My entire life is mapped out and plagued from memories tied to certain bands and particular records. There are few moments in my young life that I can’t identify (or label) with records or bands. Which is why, no matter how much artist changes, good or bad, usually bad, I cannot stop being a fan.

I’ve tried. Really, I have. There are some bands who continuously get worse, yet I still listen because well, I loved it once. I’m not like most people. I don’t just listen to music, I have passionate love affairs with my record collection. Weird? Maybe a little, but I’m kind of obsessive.

As I grow older, the music I loved in all the different phases of growing up, still sounds wonderful to me. Even when I know better. An old record is like an old photograph. It tells a million little stories that no one other than myself and those from the past can hear (or see).

Taking Back Sunday’s Tell All Your Friends got me through a fair portion of high school and yet, as I listened to it the other evening, I realized how generic the lyrics were, how simple the actual music was, how hilarious my young self must have been to identify with this. Yet”¦I still sang along and it felt right. I remember the long dark drives on country roads, feeling lost, feeling as if I belonged, the general feeling of feeling.

I’m much older now, but the memories and time frame attached to this record are poignant. Taking Back Sunday has evolved and released three records since this one, and I’ve bought and loved two of them. If asked my top favorite records TAYF would most definitely make that list. But not because it’s particularly great, but just because of the memories.

This happens often. I have personal debates. Is this record actually any good? Could I love it if it were just released today? What are these memories with out the soundtrack?

I cannot fully answer any of these questions, but I’m fairly certain, that bands like Thursday, Taking Back Sunday, Spice Girls, Senses Fail, Brand New, and From Autumn to Ashes, could never have worked in another time. These bands aren’t meant to be classics, these bands were meant for the here and the now and that’s why it worked.

The music is good in its own right, but my personal experiences and childlike fondness morphs these bands into so much more. They will always be a part of me like they’ll always be a part of music history. And who can argue with that?

I have always disliked the term ‘guilty pleasure’. I never fully grasped the concept. If you like something YOU LIKE SOMETHING. Who cares if it’s something no self-respecting person should listen to? You like it for some reason”¦even if that reason is completely invalid.

The Internet defines guilty pleasure as, “Something that brings pleasure but is considered taboo, unadvisable or lowbrow”. That or an Ashley Tisdale record. (Who?/Exactly.)

When thinking of guilty pleasures, my mind automatically jumps to the soundtrack of my swing set. (I love swing sets because I’m a pre-schooler.) I do not, under any circumstances swing to good music. I pick the worst of the worst. Though I enjoy it just as much if not more than some of my favorite music.

I cannot explain the attraction of the crappy music I listen to and in other circumstances, I would never dream of listening to. Almost daily, I find myself on the swings, listening to Destiny Child’s, Fergie, Panic! At the Disco and Mest.

Yes, I know every single word to Fergie’s The Dutchess and yes, I’m more than a little ashamed to write that sentence. Yet it’s true and hilarious.

Is it really a guilty pleasure if I’m willing to admit it? I’d like to think so. I have tried listening to these artists when not in motion and it’s not the same. In fact, I cannot handle it otherwise.

The strangest part is, I was never into these artists. I always imagined guilty pleasures were developed after someone was too old to listen to a particular genre or artist. This is rarely the case for me, so where does this leave me? I suppose, it simply means I notso secretly have bad taste.

When I listen to the Spice Girls and Backstreet Boys, I can explain that. Those artists remind me of a wonderfully innocent and simple time in my life. For that, I will never stop.

Everyone has a guilty pleasure to some degree. But with me, I’m not entirely ashamed of any of it. It’s a part of me just as much as the “real” music I listen to. It’s time I came clean.

Do you have any guilty pleasures?

