Guilty Pleasures: A Playlist

I’m a woman who has a lot of feelings about things I’m never shy to articulate. I can be judgmental. But now you all can judge me.



I want to thank Mike Singleton for inspiring this playlist. You can see his guilty pleasures here.



I am not submitting this to the Musical Milestones challenge—I’m working on something very special for that.



Music is a huge part of my life and identity. I’m an 80’s baby. I’m from an era when music videos were played on television instead of reality shows. Even as a toddler, I preferred MTV and VH1 over cartoons. My favorite thing to do as a child was to put vinyl on my Fisher-Price record player and sing my heart out, or make mix tapes (yes, with actual cassette tapes).



As you may have guessed, I’m a music snob. I like every genre, from almost every era, but I have a low tolerance for most mainstream songs released after the 70’s. Indie sounds much better to me.



However, I don’t feel guilty for liking something because it’s popular. For me, it’s about loving songs with bad lyrics. By bad I mean highly explicit, or ridiculous. You’ll see what I mean.

“Drunk in Love” by Beyoncé ft. Jay-Z

I’m sorry Bey Hive. I love Beyoncé, my fellow Virgo. I saw Destiny’s Child in concert 22 years ago. Beyoncé’s live vocals on “Dangerously in Love” gave me goosebumps. Fuck, she can sang.

But this song? It has the stupidest lyrics I’ve ever heard in my life! Yet, it’s such a bop, isn’t it?

“I Fink U Freeky” by Die Antwoord

I love Die Antwoord so, so much! I just wish I didn’t.

“Cotton Candy” by Insane Clown Posse

Here’s where it gets embarrassing. In high school, I was a juggalo. An ICP fanatic. So were my best friends, Julie and Heather. In fact, I bought Heather a bunch of 2-liters of Faygo so we could have a Faygo fight at her birthday party. Not all the guests were as enthusiastic about it as her and I. There was a kitty pool and some wrestling involved.

Some of you have no idea what I’m talking about. You’re thinking, “What’s Faygo?”

Count yourself lucky. Nana always had Faygo, Dr Pepper, and Coca-Cola in her fridge, which was confusing (why so many choices?), and also why I was hyperactive while visiting.

I don’t care what anyone says. I still find the Tunnel of Love EP to be a masterpiece. And this bouncy cunnilingus anthem has a special place in my heart.

“I Sit on Acid” by Lords of Acid

I loved dancing to Lords of Acid as a stripper. Naughty lyrics set to house music is what they do. I’m not embarrassed to like this iconic tune, but it isn’t one I can play in mixed company. The only lyrics in the entire song:

“Sit on your face. I wanna sit on your face.”

“Dick in the Air” by Peaches

I adore Peaches. She makes feel-good music for bad girls, and she was always on my set lists in my stripper days.

The video is as humorous as the song. She got the legendary Margaret Cho to wear a dick!

Fun fact: I used to do stand-up comedy. It was only for a little while, but I never bombed. I grew bored of it. It isn’t a challenge for me to make (most) people laugh. A woman approached me on Facebook about possibly joining her female comedy troupe. I invited her to one of my performances. Afterwards, she said it was too raunchy. I think she was trying to get all-ages gigs, whereas I wanted to perform in bars for the thrill of it.

This is another song I can’t play in mixed company. But I just know I’d get along with Peaches and Margaret.

“Sex Shooter” by Apollonia 6

This song was written by Prince. My mother is the biggest Prince fan you could ever meet. I was raised on his discography, which maybe explains a lot about me—my love of the color purple, and the way I’m both shamelessly sexual and deeply spiritual. My first concert was seeing Prince at the state fair with my mom when I was 4 years old. It’s kinda funny how I ended up living in Minneapolis, his city.

I wish I could perform this song with two other women, all of us in lingerie. I wanna be Apollonia 6. Yet, those synthesizers are kinda embarrassing. It’s like my love of the movie Labyrinth. You just had to be there. You had to be an 80’s baby to get it.

“Mary Jane” by Rick James

My mom is to blame for this one too. When she was pregnant with me, she’d press her womb against the giant speaker of her record player, playing Rick James. In her words, she wanted me “to be born funky.”

Thanks, mom.

I know Rick is just a Dave Chapelle meme to the kids these days, but he had jams. And I share his love for Mary Jane. I even wrote a limerick about her.

Hope you derived some guilty pleasure of your own from this. If not, it’s okay to laugh at me.

xo, Naomi