I've never been ashamed to write about the guilty pleasures in music, film and television. These are the things you know you shouldn't like but you do. Like a grilled cheese sandwich on a lazy Saturday, they just feel good even if it's not necessarily good for you. To borrow Jill's line, "I feel happy and jovial, like I'd just come in from the cold and had a nice mug of hot chocolate. It's not necessarily nutritious or filling, but it's just what I wanted".
Looking back at the year of 2005 in music, there was a lot of awesome stuff I enjoyed. Next week I'll write a detailed entry about my ten favourite songs of the year and my ten favourite albums of the year, but this is about my favourite musical guilty pleasure of the year. The guilty pleasure of 2005 was Kelly Clarkson's "Since U Been Gone".
Kelly Clarkson, a former American Idol winner, is a pop star. How is it that I like "Since U Been Gone" so much? I shouldn't be enjoying this, should I? It starts out sweet, that pluck enters the fray at 0:34 and then, at 0:44, it kicks into an extra gear it shouldn't even have. At 1:32, this kick returns for another round and at 2:19 it dares to return once more for a flourish finish. Kelly gets what she wants and so do we. It's 3:09 of pure pop pleasure, 2005's best guilty pleasure.
There, I said it. I feel better already.
