Guilty Pleasure Songs

Sorry, but I don't like it either, haha.

Let me be clear: this may be the single stupidest song I have ever heard in my life. It's such a insanely ridiculous track, however, that it leaves me smitten with awe more than anything else. The chorus is idiotically commercialized in every sense of the word, yet unforgettable in its pitch perfect catchiness. Lee Latchford-Evans' hoedown "rap" during the verses is laughably amateur, yet still recognizably corny enough that it only compliments the rest of the track perfectly. The production is also totally bonkers, coming off as a crossroad between Rednex's "Cotton Eye Joe" and Cartoons' "Witch Doctor," but on crack. It's clearly intended to be full-on cheesy, like those songs are, but unlike Rednex and Cartoons, whose respective images were caricatures of American hillbillies and Chris Tucker in The Fifth Element, Steps are obviously a bunch of pretty-faces meant to be regarded with the same dignity as other regular teen pop acts from the late 90s, and the out-of-place, beach-themed music video puts that dissonance into full perspective. "5,6,7,8" is such a catastrophe of pop tropes gone insanely wrong that in my opinion, it's absolutely brilliant in its full-blown idiocy, being both utterly brainless and sharply adroit at the same time. It's a song with a very special place in history; the world absolutely needed "5,6,7,8" to achieve completeness. It's just as legendary and important, in my eyes, as the Beatles and Pink Floyd, but in a totally different way.


Most bad pop songs from the past few years are just atrociously crass, cold, lifeless, and put me in a bad mood. Somehow though, this track just leaves a big smile on my face. It's again one of the dumbest songs I've ever come across and lacks the intelligent pandering of "5,6,7,8," but it's so goofily clueless that I can't help but enjoy making complete fun of it. You can only wonder what Meghan Trainor and her co-writers were even thinking when they allowed some of the ideas here to come to fruition.


This one is particularly interesting because believe it or not, the original 1983 recording by Laura Branigan is legitimately one of my favourite songs of the 1980s (I almost put it in my top 10, but decided to limit myself to just one Branigan song). The very nature and credibility of the song, however, more or less flips completely upside down when you hand it to its original songwriter to perform on his own. Whereas Branigan's version was an intensely moving heartbreak ballad that conveys every degree of the narrator's devastation through both its production as well as Branigan's vocals, Bolton's recording from 6 years later sounds unbelievably melodramatic and has production that is much more outdated. Hearing that deep, hammy arena rock voice whine about heartbreak just has me totally rolling my eyes. All the little elements that made Branigan's version so raw and so gripping to me are now laughably over-the-top and insincere in Bolton's hands. It you want a song that really epitomizes everything people despise so much about 80s power ballads, this would hands down be my immediate recommendation. It stands proud in its own league of cheesiness, one which even Chicago and Poison come nowhere close to living up to.


You probably already know how bitter I am about the snap movement – it was actually the primary reason I stopped following Top 40 music in the middle of junior high – but its biggest hit has gradually become a sort of masterwork in its ludicrousness to me. Much of that has to do with the chorus, complete with its hammed up shouting and wailing, all set to a steel drum beat with almost no rhythm whatsoever. Most snap songs are just lifelessly obnoxious, but "Crank That (Soulja Boy)" takes everything awful about the genre and instead goes nuts with it. It has presence that other mid-late 2000s hip hop songs completely lacked, in spite of its ever-standing ineptness as a serious composition.

It's clearly the former because I absolutely despised it when I first heard it, as I had just recently got into the Super Eurobeat compilation series, which I found such a refreshing alternative to the dreary, bland, and unpleasant radio in the United States in 2007. Ever since the snap movement died out, "Crank That (Soulja Boy)" has become a sort of hilarious time capsule of the 2000s, whereas before I was angry people were genuinely preferring to listen to it as opposed to all the bubbly, uptempo dance-pop that did find success in Europe.

I shouldn't even like this inappropriate song but it's too catchy :D

This isn't a music video and lol  :D

It's surprising that the song is based off a new jack swing beat, given that the genre had fell out of favour several years prior to the release of the song. In this instance, I think the record label was simply undecided on what to do with the group and as a desperate attempt to continue to "cash in" on their success (especially with Christmas soon approaching), they ultimately composed a song which was uncharacteristic from the rest of their material. The single was released in September 1999, so it's quite likely that this may have been the case.