As a rule, I don’t like the category “guilty pleasure” when it’s applied to music. You like the songs you like. No harm, no foul
Most of the time, when asked to report their “guilty” music pleasures, people tend to pick from artists like ABBA or Neil Diamond or Boyz II Men— all of whom I love, by the way– but what they really mean is not that they feel guilty listening to these artists, but rather that they feel a little embarrassed admitting their pleasure to you. I don’t feel guilty admitting to you the immense pleasure I experience when listening to the songs of many artists who are widely (and, for the most part, rightly) judged to be cheesy, corny, overproduced or under-talented. In fact, today marks my 103rd post in the four years I’ve been doing this Song Challenge. I’m positive there are a number of selections among those songs about which I ought to feel some embarrassment and/or guilt. Alas, taste is a funny thing.
My guilty pleasure is 50 Cent‘s “Candyshop.” Here it is:
I’m guessing that most people who only “know” me through this blog would be surprised to learn that I love 50 Cent. I pretty regularly sing the praises of roots music (country, blues, rock-n-roll) here, but don’t often enough write about the rap and hip-hop artists that I also love. But even if you may have guessed that I like rap and hip-hop, and even if you guessed that I like 50 Cent, I’m still betting you didn’t guess that “Candyshop” was something I’d like.
Here’s why I may feel a tad “guilty” about loving “Candyshop” in particular.. First, it could be heard as more than a little sexist. The video doesn’t help that much, being set in what looks to be a modern-day brothel and suggesting that the ladies are the “candy” in that “candyshop.” Everyone is being objectified in this song– Olivia certainly is meant to be the candy, but 50 pretty much reduces himself to a lollipop– but we all know that all sexual objectification is not equal.
Second, it’s a pretty straightforwardly raunchy song. Like, awesomely, bawdily, even nastily so. I mean, sure, there’s the whole extended metaphor of the “candyshop” (and 50’s “lollipop”), but when he says “if you be a nympho, I be a nympho“– well, I think at that point the metaphor gets dropped as fast as 50 and Olivia’s pants. (“Soon as I come through the door she get to pulling on my zipper / It’s like a race who can get undressed quicker.”) Now, there’s a lot of R&B music that I love that is equally lascivious, but it tends to present its content under a slight cover… with the obvious exception of Marvin Gaye’s “Let’s Get It On” or “Sexual Healing,” that is. If you were of the opinion that I don’t like these songs, you were just wrong. But, yeah, they’re guilty-ish pleasures, for sure.
Finally, 50 Cent has a well-documented reputation for being violent and misogynistic and homophobic, and I do feel legitimately guilty about that. I don’t particularly like the also-offensive (for different reasons) Toby Keith, either, though I like his music. And my favorite artist of all time, Johnny Cash, was no angel. Hell, I even like a couple of Stanley Kubrick‘s and Lars von Trier‘s films… so I know how to separate the art from the artist.
Anyway, I love “Candyshop.” Sue me.
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