We all have our guilty pleasures, but some of the albums I've bought with my own money are downright embarrassing, especially now that I can buy them online. Gone are the days of avoiding eye contact with record store cashiers!
I have purchased too many embarrassing albums to mention over the y
ears, but I'll share one that might be the worst. I not only own but know every word of every song on the Grease 2 soundtrack.
“Score Tonight.” “Girl for All Seasons.” “Do it For Our Country.” Yep, I love them all. Dennis Linde of “Goodbye Earl” fame penned quite a few of the doozies on this one, including “Cool Rider” and “Reproduction.”
What's the most embarrassing album you've ever owned?
Pokemon Christmas Bash.
No contest.
…And I bought it last year.
Well, I think my reveal will be even more embarrassing than yours, Kevin. It’s funny because I was just thinking about this topic this afternoon when I was ripping music to my computer from some hard copy CDs of mine.
Mine is Country Goes Raffi. When I was a kid, I was obsessed with Raffi. SO, I was a bit ridiculously excited when I found that country singers had adapted Raffi songs…You know, the convergence of my old music obsession with my current music obsession?
There are definitely a lot of songs that I’d never put on my mp3 player, but I’m not embarrassed to like Raul Malo’s version of “Thanks A Lot” and Alison Krauss’ version of “Blessed Be.” I am, however, a bit embarrassed that I kind of enjoy Keith Urban’s version of “Apples And Bannannas.”
Seriously, if Kevin and I can admit these two albums, you guys won’t have anything to worry about.:)
Oh god! I have early Hilary Duff albums, luckily I have a little sister so I gave it to her as I realized how bad they were, and I believe it was her first album and some Lizzie McGuire thing haha, really embarrassing.
Oh and there’s that Ashlee Simpson debut album that I had bought. Watching her reality show made me sympathized but after growing up more I now shake my head in shame, and well just hide all those bad ones in my sister’s room.
Okay, I was writing my post before I read Dan’s…!:)
I swear, this’ll be the most hillarious topic!
Yeah. This topic’s going to rule.
Dan, I still don’t know if I believe you on yours.:)
I wish I were making it up. I still find the old Pokemon stuff absolutely delightful, though I haven’t played the games or watched the show in years (the new ones are just weird – not that anyone here wants to hear that rant!)
And Kevin, I’m a big closet fan of Grease 2 as well. Seriously, I could play this game all day! But enough of me.
The most embarrassing albums I own(ed) are all those hair metal albums that came out after grunge killed the spandex boys’ paychecks, but I was still rocking the mullet and hanging on to the glory days of Aquanet and debauchery. I eventually moved on, though I still have a warm place in my heart for many of those old neon glow bands. So anyway, some of the embarrassing tapes/CDs from my collection past:
Winger – Pull
Danger Danger – Screw It
White Lion – Mane Affair (get it, “mane” yuk yuk)
Warrant – Dog Eat Dog
Relics from the days when I belonged to a CD club and didn’t get the cards mailed back in time – ABBA Greatest Hits V1 & V2 . Complete dreck
One of my first cassette tapes was New Kids on the Block. Is that embarrassing enough?
hahaha ditto to the guy who said “hilary duff”. and “lindsay lohan”. they were my early celebrity crushes. hahaha then i moved onto kellie pickler and taylor swift lol.
Non Country – Pokemon’s first Movie Soundtrack, even though there is one song I do like and another one is done by one of my favorite actresses, Billie Piper.
Country – Horse of a Different Color, Big & Rich
Don’t get me wrong, I like this album, but songs like Kick My Ass, Real World (Which I deleted from my Ipod) and the stuff after Live This Life are embarassing. Yeah I know Big and Rich wanted to be fun and funny, but after hearing it maybe 3 or 5 times, it’s not funny anymore.
I forgot to mention I was a big fan of Backstreet Boys and N’Sync when they first came out and bought Millennium and No Strings Attached. However, there are some songs on both albums that are worth listening to but I really haven’t listened to those albums in a long time.
I have 3LW’s debut album. I wonder what happened to them.
I was a child of the 90s- a very tragic era for dance music.
La Bouche- Sweet Dreams
Madison Avenue
Girlfriend- It’s Up To You (the best girl band before the Spice Girls!)
Celine Dion- Falling Into You
Shaggy- It Wasn’t me
I also have a VHS tape of Spiceworld- The Spice Girls movie, which I’ve watched about 300 times and can recite every word from. I believe I also owned every outfit from the movie, including those platform shoes…. wow.
N’Sync’s No Strings Attached was probably the worst one I ever owned. BBmak’s Sooner or Later was another embarrassing one though.
Rascal Flatts Melt and Jeff Foxworthy More Redneck Jokes.
Spice Girls — Spice Up Your Life.
It’s only embarrassing because I still listen to it sometimes!
Cowboy Troy — Loco Motive
I feel like I’m at a country music Twelve Step group. ;-)
Right off the top of my head this morning I would probably have to admit to …. and as much as y’all have heard me sing the praises of Fleetwood Mac…. I have to admit to a Mick Fleetwood’s Zoo cd. It so desperately wants to “rock” that the funk (and not a good funk) of hair-metal overtakes.
It reminds of me of when all that ’80’ hair-metal stuff was so popular THAT’S when I discovered country music and the nice, clean-cut young man named Randy Travis. :-)
jim i can one up you on the spice girls…not only do I have it, but I have several of the songs on my exercise playlist (that is used daily)
i found an LFO cd, that i am truly embarressed to own
Paul –
I’m calling foul on your Abba selections, because you didn’t intend to buy them!
I have an affinity for Abba for a personal reason. My grandfather was from Sweden, and he used to play tapes of Abba all the time when I was a child. That was his way of showing pride in his country! I associate their songs with him, along with three other things: Andes Mints, checkers and the Verrazzano Bridge.
