Guilty pleasures that are not guilty: music you love and refuse to apologise for

[Chris27]

The premise of the guilty pleasure is that taste is a competition with stakes, that enjoying something widely considered uncool is a confession. I disagree with this premise but I find the genre of conversation it generates very enjoyable because it reveals something genuine about people.

So: what do you unironically love that you might previously have hedged about? What music have you been listening to for years that you have not mentioned here because of some imaginary audience in your head judging you for it?

[Always_Craig96]

80s power ballads. Not ironically, not nostalgically, genuinely emotionally invested. The production is excessive and the sentiment is sincere and I want both of those things simultaneously sometimes.

[BigDog_Fan]

A genre of dance music that is considered deeply unfashionable in the communities where I have spent most of my listening life. I do not care. It makes me happy. The happiness is real even if the fashion is not.

[HenryThierry]

Television theme music. I have playlists of theme tunes from shows I have never watched because the music is genuinely good in isolation. I find this a completely defensible position.

[Sinead]

Eurovision entries. Not as a joke. Some of them are exceptional pop songwriting and the fact that they exist in the Eurovision context is not a disqualification.

[Blake_73]

The most commercially successful version of a genre I otherwise listen to in its less accessible forms. I know the technically superior versions exist. Sometimes I want the one that got on the radio.

[Taz]

Music from films I loved as a child. The nostalgia is real but so is the quality in many cases. Nostalgia is not the same as poor judgment.

[Hollow85]

A specific very famous artist whose critical reputation has been re-evaluated several times and who I have loved throughout all the evaluations regardless of what the consensus said. I do not require the consensus.

[PhilippeMercadal]

Ambient and new age music that my more sonically sophisticated friends make clear faces about. I sleep better with it on. The evidence base for its quality is my own daily life.