So Bad, it's Good.

Wherein Our Heroine Examines Guilty Pleasures.

I was listening to Edith Piaf as I cooked dinner last night.

For those who do not think they are familiar with Ms. Piaf's work, you have very likely heard her somewhere - perhaps in passing on some documentary about France, definitely if you watched "Bull Durham." Ms. Piaf was a French singer of enduring popularity both inside and outside of France. She is for many (if not most) an acquired taste, as her voice is simultaneously nasal, tremulous and bombastic. She earnestly committed to every syllable she sung, as if her life depended upon getting the song's point across. When she sings, "Non, je ne regrette rien..." (No, I regret nothing), you believe it, even as you suspect by the fierceness in her voice that she had plenty she could regret, should she have decided to.

I must have acquired my taste for Edith Piaf when I was eighteen and working as a summer waitress in an upscale restaurant. This restaurant's food was excellent, but it was owned and operated by a renowned eccentric who periodically ran for the U.S. Senate. His platform was entirely made up by one plank: to abolish the IRS. For some reason the New Hampshire voters, allergic to taxes as they are, never seemed to think that was quite enough to send someone to Washington for six years. The musical selections in the restaurant that summer were similarly offbeat: Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" and Edith Piaf were most heavily in rotation, and songs like "Vie en Rose" and "Padam... Padam" worked their way almost subliminally into my head.

I didn't run right out and get a recording of her music that summer, as I held the conscious opinion that she was rubbish for several years. Somehow, though, she got under my skin and I feel I have to trace my appreciation back to that summer where she regretted "rien" so continuously in the background. I do know I didn't get my fondness for her out of any nostalgia for the experience of waitressing, so it would have to be the music itself that I finally came to appreciate.

I wonder if it is part of the human condition to find something like this appealing. Does everyone have something they just love that is "so bad, it's good"? Our culture provides plenty of opportunities for such pleasures. "Trash" TV, novels, music, movies, food - everyone has indulged in this sort of thing at some point in their life. If you're brave enough to admit you have seen the latest teen movie or eaten scrapple, it's amazing how many people you know will have done the same. I have often been astonished by a minor discovery about a normally highbrow friend's favorite guilty pleasure.

But don't worry - your secret is safe with me.

Posted: Wednesday - March 10, 2004 at 07:33 AM | |