Hear Me Out: Guilty Pleasures

I don’t believe in guilty pleasures. If I enjoy a record, why should I feel ashamed for listening? There’s an overwhelming elitism that is rife in the music community- people who shame others for liking certain genres while pushing their own preferences because they deem them more worthy of listening. 

I love boybands like One Direction and 5 Seconds of Summer. Their audiences are/were predominantly young women, so society sees them as “lesser” and the “real” music lovers would never align themselves with such bands. And thus, boybands alike fall into the guilty pleasure category; the music you listen to in private, with headphones in viciously hiding your phone screen so no one will see the NSYNC album cover. Dismissing artists because of their fanbases contributes to the larger issue at hand- young women are made to feel ashamed for nearly everything they enjoy. 

One way girls have banded together to combat the shame is online fandom. Through the internet, we can find like-minded individuals to bond with over shared interests (that’s why you’re here, right?). Perhaps the greatest fandoms on social media networks are K-Pop and One Direction fans. These communities serve as safe spaces and by joining them, young women can revel in the music they enjoy without judgment from those who dismiss their interests as “juvenile” or “bad”. 

Toxic masculinity is also a major player here. In my experience, if you ask a man what their guilty pleasure songs are, they will most likely name off songs written or performed by women, or those artists whose fanbases are mostly female. Why is it that when a man loves Beyonce or Katy Perry, they’re expected to listen in private when a woman would not be subject to the same scrutiny? Guilty pleasures are subjective. It all depends on how society views you in the most stereotypical ways, and how you feel you should act based on your sense of self. 

A lot of genres have fallen victim to the guilty pleasure categorization, including rap, country, heavy metal, and pop. These genres have been demonized or dismissed because they’re “bad”, but they’re only considered bad because other people like them. This aspect is part of a societal identity crisis: we want to align ourselves with music that everyone else thinks is “good” to feel like we belong. 

I used to be a music snob. I would say things like,”I’ll listen to everything but country,” or, ”You listen to that? You should listen to this instead,”. Those were thinly-veiled egocentric statements that indicated something that has nothing to do with music at all: I didn’t know who I was, so I overcompensated to project an image of superiority when it came to what I listened to. Since then I’ve realized that demeaning people for their music choices is a weird form of emotional projection. In short, I grew up, and maybe you should too. 

This isn’t to say that you have to love everything you hear, I certainly don’t. But passing judgment on the artist because you don’t like what they create diminishes the magic of music. Their art serves a purpose, just maybe not for you. Even if a certain genre is not your cup of tea, you can still appreciate the artistry without demeaning the people who do enjoy it.

I have my own playlist entitled Oddballs that I’ve repeatedly played for my dear friends, which includes Die Antwoord, The Lonely Island, cupcakKe, and Nickelback. It’s a compilation of music that isn’t popular or what might be considered “real music”, but I will relentlessly play oddball songs because I love them, even if my friends cringe every time I take control over the music. 

We all have our oddballs, and some of us are oddballs ourselves. No matter what you like, somewhere in the world, someone else enjoys it too. Or maybe you’re the only one, and in that case, congratulations! You get to be that artist’s #1 fan. How beautiful is that? One of my greatest joys in life is finding music I’ve never heard of through friends and family. My lovely roommate Emily introduced me to the song “Int’l Players Anthem (I Choose You)” by UGK and Outkast; to be quite honest I have had that song on my monthly playlist ever since. We should celebrate our unique tastes and expand our palettes with open minds, rather than pushing our identities onto people who, a lot of times, aren’t listening.