Starship sucks?

I always knew that night nearly 20 years ago would come back to bite me in the ass.\n I was 12 or 13. It was my first rock concert. (In the interest of full and preemptive disclosure, my first concert of any genre came when I was maybe six. My dad took me to see John Denver. Hey, so I liked "Sunshine on My Shoulders." A reminder: I was six.)\nMy mother and I stood under the shell at the Finger Lakes Community College amphitheater, the rain pelting the unfortunate hundreds who bought lawn seats. On stage a visibly aged Grace Slick was belting out "White Rabbit," and I was getting bored. I turned to my mom, who was enjoying the flash from the past. "What the heck is this?," I asked her. "I wanna hear 'We Built This City.' Now."\nStarship did, in fact, end up playing "We Built This City" that night. How could they not? It was a huge hit for a band that had completely morphed from counter-culture pioneer to corporate sell-out par excellence. But in my youth, I had no way of knowing that Starship fandom was decidedly un-cool.\nOf course, I am now well aware of that today. And, thanks to Blender, I was recently and painfully reminded of it when the magazine placed "We Built This City" at the top of its list of the 50 Most Awesomely Bad Songs … Ever. And thus am I now swimming in musical guilt: I was a Starship fan. It is my albatross. Forever will I be branded a weiner.\nBut the truth is that I have always been burdened by guilt. That's because I persist in liking stuff I know full well I shouldn't. I outgrew Starship, but there are other equally tacky acts that I still cling to with an unnerving persistence. As you read on, I beg you to bestow on me pity:\nRick Springfield -- May I be forgiven on Judgment Day, but I love Working Class Dog. I love "Jessie's Girl." I love "I've Done Everything for You." I love that cute little dog in the shirt and tie on the cover. And if I was gay, Rick would be near the top of the list.\nTwisted Sister -- In seventh grade, the video for "We're Not Gonna Take It" was somewhat of a turning point in my young life. I was instantly captivated by the hard-rock riffs and Dee Snider's howling vocals, and for the next five years I would be a dedicated metalhead. (Well, I was more like a dork trying to be a metalhead -- I wore the black T-shirts and untied high-tops but was scared shitless of the true headbangers who smoked in the bathroom, wore smelly jean jackets with Corrosion of Conformity back patches and had hair down to their asses.) These days I have come back to TS's Stay Hungry, which, despite (or perhaps because of) its cheesiness, remains a classic. The power of camp cannot be underestimated. \nThriller -- It's unclear at this point whether we can still like Michael Jackson without going to Hell. \n"Sugar, Sugar" -- In 1967 and '68, media mogul Don Kirshner, the "mastermind" behind the Monkees, brought together a group of unknown studio musicians to put voice and instrument to a TV cartoon based on the popular Archie comic books. In 1969, this "band," dubbed (surprise!) the Archies, hit No. 1 for four weeks with "Sugar, Sugar," which went on to become Billboard's top single of the year. No, not the Beatles, not the Temptations, not the Stones … the frickin' Archies. The song was pure bubblegum-pop dreck. And it was totally awesome.\nEmerson, Lake and Palmer -- In high school, I was a huge fan of prog, as in progressive rock, as in boring, 20-minute songs replete with keyboard solos and needlessly cryptic lyrics, as in the unholy union of classical music and hard rock, perpetrated largely by nerdy British men with bell-bottoms and bad teeth. Perhaps the guiltiest of the bunch was ELP, a trio that produced bombastic, pretentious sludge for decades: "Welcome back my friends to the album that never ends." But even today, I still love ELP, even though I'm not even sure why (although I suspect it has something to do with a blow to the head).\nScreamin' Jay Hawkins -- I'm not embarrassed by the fact that I like "I Put a Spell on You." I'm embarrassed by the fact that I cannot stop listening to it. I play it an average of three times a day. It's become a routine part of my life, like eating ravioli right out of the can and picking my navel. I'm sure such an addiction to the true originator of shock rock is unhealthy, if not immoral.\nI have unburdened my soul. I urge you to do the same: take stock of your musical guilty pleasures and come to terms with them. If that process requires intensive psychotherapy (as it did with me), then bite the bullet and plunge ahead. You'll feel better. I swear.