ generation might envy me the 90s. (I can hear the scoffs from here!) But god knows I miss it and remember the huge excitement of feeling part of a cultural happening.
Junior Wells says
I’m with Bob on SOS being the pinnacle of Abbadom. As to the trite lyrics in Fernando well the beatles did some lame stuff too.
ABBA pretty much got theirt break in Australian and were huge. This is my preferred ABBA tribute -Norman Gunston who, as it happens, also played with Frank Zappa in 73 when he toured.
bricameron says
Hi girls!
metal mickey says
Fantastic record, no guilt there whatsoever for me, file alongside Andrea True Connection, Silver Convention, Space, The Rah Band & La Belle Epoque…
deramdaze says
Didn’t Sean Rowley “invent” the term on his Radio London show about 15/20 years ago?
I believe he’s distanced himself from it (not before cashing in on some comps, I suspect), in much the same way Dave Godin distanced himself from a term he coined in the late 60s, “Northern Soul.”
fentonsteve says
Caitlin Moran tells of the first time she went back to Peter Paphides’ house when they were both Melody Maker employees.
“Before you come in, there’s something I should tell you. My favourite band is Crowded House. Please don’t tell them at work.”
deramdaze says
Just thought … The Beatles were every bit of a “Guilty Pleasure” in, say, 1980 as Abba.
The comparisons between the two are missing the point entirely.
The people to point the figure at for this term/market are Birchall, Morley et al and the Stalinist rules they imposed in the inkies when they realised they’d missed the 60s.
Of course, the irony is that now The Beatles, Cliff, Abba etc. are shifting major units … erm, the NME, Melody Maker etc., ever-so-slightly aren’t – which is hilarious.
Rejoice, Cliff won!
Stephen G says
IIRC Burchill and Morley were more supportive than most of Abba and pop; Rock Gods were the main targets of their vitriol.
However I do remember pre-punk NME airily dismissing Abba as “soulless Europop”. This around the time of SOS being released.
Sewer Robot says
Hmmm… Y’see, while I get that the phrase is intended as a barb, it does sort of hit the spot re ver ‘BA for me.
Allow me to explain. WRT the term “Europop” – the bulk of chart music, as I see it, is rooted in black American music, even if only distantly. I believe the reason I’ve never been able to get a foothold with the IDIDIDIDIDH is their music, to these ears, seems to come from a more European tradition, a lot closer to (although obviously considerably better than) Andrew Lloyd Webber-type musical numbers – that Bjorn and Benny pitched up at the West End seemed inevitable to me.
And it could be called “soulless” in the sense that owes little to that particular musical flavour which we call “soul”. Hence, I find myself out on a limb once again, in that I observe all the pieces working together beautifully, as one might a meticulously crafted watch mechanism or even some brilliantly original Rube Goldberg device, while remaining, at the same time, largely unmoved.
Still, as prompted by the White Album discussion, I’ve not tried ’em for a while, so this thread may persuade me to take another chance on them…
Stephen G says
Hear what your saying but pretty sure the use of “soulless” was meant to indicate “emotionless”. Personally I think there is plenty of emotional heft in songs like SOS and KMKY.
Markg says
minibreakfast says
Quite a weird little world. It seems like the lairy costumes and ‘outrageous’ partying (both served with buckets of irony) are a way to display enjoyment of the music without seeming naff or uncool.
I might be wrong. I’m in a grump today, which might be clouding my judgment.
Markg says
From the clip i posted above it looks as though people compiling these Guilty Pleasure lists really have missed the point when they put on a track like Landslide by Fleetwood Mac,far removed from the tracks played at the Sean Rowley event….it seems anything goes onto this lists!
SixDog says
My heart couldn’t take the tearing apart the brilliant Radio 5 Live was engendering on the drive home, so I stuck on Deacon Blue’s greatest hits as Queen of the New Year was for some reason an earlier ear worm.
