By Stefano Blanca Sciacaluga

I’m a very indecisive person, I'll think things through a thousand times, but if there’s one thing I’m always sure of and confident about is my choices, in the things I like. I’m not ashamed to admit there are some things that I like and in much the same way I am very confident in saying there are other things I don’t like at all. And of course I’m definitely very, very open to having people convince me otherwise. I’m like this with a lot of things but none as much as with music; I’ll listen to everything, I’ll give everything a shot but I know very clearly what I like and what I don’t like. Which is nice, especially when I’m so indecisive about so many other things (like food).

I reckon I've always been this way with music, at times to my detriment. Like the time I told a cousin of mine the music he listened to sucked (not only because it truly sucked but also because I was in this dumb teenage "rock music is the only music" phase). But it was at that moment, and watching him go from happy, to shocked, to a little upset that I realised that if I truly wanted to understand music I would have to listen to it all. The phase lasted a few more years, until my late teens, when I started to realise that I wasn't only listening to music made by long haired manly men but ol' blue eyes was also making me feel some type of way. I really didn't know how I would break it to my peers, to the people I was listening to all these bands with and playing music with. So in the best way I knew I put it off and kept it pretty well hidden until the day I found out you could justify it all by calling them 'guilty pleasures'. Suddenly I was all about the guilty pleasures, this was the best thing ever; I was gaining pleasure from listening to things that were out of the ordinary for whatever the hell I was trying to be and only feeling a little bit guilty. Don't judge me!

                    Dave Ghrol agrees

Soon enough my iPod was filled with all sorts of things and I started to realise that I wasn't the only one that thought Destiny's Child's Survivor was an absolute tune. Straight in my basket it went; or should I say Spotify playlist. It was sometime in the spring of 2011, on a hungover afternoon that I realised my roommate and I were both secretly loving all these tunes, so we decided to make a playlist (that I still have and you can listen to here) called 20th Century Classics, with everything that we had considered guilty pleasures and were now singing along to, guilt free. It was liberating. I started listening to a lot more diverse music all of a sudden, taking everything in. I even started listening to the radio, from nine in the morning to way into the night; the guilt was lifted and it was pure auditory pleasure, I was even learning all these songs on ukulele and guitar.

Just a couple of nights ago I was reading an interview with the singer in the pop-rock band Best Coast, where she said what I've been thinking ever since we started creating that playlist, that day, "I don't have guilty pleasures; they're just pleasures". Because I love the Biebs and Zayn's new song (anybody got some mash?), and whenever someone like Beyoncé comes on I'm all 'yaaas!'. Which is exactly the same reaction I have with Moby, or Iron Maiden, or when I hear Cartoons (no, I might have that single they put out, somewhere, but I'm just kidding, they're not yaaas worthy at all). But the fact of the matter is it’s great to look beyond that whole notion of ‘guilty pleasures’ and be confident about choices; who cares if you're wearing a Soundgarden t-shirt and sing along to Tay Swizzle's new single in the office? As long as it's in key you're cool with me, and if we can harmonise, all the better.

 It doesn't matter if you're black or white

{fcomment}