Well, I have an ABBA Greatest Hits. I like them okay, but I really bought it out of nestalgia because my dad played them all the time when we were growing up.
I got lucky with New Kids On the Block because one of my sisters loved them, but I was fortunate enough to have thought they were horrible, especially that guy who’d tried to reach notes comparable to Mariah Carey. So, I don’t have to admit to liking them today.
I did, however, own a Back Street Boys CD when I was a teen….and not even ‘N sync, because I thought BSB was better. How lame is that?:( Timberlake’s laughing all the way to the bank.
En Vouge and Tiffany — back from the days prior to listening to country — but hey I still listen on occasion —
Well, I bought an I-pod off of a friend, and he was cool enough to leave it loaded with all his songs, so that I could pick and choose what I wanted to keep. I have never dumped many songs, only because I am lazy. I have just added my own stuff on top. Now there are sometimes in the car, with the pod on shuffle, where a gangsta rap song will be sandwiched between Olivia Newton John and Madonna. Not necessarily embarassing, but certainly amusing for the looks I get.
None of my responses to this fall under country… but they’re worth mentioning
Bobby Brown – My Perogative
Vanilla Ice
A full onslaught of Aqua and S Club 7 albums ($1/ea new on ebay!)
Wow. 29 comments and I get to be the first to say ‘In the Life of Chris Gaines’.
J.R., I’m a fan of Garth, and not even I went that far… :P
I recall old cassettes of Debbie Gibson, “Cocktail” (old Tom Cruise movie), Boyz II Men, Mighty Ducks (old Disney movie)…
My worst offense, however, is probably a Tom Jones CD. I lived and studied in Spain for a year and the most popular song in the country that year was “Sex Bomb.” No joke. I heard it about 20 times a day, and so when I got home – out of nostalgia (and that’s my defense!) – I bought the CD.
And Leeann…Backstreet Boys were much better than N’Sync. No contest. :)
@Lynn: Cocktail is still a fine album. One of the best soundtracks ever.
@Carson: if Hilary Duff was an “early celebrity crush” you’re what… 14? :P
I don’t feel guilty about any of my pleasures.
I once owned In The Life of Chris Gaines. I thought, “Oh, it can’t be that bad.” Boy, was I wrong! I’m pretty sure I flipped through it once and promptly tossed it in the trash can.
I might be the only one but I didn’t think “Chris Gaines” was all that terrible. That might be mine along with a Chicago Bulls Greatest Hits album from the mid 90’s.
I sort of liked some of the Chris Gaines stuff (though not enough to actually buy it). He picked some okay songs, like Gordon Kennedy and Phil Madeira’s “Maybe” (though Alison Krauss did a far better version on Forget About It earlier that same year), and it’s fun to sing along to all the falsetto stuff on “Lost In You.”
No! Mike and Dan Ms, take it back!:)
Chris N, I think your latest song on your myspace may be a guilty pleasure.:)
I’ve done “Lost in You”, in key, at karaoke before. Afterwards, one of my friends asked me when my … um, “cajones” were finally going to drop.
<>
If I may step outside the topic for just a moment.
Being that “Saturday Night Fever” is one of my all-time fave movies, I have to ask Kevin….
What are the six degrees of separation between ABBA -> the Verrazzano Bridge in Brooklyn? :-)
Leeann, I could never bring myself to throw a perfectly good CD away, no matter how bad it was. I could always find somebody willing to listen to it. But I found no takers for my ‘Christ Gaines’ CD. And you have to kinda have it to say ‘I have the complete Garth Brooks collection’. The same went for Savage Garden. Nobody would take them and I just can’t throw them away (it’s these damn Midwestern values), so they collect dust in the bottom of a trunk.
It’s funny because I owned a lot of the stuff mentioned above too – but found takers for them. Some other stuff I’ve bought and kept, bad as they may be are The Wikinsons first 2 CDs – ‘Nothing But Love’ and ‘Here And Now’. I still pull out “Here And Now’ once in a while – but not when anybody else is around. Oh and I have a David Kersh CD that I bought at a concert (he opened for Brooks & Dunn and Reba) that is completely terrible, but it reminds me of that time in my life, so I listen to it sometimes – alone too of course.
What’s the shame in liking the Wilkinsons? Tehy’re hardly as banal as BSB or N’Sync or ABBA
NKOTB > BSB or NSync :)
Yeah, I usually don’t throw CDs away, but I was absolutely sure no one would take the Chris Gaines album from me, though it seems that Dan may have taken a free copy of it if it was offered.:)
I, too, have a David Kirsh album! I’m not proud of it though. But I still like “Day In, Day out”, I’ll admit.
Hey, I liked the Wilkinsons — back in my early country days and I even think I have one of their CD’s in depths of my collection —
“Let’s Talk Dirty In Hawaiian” by Petty Booka. Two ukelele playing Japanese girls singing cover versions of some fine songs in broken English that is surreal its so odd. I lay the blame at the feet of a Scottish BBC DJ that put me onto these two…..
“The Future Is Unknown” and “Target Practice” by Unknown Hinson. Most normal people would not go around admitting they are fans of the rockabilly vampire Unknown Hinson unless they are also fans of “Squidbillies”. Definitely an embarrassing guilty pleasure…
Regarding David Kersh, any guy that can land a doll like Kerry Harvick must be doing something right…..
Kevin – I didn’t intend to buy the ABBA stuff but I didn’t return it and I have yet to trade it in, so it’s still stinking up my CD shelves. Of stuff I did buy, THE SESAME STREET ALBUM. I’m 14 years older than my brother and when he was 4 he’d listen to it for hours (it kept him out of my hair)