90's Guilty Pleasures #54: Marilyn Manson "Sweet Dreams" (1996)

The late-80's had "Cure kids." The early 90's had "NIN kids." By the Spring of 1995, "Manson kids" were the new high school goth-outcasts. And this made perfect sense, since Manson was considered too dark and creepy for MTV and radio airplay at the time. Before "Sweet Dreams," it was to my understanding (as I was told by said goth-kids) that Marilyn Manson was not the name of their lead singer, but rather was the band's name, created from a combination of the names Charles Manson and Marilyn Monroe. I was told their singer's name was "Mr. Manson" and that the band included a zombie-faced heartthrob guitarist named Twiggy Ramirez. I knew all of this over a year before hearing a note of their music (with the exception of "Get Your Gunn" on the S.F.W. soundtrack which I checked out of curiosity and did not terribly impress me). However, this band clearly had world domination in mind and were VERY quick to turn their backs on the early supporters. In early 1996, their cover of "Sweet Dreams" was considered commercial enough to earn the tag "Buzz Clip," and somehow the singer's name became "Marilyn Manson," possibly because their label thought the band was more marketable this way. After the black smoke had passed, the jocks finally had their chance to tease the goth-kids for adoring a band who could produced such a terrible cover song as their breakthrough hit. 2 key elements save this song, however: #1 The guitar riff, and #2 the hypnotic, Alice Cooper-inspired vocal performance. This song was also debuted on New York's 92.3 K-Rock by Howard Stern himself, who chose this as the 1st song to air after their format flipped to modern rock in the Spring of '96.

90's Guilty Pleasures #55: Quad City DJ's "C'Mon And Ride It (The Train)" (1996)

I'm having trouble pinpointing why exactly this is a "guilty pleasure" since it seems nobody has anything really negative to say about it.. The biggest complaint I've heard is "it reminds me of middle school dances," which simply means that some may associate it with bad childhood memories... Not really a valid argument in either direction. It appears to be merely Jock Jams fluff on the surface, but there's a lot going on in "C'Mon And Ride It" that doesn't necessarily reveal itself until you listen to the individual sections that make up what really can't be described as much else besides "epic..." This is what God puts on at the party room in heaven.

Unfortunate.... The vocal version is nowhere to be found online... and the rap sections and vocal parts are so insanely key to grasp the full effect of this one... But anyway, here's the instrumental version..

90's Guilty Pleasures #56: Ben Folds Five "Brick" (1997)

The easy Elton/Joel comparisons only existed because he's a piano guy. The truth of the matter stands: Ben Folds was the only dude who knew how to do Joe Jackson just as well as Joe Jackson. Over the course of the Five's 3 albums, Ben turned out to be one of the only cases of 90's rock in which a songwriter's abilities matched his most obvious influence. For example, there's a Joe Jackson song called "Friday" that, if sung by Ben Folds, you'd never know it wasn't one of his songs. (There's another one called "It's Different For Girls" which almost surpasses this uncanny similarity.) And I think Joe Jackson was aware of this, because they collaborated when helping to put together William Shatner's last album.

So The Five's inevitable big single turned out to be "Brick," which was the song that BF5 ended up dreading. What makes "Brick" such an odd case, obviously, is the subject matter of the lyrics, which were pretty deep considering it was released as a single the same time that "Tubthumping" was the biggest song in the country. (For years I tried remembering to listen to "Brick" at 6AM on the day after Christmas, just for fun, but I ended up never being able to wake up that early, and then somewhere around December 29th I'd be like "damnit, I forgot again this year..") The fact that it was a ballad ended up turning off hard rock fans, which is why it's a guilty pleasure. Another band who suffered in a similar manner was The Verve Pipe with their one-hit "The Freshmen," which coincidentally has a similar sounding intro section to "Brick." Both were great bands who fell victim to having a sappy ballad as their one-hit-wonder. Such is life.

"Brick"


"The Freshmen"

90's Guilty Pleasures #57: Whitney Houston "I'm Your Baby Tonight" (1990)

There must have been a point before Whitney Houston's fame when she was more humble and less crazy. But by 1990, she was well past that point, having sold something like 20 million albums and being engaged to Bobby Brown. The groove of this particular song, while not especially present in any of her other hits, sounds like a fitting soundtrack for her ascent into complete insanity. Fifteen years on, our suspicions were confirmed thanks to reality TV.