Musical guilty pleasures that have become national treasures? April 1, 2017
Posted by WorldbyStorm in Uncategorized.trackback
Thinking about Sabbath the other day I was wondering about groups that have transitioned from guilty pleasures to…well… seeming treasures over the years. dmfod a few years ago pointed to Fleetwood Mac as a group that had long ago moved from the former to the latter category, but what others can one think of? I’m tempted to say some metal groups – Motorhead or AC/DC spring to mind (Sabbath not quite so much), but is that quite the same dynamic? Huge rafts of 1980s music, Duran Duran perhaps? Any thoughts on this?
The Cedar Lounge Revolution 
Maybe not quite what you mean, and he’s not around to enjoy it unfortunately, but it’s hard to remember how unseriously people took Marc Bolan and T. Rex at the time.
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God that’s so true. Even reading the Glam book by Simon Reynolds I”m not sure that comes across…
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Just bought a copy of Jeff Wayne ‘ s War of the World. Does that count? Or is it still a guilty pleasure…..
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Kind of guilty and one I share 🙂
Am I very bad for particularly loving the song Thunder Child – bombast and all? there’s just something about it that gets me, lyrically too, about a small ship attempting to help civilians get away and going to its doom – and the lyrics are taken almost entirely from Wells.
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Again, probably not exactly what you were asking, but there was a time when Serge Gainsbourg was only known for one ‘dirty’ record, before he became a genius. Maybe an anglosphere counterpart would be Jimmy Webb as the songs he wrote for Glen Campbell shook off their MOR clothing with the passing of time and context.
On the other side, there was a time when it was perfectly permissable to laugh at Leonard Cohen.
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Yeah along with Duran Duran the death of George Michael makes me think of Wham! (though maybe still a guilty pleasure I don’t know). In America I think of bands like The Carpenters or Blondie bands which my father for one would not have admitted to liking at the time but have become more mainstream since.
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Watching Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid last night reminded me: Burt Bacharach.
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Yes, time has treated him kindly, I like his stuff mostly.
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St Pats hardcore have turned “Yes sir, I can boogie” into a fans’ favourite down Inchicore way. Chalk this down as a victory for retro cool-before-we-were-born-ism
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Sade doesn’t seem to be damned as sophisticated wine bar music anymore
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And what was interesting was where her music was played wasn’t her fault.
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