Guilty Pleasures

My two most recent CD purchases: Nelly Furtado, Loose and Madonna, Confessions On A Dance Floor. Had you told me when I was a teenager that someday I would pay money for Madonna's music, you would have given me a good laugh. Had you told me when I was in university that I would someday pay money for Nelly Furtado's, you would have earned my scorn. Times change.

Nelly Furtado actually started to grow on me with a couple of songs, "Explode" and "Forza," from her previous album. Lately if you turn on the radio for five seconds you'll hear "Maneater," which thumped its way into my head so steadily that I either had to start liking it or get a labotomy. Prior to that, "Promiscuous" was a big hit, and I didn't mind it. But just the other day I heard the third single "Say It Right" for the first time---on CBC, of all things---and that sold me. "Say It Right" is a really good tune: catchy rhythm and beat, Nelly's voice is at its best, and lyrically the song has a bit more angst and art in it than a lot of her stuff. This is the same reason I like "Explode." So I bought Loose, and it's okay. My opinion of the songs I knew hasn't changed, and I advance it to "Say It Right" a lot. The rest of it is hit and miss. She has collaborated with Timbaland and some other hip hop guys, and this means that the CD has those between-track interludes and chatter that you frequently get on hip hop albums, and are mostly fantastically annoying. All in all, some good songs mixed in with some bad ones. I've had worse returns on CD investments.

Madonna...oh Madge, you old slut, always changing your music to fit whatever is trendy. I guess I might get some kind of kitchy pleasure out of her tunes from the 80s, but I'm in no hurry to snap up the Madonna discography. However, a few months ago I downloaded "Hung Up" and "Sorry," because I heard them on the radio and they were just so bloody catchy. Since then, every time I've entered the CD store, she's been there, taunting me in her leotards on the cover of Confessions, saying "Look at how ridiculous I am. I'm fifty. You know you want to buy this CD." And Friday I gave in. Well, actually I made Shauna buy it for me, cause I was just that embarrassed.

And she's probably regretting indulging my weakness, because I've been listening to it over and over ever since. In fact just now she's fleed to the bathroom and turned on Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young, as if to cleanse herself. Anyway, the two singles give you a good idea of what Confessions is like---beat driven dance music that will get tons of play in clubs. It's bumpin'. I challenge even the most anti-techno/dance types out there to listen to it and try to stop themselves from nodding along to the beat. And maybe chair-dancing a little. Every song is groovy and catchy, but never manages to cross that good/cheap techno line by devolving into nothing but a bass, drum and high-hat beat like the trash you tend to hear at hockey games. Lyrically, it also stays on the good side of the line by not being moronic. So much of the wide genre of techno has no lyrical thought behind it whatsoever---I'm thinking of that awful hit that once followed me around Ireland, "Put yer hands up in de air/Put yer hands up in de air."
The songs on Confessions are more subtly produced and layered, and while I wouldn't suggest Madonna should publish her lyrics as poetry, they're a lot better than what's found in most pop tunes. With one exception: musically, "I Love New York" is as creative as anything else on the album, but lyrically it's a bit of a laugh, opening with "I don't like cities/But I like New York/Other places make me feel like a dork." Goodness.

Guilty pleasures, Nelly and Madonna both. They are not the first to fall into this category---I am a proud...well, semi-unashamed...owner of Kylie Minogue's Fever. I've revealed my musical weaknesses. Time to restore my manliness with something nasty, like Queens of the Stone Age. Or something light years from mainstream, like...oh geez, I don't even know what the cool cats listen to these days.

La la la
La la la-lala
I just can't get you outta my head...