Pop Culture Petri Dish

If you want to get technical, this is Day 35 of the 30-Day Song Challenge: I fudged and neglected posting on a couple of days. And no, I don't want to go out on Toto (see previous entry). Close to this time last year, I was first discovering the joys of Cobirds Unite , the most recent solo CD by Seattle's best singer/songwriter, Rusty Willoughby . The title track, my favorite song on the album, sounds (to me, at least) like the Beatles and Neko Case waltzing through a dense forest together, under a bright but foreboding full moon. Or something like that. Gorgeous, eerie stuff; sung sublimely by Willoughby and Visqueen's Rachel Flotard.

Some of my first favorite bands as a kid were incubated in the slick waters of AM radio. Before I discovered punk and new wave at age 15 I drank as deep from the well of arena-schlock as any child of the 1970's. One of those AM-ready bands was Toto, whose big hits of the 1970's and '80's made for some reasonably tasty empty calories. One of the first LP's (vinyl, kids) that I purchased was  Hydra , the band's sophomore release in 1979. The title track's combination of pompous prog rock keyboards, unicorn-piss fantasy lyrics, arena-metal guitars, and radio-ready gloss stroked my pre-adolescent pleasure nodes. I hadn't heard this song in ages, and it did take me straight back to being 11 years old. No, it's no damned good, but it entertained the hell outta me back in the day. Toto actually made a 'video album' for  Hydra , many excerpts of which can be found on YouTube. The 'Hydra' video is really damned entertaining...

Still behind. Sorry. Took a day off yesterday from everything, including participating in this Facebook-rooted time-suck. So what to make of today's Song Challenge? Are we back in Guilty Pleasure territory? Or are we talking about a song that triggers associations with acts of guilt and sin? Or are we talking about a song that really addresses issues of guilt in an eloquent fashion? This silly challenge yields as many nuances of interpretation as Shakespeare, I tell ya. Well, I've already covered the so-called Guilty Pleasure turf (viva, Spice Girls!); and as an ex-catholic whose every breath and move induced guilt in his halcyon years (and sometimes today, for that matter), every third song I hear could probably trigger some guilt-induced association. And that's not particularly fun (though it is sort of funny). So I go for Door #3: A great song that happens to address guilt. And as a bonus, I'll throw in two great ones. The Arctic Monkeys are probably my favor...