but I have a fondness for some of Andrew Lloyd Webbers's stuff, particularly Jesus Christ Superstar (seen it performed twice, once starring the bloke from This Life as Judas - the film version is pish though) and Evita (particularly Julie Covingtons's performances). Admittedly most of his other stuff is rubbish but I would defend these two to the death. I suspect the reasons he is despised so much are not always musical ones (ultra-establishment figure, posho, rubber-faced, terminally uncool etc etc). I may be alone in thinking this.

For the "no inherent value" I would nominate Westlife - so many hits, all instantly forgettable.

but Gilbert O'Sullivan's early work is brilliant.

Slade, particularly the early stuff

Electric Light Orchestra - who have had a bit of a revisiting in light of the Guilty Pleasures genre.

Not expecting the "See through the correctness, and Gary Glitter's music...." comment

Many great suggestions. David Gates is a truly great singer and songwriter, and I'm still very fond of WWW's second album, "Holding Back The River".

I would also go with:

Donovan
The Stranglers
The Damned
The Moody Blues
Stock, Aitken & Waterman
a lot of Hi-NRG

and I will hold a torch for "Hotel California", "Face Value" "Christopher Cross" and "Brothers In Arms" until my dying day.

I agree with you, I'm also far more accommodating now.

Can I nominate a big stack of disco 45's, or are they already a part of the great canon?

For example Tavares, Chic, Odyssey, Kool and the Gang (not disco? - dunno), The Jacksons ("can you feel it" is surely one of the best singles ever), Donna Summer.

.....was more rigorously applied.

We live in a Cheryl Cole/Michael Jackson/Madonna fixated world.....and you want people to 'lower' their standards!!!!

That said, I suspect that Cliff's 50s 45s are still sorely neglected, and if the same man's 'In The Country' replaced 'Good Day Sunshine' on 'Revolver' or 'The Day I Met Marie' had been the Floyd's follow-up to 'See Emily Play' they'd be revered.

...seem to be seen as pure pop fluff (not that there's anything wrong with pure pop fluff) but they also had weird and wacky singles like Chorus and Drama and arguably were the first example of an unambiguous, sexualised gay sensibility in the mainstream charts.

I was thinking about this on the way in this morning.

A couple of Big Country tracks came on the iPod - live tracks. It started me on a track of thought about "are they a guilty pleasure" "they're actually rather good" and "they really could do their stuff live".

It started me thinking about how 'good' artists are assessed, and music that I 'love' on an emotional level, as opposed to 'like' and 'respect'.

I don't know that I reached any firm conclusions in my head, other than "well, I know good when I hear it', which didn't really advance my thoughts very much. Of the others, I think I can admire the craft rather than want to listen to it. ELP and Joel may get the occasional spin, but other than that....

Of the people you listed, I don't know that Green Day didn't get their moment in the sun. "American Idiot"still stands, politically and musically.

If this means I have to re-evaluate my perfectly reasonably held belief that BoNo is an annoying yodelling twonk of the first water then I resign. You'll be expecting me to lavish praise on The Stereophonics next. Tut and indeed splutter!

Sweet - unfortunately they tend to be lazily described as brickies with eyeliner or some such nonsense. Fantastic pop singles, great rock b-sides and some top quality albums.

Gary Numan - Replicas, The Pleasure Principle and Telekon albums. All three released within 18 months, and they have aged beautifully.

I like 'em. MH is a truly fantastic singer. The 25 greatest hits album is a fantastic collection. Great band.

I am a big man. I am 6'3" tall, size 13 feet, and tipped the scales at something like 24 stone at the time I'm about to relate (thankfully I've shed a quarter of this weight since, but that's another story.) I've also been faithfully hitched to the same woman since I was 19 years old - some 16 years now.

The reason I mention all of this is because I was once asked what I was listening to on my Walkman.

"Ella Fitzgerald," I replied.

My inquisitor - a highly-educated woman (which is why it still puzzles me) - then said, "Oh. I thought you were married?"

"Yes, I am."

"Oh, okay..."

A pause.

I replied, "Sorry, Kath, I don't get the connection."

"It doesn't really go with your image, that's all."

"Why? What is 'my image?' Go on - I'm intrigued."

"I thought it was only gay men who listened to Ella Fitzgerald."

So, I learned two things that day:
1. That, to be homosexual, one has to be presumably shorter / thinner / less four-eyed than me; and
2. Ella Fitzgerald is presumably code for homosexuality in South Africa (where Kath came from.)

