Last week my fellow blogger Adam Walton was deliberating on Facebook what track to play from Paul Simon's Graceland while DJing. Against all my expectations, Adam was not greeted by a deluge of gleeful opprobrium.
Instead, a few people admitted their appreciation for a record that, while suffering the ravages of time, has a place in a lot of people's collections, including mine. It got me thinking about 'guilty pleasures'; records that - were they released today - would never pass muster and find a place on your shelves.
Graceland (and I defy anyone not to enjoy Boy In The Bubble or You Can Call Me Al) came out when I was eight, and being eight is fantastic. It was the soundtrack to 1986 and was genuinely a leap forward in its exposure of rhythms, instruments and sounds that the western music world had simply never heard before.
For me, nostalgia is a great cover-all excuse, so alongside Graceland, there's a whole stack of appalling 'cock rock' - poodle-permed 80s rockers in spandex.
When I heard the likes of Guns N' Roses, Bon Jovi, Van Halen and Mötley Crüe I was spending my summer holidays playing Sonic The Hedgehog on the Sega Megadrive. Endless holidays, silly conversations, sun. So every time I hear the strains of Livin' On A Prayer or Jump I get transported back to some of the most fun times of my life.
Welsh journalist Richard S Jones believes guilty pleasures are not only about nostalgia; indeed, they can perform a function: "I always compare the 'guilty pleasures' in my record collection to those filler stories you often get at the very end of the news; those little relief news items about a squirrel that has taught itself to sky dive, or a pensioner that can roller skate on elbows. They are sort of there to remind myself that I have a sense of humour, and that it's not all Metal Machine Music."
Of course as one gets older it's less important to mask the more cheesy elements of one's record collection. At school, as a teenager desperately trying to construct a cool facade, you drop the latest hot beat combos into conversation, carefully neglecting to mention the East 17 record you surreptitiously bought. But then all that goes out of the window when it's no longer as important to impress girls and score cool points over your mates. Is there any such thing as a guilty pleasure over the age of 30?
Music journalist Sarah Bee says, "Around 30 I think you realise cool as it's generally defined is silly. Or as my dear friend once said, 'cool is just dumb with sunglasses'".
Meanwhile, Welsh epic pop maestro David Wrench says, "I love loads of dodgy pop records. I justify it by claiming that if I like it then it must be cool anyway." That's confidence for you, but Wrench's statement really nails the key to abandoning the concept of guilt.
These days I'm out and proud of my love of poodle rock, not to mention all the top 80s pop of the likes of Pet Shop Boys, Duran Duran and Frankie. I could go on.
Sarah Bee takes a holistic approach. "I just don't distinguish between pleasures and guilty pleasures, so I can't tell you what my guilty ones would be," she says. "Ten different people could look through my mp3 player and pick out 10 different things that they think are awful. I do have things i wouldn't admit to liking but that doesn't really mean I feel 'guilty' about liking them. I just don't necessarily care to justify them to others if i think they'll point and laugh or try and get into a tedious debate."
I relate entirely to that. I couldn't tell you how many entirely pointless conversations I've had - and hours wasted - in explaining why I like Pearl Jam.
Talking to friends now, in their late 20s and well into their 30s and 40s a pattern emerges. The most proferred examples of guilty pleasures are 1980s pop rock: Phil Collins, Go West, Bryan Adams and so on. Old music seems, like old cars that were once dreadful sheds, to develop a cool of its own, born out of its weirdness. So a band like The Bee Gees, deeply uncool at one point, are maybe music's Austin Allegro. And new music seems just too... new to be a guilty pleasure.
The 1980s almost have a monopoly on guilty pleasures, whether it's cheesy spandex rock (Jarrad Owens of Amped Wales: "I got into Manic Street Preachers really early and digested as much Manics-related stuff as possible, it lead me onto bands like Hanoi Rocks, New York Dolls which in turn got me into Motley Crue, Poison, Danger Danger...") or Genesis and Phil Collins' balding mullet.
It's from the 1980s that the Welsh guilty pleasures come too. Jarrad Owens says, "Then there's Tigertailz. You can't not love the greatest glam band no-one's heard of, especially when they're from Cardiff". Then there's Bonnie Tyler and probably Shakin' Stevens. What are your own guilty pleasures, Welsh or otherwise? Try admitting some of your guilty pleasures; it's therapeutic.
Feel free to comment! If you want to have your say, on this or any other BBC blog, you will need to sign in to your BBC iD account. If you don't have a BBC iD account, you can register here - it'll allow you to contribute to a range of BBC sites and services using a single login.
Need some assistance? Read about BBC iD, or get some help with registering.
