Thursday, August 07, 2008

Music Meme: Guilty Pleasures

So Kevin at Rumproast tagged me last week with the "Embarrassing Guilty Pleasures" meme. I'm supposed to name five songs that are guilty pleasures; I don't know if YouTube is mandatory, but Kevin included it and so will I. So, here we go.

First off: everybody loves Tom Jones singing Kung Fu Fighting.

No apologies for the song; apologies for the goofy vid, from some lame-ass kung fu parody movie. The original source was the closing credits of Supercop, the greatest Jackie Chan/Michelle Yeoh movie ever made (hence the line about "funky Jackie Chan/on a mission from Hong Kong").
More...

Ever feel the need to move to a town that's right for you? Lipps, Inc. knows where to go:

It's fluff, but it's great fluff. In fact, the video, a real period piece, is more embarrassing than the song.

If you were to put Blondie on your 'guilty pleasures' list, which song would you include? Easy:

Described at the time, by a friend of mine, as 'the lamest rap ever' (I have a feeling that's overly harsh, but I can't come up with an example to disprove it), Rapture takes the Sugarhill Gang's penchant for nursery rhyme style lyrics and subtracts their verbal agility. But of course, the song is less embarrassing than the video...hey, I'm sensing a theme here.

Coming from a completely different angle, there's Tuxedomoon:

The first three are guilty pleasures because they're so fluffy; this one is a guilty pleasure because it's insufferably pretentious. What can I say? It's catchy, dammit!

And we finish up with Donovan:

This was my absolute favorite song when I was eight years old. It's a little embarrassing to listen to now (especially if it makes you think of the Spinal Tap druid song (edit: Stonehenge) with the spoken intro), but I still teared up when I heard it. Which is really embarrassing.

And just so Donovan doesn't get a bad rap here, as a bonus I'm posting a song he did that's genuinely awesome:

Pop just doesn't get better than that.

And because every meme requires new victims, I'm tagging Generik, Jamelle, George, Shiltone (this should be entertaining!), and Ahab.

Update: And, of course, everyone else is welcome to post your own in comments.