I didn't bother to disclose that I also have practically every note recorded by Billie Holiday lest she made me wear a pink star at work.

Def Leppard
Supertramp
10cc
Eurythmics

Few of these are well loved by members of the massive, but for Joe Public I would imagine they are considered oh so uncool

Renaissance
Cars
Cheap Trick
Sammy Hagar (solo)
Harpo
Visage
King
The Members
Angelwitch
Peter Skellern

Whilst on the other side, I shall gladly never again hear any of the following music press faves

Jesus Jones
The Redskins
March Violets, Blood & Roses, Brigandage et al
Any fucker banging bits of metal (NB that's not a cue for Jerry Sadowitz's gag about Norman Tebbit and his wife)

Fleet Foxes revered.

How does that work? Their records are identical.
.

of the above artists I like to think that I have always appreciated a song for its merits and have never let anything else influence my decisions.
The only filter I have had is when I was a DJ. My best mate was also a DJ and if he discovered a record before I did I hated it unreservedly, and he found several excellent tunes. I was never going to admit that to him though.
That can also be filed under Bob's Deadly Sins thread as pure envy.

and not to care what anyone else thinks. It's always worked for me.

Some retrospective credibility for Head, but otherwise critically ignored. The top ten Monkees tunes can go toe-to-toe with the top tens of the Beach Boys or Creedence CR or The Doors in my book.

Saw them at Manchester Boardwalk during their "warm up club tour" for, I think, the Holding Back The River tour. I still rate it as one of the best concerts I have ever been to.

They were a good live band full stop. Saw them again here in Singapore when they toured the Greatest Hits album. This time in a bigger venue, but still enjoyable. My wife's comment was how come Marti Pellow's voice was so clear when singing but she could not understand a word of his Glasgow accent in the bits between songs......

Yes, bits of Oasis' songs sound like the Beatles, Rutles, New Seekers etc, but no-one complains about The Jam's Start or 10cc's I'm Mandy Fly Me (to name but two) for filching from The Fabs

Oasis are greater than the sum of their parts. They have produced at least a dozen instantly recognisable pop-rock classics that have never dated and could only have been made by that particular band.

On the other hand, Celine Dion and other Foghorn Leghorn-esque ballad singers who bawl over tinny synth drums and a couple of chords always sound awful.

Sold a shitload of albums. How are their critical status?

Worked with Pierre Schaeffer at GRM composing proper, hardcore Musique Concrète (see some of his work at the start of the 1970s), composed some pretty epochal albums that are still played and listened to now, over 30 years after. Releases an album with only 1 copy in existence and auctions it, telling fans to pirate it on Radio Luxembourg on the one occasion it will be played in public. Then releases an album that pretty much pushes the envelope with the use of sampling, harking back to those GRM roots.

He managed to redefine some of the parameters of the performance of electronic music, experiments with the way music is recorded, mastered and listened to and generally still tries to things which are true to himself. Indeed, electronic music might sound very different without his presence.

Jean Michel Jarre.

But to listen to some, he's just a guy who produces dull, aural wallpaper. Meanwhile, partly because of their krautrock associations, Kraftwerk are fêted (which is no problem for me 'cos I love them as well). The inventiveness and the craft, the love of melody and the desire to do something new are shared, but one lionised and the other derided in this country. Not really fair.

I mentioned my liking for SAW's output on the site, I was treated as a heretic. Okay this is going to make it worse. I have the first two Stereophonics albums, I think they are good. I also have all Keane's albums and like them too - much better than Cold Play.

I too faffed around for many years trying to chime with the musical In Crowd, erecting aural barriers to anything that didn't come with the right critical credentials or suitably hip levels of self-awareness on the part of the acts themselves. Having kids has been a key factor in loosening the tourniquet around my listening filters. Hearing your own daughter sing Lady Gaga or Tinie Tempah releases music from its media/PR-centric moorings. I've increasingly found myself willing to take whatever comes my way at face value but as others have said on here, some music and acts remain tarred and feathered, despite the clear evidence of feted achievements.

