Guilty Pleasures. The syndrome, as a whole, can and should be erased. Making references to, or believing in “guilty pleasures” is not an incurable social or pop-cultural blight, nor are we all “guilty” of it. “Liking something you should not” is counterintuitive to music love and research, and has been a reliable crutch since music criticism became saturated with indie rock and post-indie rock music geeks (essentially late-80’s until today). Music critics from the 1970’s did not feel the need to apologize for what they liked. The fear and self-referential, defensive babble that might precede a statement like “The Little River Band wrote some songs that were catchier than the Beach Boys” proves a bigger insincerity, a real personality flaw. If you like it, you like it, if you derive real pleasure from it, guilt is evidence of a dishonesty with one’s self. Also, the guilty pleasure syndrome provides an easy route to pedestrian humor for writers or conversationalists. Differing from the practice of simply laughing at bad art, it is bolstered by the sturdy backbone of self-deprecation. With music, it is the equivalent of droning, “You know what, I saw that movie in the theater.” To exemplify the flimsiness of guilty pleasure status, look no further than the genres of music that were once labeled as such, then went on to become very hip and accepted, such as metal (usually “hair”) and new wave, two past genres that traveled from “guilty pleasure” to underground credibility, and then on to relative mainstream success (in a retro-savvy fashion).