You’re driving along pushing random radio buttons when you hear a song that you don’t consider particularly good yet you can’t will yourself to change the station. In fact, you find yourself turning up the volume and singing along. (In one writer’s case, the episode might sound like this: “I’m HOT BLOODED/Check it and see/I GOT A FEVER of a hundred and three . . . )
Or you’re at home flipping through your old records or CDs and you come across a song you’d never play if anyone else were at home. But no one is, so the next thing you know you’re dancing around to “Rock Me Amadeus.”
Guess what? You’ve been busted.
The question: What song are you most embarrassed to admit you like?
Here’s how some entertainment folks plead:
Kevin Spacey
Profession: Actor (“American Beauty”).
Guilty pleasure: The ’70s soft-pop geniuses behind “Baby I’m-A Want You.”
Confession: “I remember people used to make fun of me liking a band called Bread when I was in high school, and I thought Bread was a great band. And I remember friends of mine thinking that they were really sentimental, kind of sappy, and I didn’t. I thought they were great.”
Uma Thurman
Profession: Actress (“Pulp Fiction”).
Guilty pleasure: “Cold As Ice” by Foreigner.
Confession: “I’m not embarrassed at all about it, actually. I couldn’t be embarrassed about music. I love all music “the more ridiculous, the better.”
Heather Graham
Profession: Actress (“Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me”.
Guilty pleasure: “Billie Jean” by Michael Jackson.
Confession: “It’s a good song, but Michael Jackson is so weird and strange now, it sort of seems embarrassing to say you like any of his music.”
Ethan Hawke
Profession: Actor (“Snow Falling on Cedars”).
Guilty Pleasure: “Morning Train” by Sheena Easton.
Confession: “That song “My baby works from 9 to 5.’ No, the ‘Morning Train’ “(sings) ‘taking the morning train.’ I like that song.”
Johnny Rotten
Profession: Lead singer, The Sex Pistols.
Self-righteous non-confession of song he’d be embarrassed to admit he likes: “‘Crazy Horses’ by the Osmonds. Because I don’t like it, and it would be a lie, and a lie would embarrass me.”
Emily Watson
Profession: Actress (“Angela’s Ashes”).
Guilty pleasure: That ultra-popular Swedish group.
Confession: “I’m a great ABBA fan, actually. I think that’s pretty low down. ‘Fernando’ will do. Cheesiness is absolutely its greatest strength.”
David O. Russell
Profession: Film director (“Three Kings”).
Guilty pleasure: “If You Leave Me Now” by Chicago (which appears in “Three Kings”).
Confession: “When we were picking that song, we debated with the music editors which nanosecond of the song was the most identifiable [to play very briefly out of a car stereo]. At one point we had ‘If you le-.”‘ (They opted for the falsetto “Oooh ooo.”)
Taye Diggs
Profession: Actor (“The Best Man”).
Guilty pleasure: “Everybody (Backstreet’s Back)” from the Backstreet Boys.
Confession: “What’s the name of that song? (sings) ‘Everybody, rock your body.’ I find the Backstreet Boys to be very entertaining, which some people would find embarrassing to say.”
Frances O’Connor
Profession: Actress (“Mansfield Park”).
Guilty pleasure: A particularly chirpy love duet of the ’70s.
Confession: “I just listened to that song — it’s actually a really good song — with Elton John and Kiki Dee, ‘Don’t Go Breaking My Heart.’ That’s such a good song. Such a good song. I remember sitting in my lounge room watching that as a kid.”
Robbie Fulks
Profession: Singer-songwriter of twisted country-folk-rock amalgam.
Guilty pleasure: The singer who proclaimed “Man, I Feel Like a Woman!” among others.
Confession: “I know a 36-year-old man should be embarrassed to enjoy Shania Twain, Indigo Girls and Rik Emmett, but after you spend your high school years listening to bluegrass, you get pretty well inoculated against all sorts of pillorying and public disapproval.”
Dennis DeYoung
Profession: Singer/song-writer, Styx; musical-theater composer (“The Hunchback of Notre Dame”).
Guilty pleasure: “It’s a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood,” the theme song from “Mister Rogers’ Neighbor-hood.”
Confession: “When my kids were growing up, I used to sing it to them all the time, and I thought the message that the guy had to give kids was an important one about [how] there was nobody else in the world quite like them and they were special … Secondly, ‘Der Kommissar.’ I love that song. Either by Falco or those other guys [After the Fire]. It’s just funky, you know? But I wouldn’t be embarrassed to say I liked anything. If I like it, I like it. I really don’t care that much about what other people think.”
Steven Soderbergh
Profession: Film director (“Erin Brockovich”).
Guilty pleasure: The New Wave band with the best hair.
Confession: “You know what I am? I’m a closet Duran Duran fan, so there’s lots of material there. When we were shooting ‘Out of Sight’ in Detroit, they played in the State Theater where we were shooting, and I went with one of my producers, and she looked at me during the concert with such horror. She said, ‘You are having way too much fun. You’re scaring me.’ ‘Save a Prayer’ is such a young teenage girl song that I think if I was going to put myself on the line, I’d have to pick that one.”
Anthony Minghella
Profession: Film director (“The Talented Mr. Ripley).
Guilty pleasure: “Sun Arise” by Rolf Harris.
Confession: “Rolf Harris is a middle-of-the-road Australian crooner. He sang also ‘Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport’ — remember that one? They’re appalling, appalling songs, and ‘Sun Arise’ is one of my favorite songs ever. I am determined to rerecord it and put it in a movie. It’s an aboriginal song that he turned into a sort of five-and-dime hit.”
Paul Thomas Anderson
Profession: Film director (“Magnolia”).
Guilty pleasure: “American Pie” by Don McLean.
Confession: “I don’t know really if that’s a good song or not. I really can’t figure it out. Is that supposed to be a good song? It’s so long. It is something like six minutes long. It just goes on forever, and every time I hear it, it just cracks me up, and I love it, and I sing along, but I don’t know whether it’s good.”
Nathan Lane
Profession: Actor-singer (“The Birdcage”).
Guilty pleasure: “Shake Your Bon-Bon” by Ricky Martin.
Confession: “Yes, I have to admit I like ‘Shake Your Bon-Bon,’ and there’s a certain amount of shame.” (His answer followed the whispered suggestion by the woman sitting next to him at the Sundance Film Festival that he choose “Hakuna Matata,” which he sang in “The Lion King.” His response to her: “No, I actually don’t like ‘Hakuna Matata.’ “)
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What song are you most embarrassed to admit you like?
E-mail your answers to ctc-arts@tribune.com or mail them to Guilty Pleasures, Arts & Entertainment, Chicago Tribune, 435 N. Michigan Ave., Chicago, IL 60611.