Soundtrack in Motion:
Destiny’s Child – Lose My Breath/Say My Name/Jumpin’ Jumpin’
Kelly Clarkson – Since U Been Gone
Justin Timberlake – Cry Me a River
Amy Winehouse – You Know I’m Know Good
Usher – Burn/Yeah!
Spice Girls – Stop/Spice Up Your Life
Backstreet Boys – As Long As You Love Me
Panic! At the Disco – But It’s Better If You Do
Britney Spears – Outrageous/Stronger

“¦I can say no more without losing my dignity.

My musical evolution has grown as much as I have and so has the form of media — from cassette tapes, to CD’s, to mp3’s….to…vinyl? I grew up on music and while most of the music I was force fed as a child, on long car rides and on cleaning days, wasn’t music I particularly enjoyed, it was music. I had always been drawn to the background noise escaping the speakers. I feared silence.

My mother was a country fan, but my father listened to death metal. I was raised on bipolar genres and my preferences today reflect as much. My first cassette was purchased by my father in Mexico. It was Mariah Carey. While I never fell in love with Mariah, I was, however, marveled by the idea of having music at my palms, whenever I wanted. Like most kids growing up in the early 90’s, I received my first Sony Walkman and with it I was given blank cassettes. The radio was my newfound best friend. I made makeshift mix tapes, composed entirely of popular music. From the Goo Goo Dolls to Destiny’s Child to Green Day, I wanted it all. I stopped being social and was rarely spotted without headphones attached to my head. I used and reused those original tapes creating better mixes every day.

And then…middle school happened and so did compact discs. With CD’s came a bigger selection, more of an opinion, and I was finally allowed to watch MTV’s Total Request Live. I wore band tee’s like it was my job. I had lunch boxes, patches, purses, stickers, folders, whatever I could get my hands on. I loved music and everyone had to know. I graduated from cassettes to CD’s, but also from pop radio to rock television.

Middle school came and went as did the allure of CD’s. High school showed up with MP3’s and music pirating. MP3’s were all the rage. You mean I can download music from my computer, where I spend all my time anyway, for free? Which is great because I’m only fourteen and don’t have a job and oh, wait, I can get music before it’s released? WHAT? I was enthralled, hypnotized, captivated, it didn’t get better than this, did it?

I did not purchase an mp3 player until graduation, but I bought blank discs by the 100’s. I made everyone I knew mixes full of music I knew they’d hate, but hey, IT WAS FREE MUSIC. I never once thought downloading music was wrong and so, when I heard that it was illegal, I simply downloaded more. Record labels and prosecutors be damned. Once I had an iPod, I gave up CD’s and had 20 gigs of music with me at all times. I thought, how in the world, can this get any better?

College came and I made it through the first year being entirely content and happy with my rapidly growing digital collection, but with digital I had nothing tangible. Just something filling the empty space of my hard drive. No longer did I count the days until release dates, rushing to the mailbox every day until I received that brown bubble wrapped package. I no longer had to struggle with the sticker on the top of a CD. Digital was easier and free, but I missed all of the anticipation, the actions, the smells, the shine.

This is how I fell in love with vinyl. Vinyl filled the void that mp3’s never could. I felt as if I had finally found the perfect balance in the musical world. But solace in something so old and so dated? I was skeptical. I felt as if I was moving backwards instead of forward, but unbeknownst to me, records were just as popular, if not more popular. I began collecting records before I received a record player. Because, hey, we all have to start somewhere.

Luckily, the city I live in has an independent record shop and the bands I listen to are the bands that put out records. One of the many things I enjoyed about vinyl was that a lot of records came with a link to a legally downloadable file. My world was simultaneously revolutionized and de-revolutionized. Once again I was reunited with the packaging, the anticipation, the entire process of having tangible music at my finger tips.

Vinyl looks good, smells wonderful, sounds better than any mp3 ever could, and there’s just something about listening to vinyl that puts a smile on my face and eases the tension of my busy life. And hey, there’s nothing wrong with supporting the music you love.

Who know’s where we’ll be in ten more years and I may be traveling backwards in time, but as long as there’s music in any form in the background, I can’t say I mind.