iShame: ABBA and Huey Lewis to Blame

In the age of iPods, one can no longer hide their guilty pleasure songs from the rest of the world.

There will always be someone scrolling through your mp3 player, snobbishly laughing at songs you can't help but love. But what constitutes as awesomely bad and just plain bad? I did some soul-searching, by which I mean I spent almost an hour going through my iTunes, and I came up with just a few songs that I hate to admit I listen to.

ABBA has always been a secret favorite of mine. The Swedish disco-pop quartet responsible for "Dancing Queen" and "Mamma Mia" are so tacky and generic that I should probably not admit that. But something about their saccharine melodies is innocent and alluring. The early synthesizers are so quaint, it's like seeing a Model-T on the road when I listen to their "Gold: Greatest Hits" album. I guess my love for ABBA started because it was one of the first CDs my parents bought in the early 90s after they abandoned cassettes.

I remember they blasted it on Easter mornings as we got ready to drive to my Uncle's house to eat. Whenever I hear ABBA, it always makes me feel like Easter morning. I get to be a kid again every time I hear the piano-run intro to "Dancing Queen."

Mom and Dad also used to play Ace of Base as loud as they could on sunny spring weekends when I was young. They always did it with the windows wide open to let in the fresh air, and probably to piss-off the neighbors. It's hard to criticize the bad radio music of your childhood. Everyone could probably sing along to a Backstreet Boys or Spice Girls song, just because radio is what we listen to before we start buying CDs. That's why I have Brandy and Monica's "The Boy is Mine," KC and JoJo's "All My Life," or any song by Mariah Carey or Coolio.

I could spend an entire book writing about the once-trendy, now passé and pathetic songs in my music collection. A lot of these songs I found in a movie that I love, and was forced to hear them enough times to like them. "Fool for Love," a country song by Sandy Rogers from the film Reservoir Dogs about a first love that ends in heartbreak when the girl marries someone else comes to mind. I hate most country music, but something about Rogers' voice is so much more sincere and heartbreaking than other country singers, yet the song itself is upbeat and uplifting.

The most embarrassing, I decided, is definitely "Crusin," by Huey Lewis and Gwyneth Paltrow. It was part of the soundtrack for the movie "Duets," which they both co-starred in. I can't even describe what I like about it. I didn't know what Gwyneth Paltrow was doing in music or what Huey Lewis was doing in acting. I never saw the movie it came from and if I ever even heard it on the radio so how it landed on my iPod is a mystery. It is a mind-numbing bit of pop drivel, but it does have a nice chilling effect, like star-gazing. That might be my brain cells quietly dying. It's the equivalent of musical junk food, and there's nothing wrong with the occasional dip into the formulaic and sophomoric sludge of pop music.