Cliff Richard is a good example of someone who, I feel, has made some pretty decent records but is also someone who, in musical terms, is treated like a perma-tanned Jehovah's Witness knocking at your front door. Spitting Image probably had a lot to do with his reassignment from popular singer to popular target as did his own egotistical simpering antics, primarily derived from his God bothering pronouncements and self-canonisation references (e.g. his "Big fish, small fish, Christ on the Cross" shape throwing in more recent videos). In truth I suspect he's a probably a bit of a vain div, someone who lives these days in a world where he's always confusing Harry Webb with Cliff Richard and can't really cope without a daily dose of fawning adulation from someone.

That said, stuff like Devil Woman, Carrie and We Don't Talk Anymore are great MOR pop songs.

But reading through all this thread, apart from Ella Fitzgerald, two 10cc & two Fleetwood Mac albums (maybe the odd song here & there - New Rose springs to mind) I could happily live without the lot of them!

Each to their own, I guess but shame on you for neglecting soul music for so long.

I'm not quite sure what the genre was called, but it was very big when I was a young whippersnapper and I loathed it, not least because it was deeply unfashionable: REO Speedwagon, Styx, Toto, Chicago, Journey that sort of thing. Big choruses, big hair, vests, histrionic guitar solos, chunky synth chords etc. I've become rather partial to things like "Rosanna", "Take It On The Run" etc. when they crop up on the radio. May even put together a spotify playlist one of these days and have a good long wallow in the stuff. I'd also lump in some of the British pop metal that was around at the time: Rainbow, Whitesnake.

As far as I can remember, (you hardly ever hear any SAW product played these days, even on Steve Wright), all those records featured a characteristic hollow knocking sound where the beat should have been, whilst the rest was all flimsy, insubstantial synths fronted by either Kylie, Jason or Rick Astley. Then there was the ghastly Yell or the ironically named Big Fun. Filters or no, surely SAW generated only dreadful rubbish :

Often derided, but a career of genuine highlights and worth

He had a great voice and produced some great singles that stand the test of time.

And also, how about Leo Sayer?

was turned off at birth. I enjoyed Barry Manilow when I was a teenager, I thought Bros were great. Simply Red and especially Level 42 made brilliant pop records. Gilbert O'Sullivan and even my beloved DA seem to be blocked by manys correctness filters. Through my sons I have chosen to listen to Razorlight, Editors and Stereophonics. Keanes "Hopes and Fears" would register very high on my list of favourite albums. Kajagoogoos "Too Shy" came on my iPod tonight from an 80's electronica compilation and I had my air slap bass, full overbite turned up to 11. Great, great thread.

Unfortunately nowadays set in some kind of kitschy Butlins 70s nostalgia weekend bracket.
I think they should be seen as one of Britain's finest soul bands.

When I started to listen to them when I was ten or eleven I thought they were the coolest ever. The music, Eddie, the noise they made.

Now I realise they are probably not so cool, to be honest. Still love the music though. It makes me happy, it moves me and it fills me with energy.

It's a dry, dusty afternoon. You roll the hire car into an obscure village off the main road, looking for a coffee, even a Fanta. You drive past a cafe that may or may not be open, find the first available parking space a few hundred yards further on, then walk back. The streets are empty apart from one disinterested cat. You've forgotten what time it is, then suddenly you hear a medieval bell toll three times with a gravity and timbre that stops you dead in your tracks.

That's Karen Carpenter's voice that is.

so the wacko years and the innumerable nose jobs played havoc with his reputation, but that run of albums Off the Wall/Thriller/Bad still sound mostly) terrific, performance-wise and sonically.

Worthless? I suspect people like 50Cent and Kanye West are only in it for the money.

Am I alone in appreciating the notion of "guilty pleasures"? The consensus here seems to always be that there are no such things are guilty pleasures, just music you like and music you don't, but that's just not what it's like in practice, is it? Music, pop music in particular, isn't just a floating sound with no relation to real life: it's all about the context and the fashion and the message.

Let's take a comparison:

Do you like picking your nose? Everyone does it sometimes, don't they? So why don't you do it in public all the time? Because some things are best left private. You inherently understand that it would be an affront to public social mores to go around picking your nose all the time. So you do when no-one's looking. You would feel guilty if someone caught you at it. Ta da! It's a "guilty pleasure".

Well, I quite like picking my nose. And I also quite like The Only Way Is Up by Yazz And The Plastic Population. But I wouldn't walk around in public with a Yazz And The Plastic Population tshirt, or with a ghetto blaster blaring out The Only Way Is Up. Because I understand that this would bewilder and confuse people and they would think I was a moron.