What a great set of tunes they were too. Thoroughly enjoyed myself.
Markg says
Yep couldnt agree more,they have just bought out a live set btw…..great energy coupled with great songs is all you need!
Markg says
Black Celebration says
I know I might occasionally mention Depeche Mode here…but it brought about a reaction that alarmed me recently from a bloke I have known for about 10 years. We’d never really talked about music before. He was absolutely astonished. His face widened with wonder and amusement, laughed heartily and at length. After wracking his brains, he eventually remembered the tune to Just Can’t Get Enough and thoroughly mocked me for the rest of the day.
I walk into a room – and he’s going “do do do do do do do” – and laughing like a drain. Very much in the incredulous “are they still going!?” camp – he wouldn’t accept any facts from me about their subsequent and continuing success. The more I protested – the more I felt like I was their only remaining fan in the world. When he left he thanked me for giving him such a great laugh and said – still laughing – “Depeche Mode! Classic!”
Thing is – he is a really nice guy and I like him and his family a great deal. But he doesn’t really get how much this genuinely hurts.
Moose the Mooche says
Oh come on. Having your favourite band insulted and ridiculed is just one of the glorious trials of youth dear boy.
One of the few good things about living in Hull is that people don’t go “WHAAAA??” when you say you like the Housemartins.
They save that for The Beatles.
Black Celebration says
WHAAAA?? Housemartins? Hang on a minute…wasn’t their song…(snaps fingers) “Happy Hour”? Bloody hell that was *years* ago. Are they still alive? I actually really liked them – when I was a kid!!! – Most of of us have, you know, moved on shall we say.
A bit later…
#It’s happy hour again… # (silly dance) Brilliant. The Housemartins! You really crack me up, Moose.
Moose the Mooche says
You ain’t from round here, are ya boy ?
Kaisfatdad says
Your friend is so embarassingly out of touch. A finger so far from the pulse I am gobsmacked.
Depeche are one of the most popular and hippest bands on the planet. A true household name who are loved my all generations. Any Swedish granny can hum you one of their tunes.
Black Celebration says
That’s right – he’s the one who should be embarrassed.
Lodestone of Wrongness says
If DM are so hip why can’t I name or hum a single tune of theirs? I think I may just have answered my own question.
ps one of the joys of this site is the huge range of musical tastes and musical opinions. I would never for one moment try to maintain my opinions and tastes are “better” than anyone else on here but I am genuinely bewildered that apparently sane people can posit that Abba, The Carpenters or worst of all The Evil Bastards Known As Bread are not irredeemably shite. IMHO I add hastily…
Uncle Wheaty says
I liked the early 1980s DM but beyond the early stuff i never really got them. Same with New Order. My loss maybe…
SixDog says
First guitar lick I taught my daughter was Personal Jesus.
Dead easy, utterly memorable. Martin Gore remains a bona fide genius.
And Spirit knocks bells off much of their preceding three albums too
retropath2 says
Bread? Has there been a frontlash then, a latter-day re-appraisal of their oeuvre? Confess I hadn’t even realised anyone even recalled them or had given them a mention since they headed up the soft rock category in those Virgin records ads in the 60s. I certainly don’t recall any strong feelings either way. OK, the voices were the syrupier side of saccharine, and the lyrics a bit sickly to match, but who is calling ’em good?
O, just remembered, me. Once. Guitar Man was a dormitory fave. Haven’t heard it for years. How’s it go now?
retropath2 says
Cripes, that’s a bit shit, innit….. But it is just naff isn’t it. Surely no-one is going to stand up and proclaim it’s intrinsic place in the pantheon?
Lodestone of Wrongness says
Naming no names but just look for Wheaty’s comments above…..
Lodestone of Wrongness says
I have just done the math and it’s official – I have finished (or to put it another way, killed off) more threads than any other contributor still with us.
Moose the Mooche says
Frontlash?
hur hur hur