Guilt — yet another one of those emotions I’m incapable of feeling. The closest I’ve recently come was Beck’s summer release, “Modern Guilt,” an apocalypse-themed album sporting social and environmental awareness; but as much as I may try to mooch off of Beck’s guilt, it’s really his and not mine. The role of guilt in music preferences is a strangely large one. The existence of guilty pleasures in music implies that enjoying the sound of an artist is not sufficient justification for liking that artist. What is it that disqualifies an artist whose music we enjoy from being acceptable to like and instead invokes a feeling of guilt and shame when we listen to that favorite song in secret? Some reasons for not liking a performer despite liking his music can be classified as political preference rather than guilty-pleasure...
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