But: I would discuss the merits of The Only Way Is Up with like-minded friends who were attuned to the nuances of great pop composition. Or I would bring it up in a place like the Word blog.

So what's wrong with calling that a "guilty pleasure"?

Furthermore, I think it's a really handy shortcut of a term and you know exactly what someone means when they say it (which is why it works so well as a concept for a compilation or a club night). I bet the vast majority of people I asked would be able to instantly identify what I mean by picking out the "guilty pleasures" from these five songs with little or no further explanation:

- What's Goin On - Marvin Gaye
- The Cha Cha Slide - DJ Casper
- This Ole House - Shakin Stevens
- Rhapsody In Blue - Gershwin
- Two Little Boys - Rolf Harris

Written off as a gauche, novelty ska band (which they were and so what?) and always unfairly compared to Madness. The bands were quite different really. I loved their first four albums as a kid and most of their singles were great goodtime pop! Lip Up Fatty, Special Brew, Lorraine, Just A Feeling, Walking In The Sunshine to name just four originals.

I've just learnt Buster Bloodvessel played his final ever UK gig in January. Shame, they were a superb live act.

you people who care about being cool

Pretty grim much of the time. But No Milk Today is great pop, and My Sentimental Friend has a "that's it, the sixties are over" feel - good instant nostalgia.

Too often hurled in with the teeny bob New Romantic detritus of the early 80's, however they were much much better than that.

Interesting both musically (some of Pirroni's guitar lines are still quite brilliant - esp around Kings of the Wild Frontier) and visually. Ant providing Michael Jackson's uniform for the following decade.

Great example. Back in 81 he was all over the charts. At the time I despised Prince Charming, but in hindsight, only because to admit liking A&TA was to invite mockery.

I know better now, Prince Charming is a fabulous song. (good video as well).

I have long considered Radiohead to be the worst band in the world ever. David Gates crashes into Van der Graaf Generator with some awful songs. That just about covers it.

So I took Paul's advice and removed the Correctness Filter and listened again to OK Computer.

It's not all that bad.

Fuck.

"Sunny Honey Girl" - can someone please link to the video on You Tube?
Now I don't know which came first but what much-feted classic of uber-cool suburban shades and black-leather avant garde rock does it share its chorus melody note-for-note with?

years, my mates and I would alienate legions of our comtemporaries by playing stuff like "Metal Machine Music" (admittedly briefly) or Fripp Eno albums on the Common Room record player.
"Horses" and "Marquee Moon" were among the more palatable selections as we would suck on our Embassy Regal striking self-congratultory poses,convinced we were superior in our musical orientation to anyone whose tastes included anything unapproved by CSM or Nick Kent in that week's NME.
Woe betide any of our male counterparts who brought in "Hotel California" or their Peter Frampton, Yes or Supertramp albums.
Scorn unabated would be cast their way should anyone suggest we remove Bowie's frightful "David Live" in favour of ELP for a lunchtime airing.
As it was a boys' Grammar School up to Form Five, an even greater and more withering contempt had we for anything brought to bear by the newest recruits to our seat of education, the girls.
While pleasant to behold and rather more fragrant than us spotty, sweaty oiks, these individuals listened, would you believe, to singles!
How we guffawed as they asked if they could play their Diana Ross or Bee Gees 45's! "If You Leave Me Now" by Chicago - please ladies, go and tune in to the Radio One Roadshow in your rest room, we have the new one by The Dictators to spin to here!
These days I'd far sooner listen to a scratchy vinyl KC and The Sunshine Band or Kool & The Gang compilation than any remastered reissue of "No Pussyfooting" or "Radio Ethiopia"
How do they say, the men don't know but the little girls understand?

The Seekers

but by crikey those songs have longevity

I present for your consideration
Duran Duran
Pre Lady In Red Chris De Burgh

Petula Clark and The Carpenters.

Fletch is one of my favourite movies.

Dr Rosenpenis, Dr Rosenrosen, Mr Sinlinden, Fletch F Fletch and Dorf "The Dorf" Dorfman make me laugh as I type.

I love your legs, Larry.

- Are you a cop?
- As far as you know.

For my sins, I love this (& every other version of Elizabethan Serenade I have ever heard)

Please disconnect all taste sensors before watching this clip.

http://youtu.be/Rthj1nqfzgI

I have just posted this on the summer songs thread, but I think this thread is perhaps a more natural home.

I absolutely love this.