All of us have a song that deep down we love, but is either outright embarrassing to listen to, or just weird. For all the songs we can’t show our friends in fear of not being as “cool” as we want to be, the music directors highlight their personal guilty pleasure songs that need to be listened to alone.

---

ABEL: NONE! (but also break my heart by dua lipa)

There’s no such thing as guilty pleasure songs! If you like it, you like it and you shouldn’t be ashamed of what you enjoy! While I do stand by that, I do absolutely love more than a handful of Dua Lipa songs, particularly Break My Heart. And Levitating is always a banger, but the original, not the remix with DaBaby. That version was far inferior, way before he was publicly homophobic!

GAVIN: JUGGALO HOMIES BY INSANE CLOWN POSSE

Let me say this: Imagine you are a kid in the early 2000s. You are a big pro wrestling fan and you get the game Backyard Wrestling: Don’t Try This At Home. You start it up and the intro is a montage of wrestlers doing crazy stuff and this song playing over it. I felt like I was entering a different world, where there were no rules, no parents to tell me it’s time for bed, no kids to make fun of me, I was at peace.

CHLOE: YOU CAN’T TAKE ME BY BRYAN ADAMS

This is definitely my guilty pleasure song because it’s literally from Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron. The fact that it’s a horse movie just cracks me up and the sheer amount of love that I have for this song, and the movie in its entirety, might be just a little embarrassing… I can confidently say I know every single word to this song. Something about it genuinely makes me want to conquer the world, and every time I hear it, I can immediately picture the scene that it’s used in.

DAYTON: ROCKSTAR BY NICKelBACK

I chose Rockstar because it’s my favorite song from the controversial band: Nickelback. Growing up, my two older brothers would give me and mom shit for listening to Nickelback. Since they are the root of much of my own music taste, their dislike of Nickelback meant a lot. Ever since then, when I listen to them, I look over both shoulders first.

GARY: THE SAFETY DANCE BY MEN WITHOUT HATS

I say, we can go where we want to

A place where they’ll never find

And we can act like we come from out of this world

Leave the real one far behind

(It’s really good)

ASHLYN: MMM YEAH BY AUSTIN MAHONE (FEAT. PITBULL)

(This totally wasn’t my favorite song when I was younger)

I was BUMPING this on the bus ride home from school. I was listening to this on repeat everywhere, and could have been convinced it was the best song known to man at one point in time. Shaped me as a person, certified banger, but I’d rather be caught dead than being caught listening to this infront of my friends. I wouldn’t live that one down.

EVANNE: BLACK EYE BY VERNON

This song is awful. The lyrics are so simple that my dog could probably come up with something better and Vernon sounds like a cheaper Bryce Hall and probably is the Bryce Hall of his kpop boy group. The thing that really caught me was the aesthetics of the music video and how the angst makes me feel like I’m 13 again.

JUSTIN: THE BAD TOUCH BY THE BLOODHOUND GANG

This song kicks off with a smug narration describing two animals engaging in “the act of mating”. Then, from nowhere, the funkiest bassline you’ve ever had penetrate your ear holes gets you moving. From there we get a compilation of gross sexual references and dad jokes for the song’s entire 4:20 (nice) runtime. This song isn’t meant to be taken seriously at all, and at times is just plain gross, like when it compares a partner to “Waffle House hashbrowns”, but that bassline is something that cannot be taken lightly.

ISAK: PRINCESS OF CHINA BY COLDPLAY AND RIHANNA

It’s a guilty pleasure song for pure nostalgia. I don’t really listen to Coldplay a whole lot because their stuff now is a little too pop for myself. It’s not a bad song though alright. I still crack up to this! Older Coldplay tracks hold a special place in my heart for real.

ANGELA: STRANGE THINGS WILL HAPPEN BY THE RADIO DEPT.

This was my first-ever favorite song. I discovered it because it was featured on my first-ever favorite movie: The Fault in Our Stars. Is is embarrassing to admit that was my favorite movie for a long time? No. Is it a young adult chick flick? Yes. Is it also written, cast, and filmed beautifully alongside one of the best movie soundtracks ever? Absolutely!! This song specifically encapsulates the feelings captured by this film and I think it’s actually a masterpiece.

