What Are Your Guilty Pleasures?

by Robin Hilton

My iTunes library is packed to the gills with guilty pleasures. Let's start with the soundtrack to E.T. That's the John Williams score to the 1982 movie. John Williams penned the soundtrack to my youth! I was 12 when that movie come out. Give me a break.

There's also Andy Griffith (he sings "old-timey" songs), Justin Timberlake, Peter Frampton, several former American Idol contestants (like Kelly Clarkson and Adam Lambert), New Age pianist George Winston and Gordon Lightfoot, to name a few. Then there are some borderline guilty pleasures like Stone Temple Pilots, Sheryl Crow, Indigo Girls and The Wallflowers. I'm not sure those count, though I'm sure plenty of people would think they do.

It occurred to me recently that I've never heard All Songs Considered host Bob Boilen play or admit to liking any music that could be considered a guilty pleasure.

When I asked Bob about it, he scanned through his iTunes library -- which, by the way, has 81 days' worth of music, and couldn't find a single artist or album that could be called a guilty pleasure. The closest thing was 10cc doing "I'm Not In Love." I actually think that is a guilty pleasure, but Bob made a convincing argument about how innovative it was for recording and layering hundreds of vocal parts.

So, two questions for you: How do you define a guilty pleasure, and what are yours?

5:09 PM ET | 06-19-2009 | permalink

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