We can all agree that art is subjective, so why are we inclined to see certain songs, no matter how iconic or culture-shifting, as ‘guilty pleasures’? Charli XCX is our guest editor this week, and she’s kicking us off with a few confessions of the tried and tested tunes which never fail to get her in the mood.
Fresh from dropping her eponymous third album Charli, she has no problem confessing her weakness for classic 90s cheese. “Guilty pleasure songs, they’re just great songs. Straight up,” she asserts. First up on the list is the Vengaboys’ classic dance anthem, “We Like to Party”. “I always put it on in the car when I’m going out… or going anywhere,” she says. “It makes me wanna rave.”
No primary school disco or pissed-up pre drinks respectively would be complete without her next choice, Whigfield’s 1993 hit, “Saturday Night”. Admiring the “iconic” pop-dance classic, she admits: “It’s an incredibly well written pop song that I wished I’d written.”
“This actually is guilty pleasure,” she says of her third choice, Simply Red’s only UK number one single, “Fairground”, which Charli says she would listen to during car rides with her mum on the way to school. “Fun for all the family” is how she describes the anthemic, galvanising people across cultures, generations, wedding dancefloors, the “Macarena”. “It’s withstood the test of time”, she muses on the 1995 tune. “It’s great to do that dance routine to any song.”
And is a guilty pleasures list complete without some early 00s gothic metal-rap rock? Here, she chooses “Bring Me To Life” by Evanescence. “Anything by Evanescence,” adds Charli, “which I don’t think is a guilty pleasure”, having been immortalised through memes and on the emoticon-heavy lyrics plastered across ever ex-emo’s MySpace profile.
Watch the video here, and tune into the rest of Charli’s guest edit of Dazed here.