DANIEL: GIMMIE THE CAR BY VIOLENT FEMMES

This song is THE definition of a guilty pleasure song. It is so good, so amazing, so groovy, and yet so… creepy, so disturbing, and so intriguing. This song describes something which is unfortunately very familiar to very many people – the deep sexual frustration of a teenager. But rest assured, it gets much worse.

Now, time for the guilty part of this song. This song tells a story, a very dark and sad story. It is the story of a teenage boy who is on the verge of suicide due to his inability to get laid. As the lyrics state, all he wants is to borrow his dad’s car, since he’s got this girl that he wants to *bwing*. Immediately after that he describes exactly what he’s going to do to this girl once he picks her up – or more accurately, exactly what he imagines himself doing to this girl. These activities include the following: picking her up, getting her drunk, making her cry, getting her high, making her laugh, and, well, making her “sshhhh”. As you can surely guess, he then plans to touch her all over her body, only followed by her touching him all over his body. A truly romantic evening. The rest of the song follows his mental anguish as he deals with the reality of him being a terrible person; yet he just can’t bother to care since he is at the end of his ropes. If he can’t get this girl and make it to a man, he might as well die since he never had much to live for anyway.

I’m sure you’re wondering “How such a guilty song can be so pleasurable?” Well, the answer is simple: it’s just so damn groovy. That’s right, the groove of this song is simply unbeatable. It has an immediately recognizable bass line, which is arguably the most important part, and it has such a unique flow to its sound that you never know what’s gonna come next. The best part is, everything fits together perfectly. Whatever mood Gordon Gano wants you to feel when he’s pouring his heart out into the lyrics, he makes damn sure you feel that through the music. To top it all off, the song is perfectly clean! That’s right, for such a raunchy song, every swear is bleeped out in the best way possible. If you wanna find out how, I guess you’ll just have to hear it for yourself.

ZEKE: ZZZ BY KYLE ALLEN MUSIC

Never in my life have I played Roblox. I have almost no concept of what Roblox gameplay even is, which makes this guilty pleasure song of mine so funny. The lack of context is part of the reason I enjoy Zzz so much. The situation in which a player would hear this song is completely unbeknownst to me. I have no idea what Roblox High School is. Regardless, I am fortunate enough to have come across the song on TikTok of all places. When it was used as the sound behind a video, I liked it enough to listen to the whole album.

Zzz in particular has a very ethereal feel to it. I love how the chords feel suspended in air, almost like a cross between Brian Eno and Mort Garson (no you can’t come after me for making that comparison). The song is repetitious, but that’s what makes it so mesmerizing. The release is a surprisingly compelling example of casual electronic music, even outside the context of a video game. I wish I had more to say about this track since it’s so embarrassing admitting listening to it, but I truly have very little knowledge regarding its existence. Amazing music shows up in unexpected places.

PETAR: PRESSURE ZONE BY TONETTA

Tonetta, aka Anthony Jeffrey, is a Canadian singer, songwriter, producer, and visual artist who in the 80s began living as a recluse recording music on cassettes after separating from his wife. In 2008, Tonetta started his first YouTube channel which led to him posting DIY music videos that would accompany his songs. Unfortunately, due to the graphic and sexual nature of these videos, Tonetta has been banned from Youtube countless times. I chose Pressure Zone for this Station Rewind because it’s one of those songs I absolutely adore but can never play around people. Despite the warm lo-fi drums, incredibly catchy guitar riff, and soulful vocals, most people don’t seem to like the song’s lyrical content which contains messages regarding Tonetta wanting [redacted] as well as [redacted] and [redacted] [redacted] [redacted]. After years of keeping Tonetta for myself, I’ve recently begun to show my fellow music lovers the power of Tonetta’s art. Most seem disgusted, unimpressed, confused, and sometimes worried. Tonetta has not talked to his wife or seen his children since 1983. Please give Pressure Zone a listen.

[Ashlyn recommends you watch the video to get the full experience for Pressure Zone]