I have no idea why this has stuck in my mind but it did. I have no idea if the rest of the album is any good but I’ve had this song in rotation for years.
Actually, I have a slightly different version but this was the one I found on YouTube. I think I like it better without the video!
This music makes me feel guilty for other reasons than I guess most of the other posts in this thread. It’s still a pleasure to listen to. And no I’m not trying to make the thread political.
Mama’s Gonna Kick Me Out
On what fucking planet is Public Enemy or Grandmaster Flash and “The Message” a guilty pleasure?
“Yeah, my guilty pleasures are listening to Coltrane’s Love Supreme, watching Scorcese movies and reading Flannery O’Connor short stories…”
Not this planet.
THIS is a hip-hop guilty pleasure. And it’s a little debatable.
I’m down with Kris Kross too. That whole record is kind of actually pretty terrific.
Yeah, it only enters my guilty zone because “kids”.
Like this is a guilty pleasure, but the tune has grown on me as the years have passed:
Okay, this thread has jumped the shark.
You have jumped the Shark calling “White Lines” a guilty pleasure! The thread is fine!
Pure as the driven snow…
But The Message is okay? Hypocrite!
We established that it isn’t guilty either! Catch up!
1997 was the last year of a generally very good five-year stretch for pop rock music. Certainly the average number one hit of any of the twenty prior years was a bloodless, unmusical, and forgettable effort compared with Hanson’s “MMMBop,” a rare case of entirely well-deserved mass appeal. Of course it’s based on the Jackson Five, but it’s well short of plagiaristic, and cunning in its angle of divergence: the lyrics, interestingly, don’t traffic slickly in feelings and entertainment like J5, they critique. The word “MMMBop” is the heartbeat in which relationships you thought would last can be gone: “Keep planting to find out which one grows/It’s a secret no one knows.” They riff on that with “Can you tell me?/Oh yeah, you say you can/But you don’t know,” which is rather impressive hardball for literal teenagers. And as everyone already knows, the performance is fabulous. --Scott Miller
PulpFictionUmaThurman.youtube
I’ll say this too. Zac at 11 was better on the drums that I ever was.
LOLOL
My folks had that album on vinyl, and I of course bought it on CD at the first opportunity, along with A Charlie Brown Christmas whose jazzy take on “O Tannenbaum” is irresistible.
As far as guilty musical pleasures goes, I’d say early Madonna (“Borderline” “Like a Virgin” “Material Girl” etc.), Bananarama’s “Cruel Summer” and their “Venus” cover, and Cyndi Lauper’s “She Bop.”