Thirty Days of Music- Part XIII

When I was very little my daddy owned a mustard yellow Volvo 240. An elongated, boxy lemon affectionately referred to as the Custard Carton*, being a passenger in this veritable behemoth of an automobile partly conjured notions of being in a limousine, and partly conjured notions of being in the hearse from "Harold and Maude". I loved it. I loved the dusty walnut dash, and the beige waffle-print seats and the fact it smelled like antiseptic hand gel and old newspapers** Being able to sit in the front seat was also the greatest of privileges, because it meant you got to pick which cassettes were played in the tape deck.

I like to think I absolved myself from any musical snobbery a couple of years ago when I realised that music was becoming throwaway to me, and I was devouring one song for each of the forty bands I listened to every day for the soul-destroying purpose of being able to cite indie bands that were yet to be conceived as my Myspace musical preferences. My relationships with bands had no longevity; it was perfunctory, sans courtship. Romance was well and truly dead. After a while I thought it best that music and I got to know each other a little better, and in my attempts to eradicate any sense of elitism, subscribed to the Hank Williams School of Equality: our motto is "a good song is a good song". As a result, I thought it would be impossible for me to write about a song I regard as a "guilty pleasure". In the Hank Williams School, there are no guilty pleasures.

Then I remembered the last tape I'd played in the Custard Carton. I remember specifically it was the last cassette, because it become lodged in the tape deck and we were never able to eject it again. Years later, my daddy and I took a roadtrip to Oxford, where I went to a piano recital in a church because nobody would take me the pub, and made friends with a Scottish Big Issue vendor who called me "darlin'" and made me melt. On the way there, I decided to turn on the radio and was greeted by one of the songs that held my childhood together at the seams.

Even though I know this is terrible manufactured bubblegum Eurotrash, I cannot help but still love this song.
Day thirteen is a song that is a guilty pleasure. Please spend five minutes watching the hilarious music video. It's entirely worth it

If I still had a Myspace, my number one band would be a Danish outfit with a penchant for puns***, the sexualisation of plastic dolls and grandiose, flourishing Disney dance pop. In an entirely non-ironic way.






* I'm personally very pleased about the fact I've used three different descriptive tones for the colour yellow in two sentences.

** My daddy has OCD, and, consequently, an enveloping phobia of germs of all descriptions. Incidentally, he's also a hoarder. E! True Hollywood Story to follow

*** Album names include "Aquarius" and "Aquarium". Inventive