Slaying A "Guilty Pleasure"-Labeled Dragon

Apparently I do have time for a tiny morsel of profundity.

My adult life has, admittedly, become quite a complex maze of activity and actions, of first impressions that are needed to be made in a positive manner and of impressions made upon individuals who are of the utmost importance to the innermost self. This confused jungle of thoughts and ideas and processes sometimes overwhelms me, makes me lose contact with who I am at the very core of my being. So whenever those times come, I usually tend to find myself lost in music for a spell, searching for a remedy and re-validation from the tunes that I have adored for a very long time. Some of these songs are perfectly okay to mention in decent music-listening and -obsessed company. These songs evoke a sense of the listener, i.e. me, having taste and class in her musical selections. Then there are what would be known as "guilty pleasures".

Admittedly, I find myself reaching more and more for what might be considered a "guilty pleasure" whenever times get their toughest. I suppose it's because those songs, without the requisite credibility factor inherent in songs discovered later on in my music listening life, reach to the very deepest parts of me, where the parts of me that have been living and beating inside me for over a decade resides. Tonight I felt the intense need to reach for one of those songs, a song I remember very well from my early adolescence.

It was Laura Branigan's "Self Control".

Now, this song isn't to be considered "New Wave" or "synthpop" in any real sense of the terminologies. This was just a very hi-nrg, synthy, rock-flavored pop song, performed by a pop songstress for whom not even death has provided credibility toward. It is still (fortunately or unfortunately, depending on your own point of view) considered gauche to admit to liking a Laura Branigan song. Branigan's voice, as a critic I hate to admit was correct every once in awhile said, is safe. It's anonymous. Yet I sense in it a sort of gusto, a real conviction to believe what she sang, and in this era of "American Idol" oversaturation, where the predominant female pop singers are miniature divas with no real comprehension of what they are actually signing, there is something about how honest Branigan's singing is that breathes renewed hope within me for the power of really surprisingly good pop vocalization. (In fact, there are elements of her singing that remind me of Meat Loaf's, another singer with not quite the credibility factor of most yet with a small contingent of defenders.)

Which brings me to "Self Control". Unlike her previous smash hit "Gloria", Branigan (or her songwriters -- I'm not clear) decided to incorporate elements of the then-current musical zeitgeist, i.e. New Wave, into the song. There is the Linn drumming. There is the heavy synth action. There are the touches of robust guitar action. There is a staccato rhythm evident that showcases a sort of Italo disco flavor to the song, Italo disco being in and of itself directly influenced by New Wave. The atmospherics are cold sophistication. It is almost credible enough to be New Wave! But because it is Laura Branigan, and because it is more authentically pop, it resides in the mainstream pop universe. Because of that, syndicated '80s retrospective radio programs that aired throughout the mid - late '90s, with their emphasis on the straight-ahead pop of the decade, played "Self Control" on a regular basis. It was almost guaranteed, for instance, that Al Bandiero, late of the (now defunct) '80s radio program "The Amazing '80s" (which I listened to loyally in high school), would end up playing that song, and, truth be told, I did get tired of it after awhile.

Funny thing about those sorts of things. Flash forward over a decade later and now I sit here in front of the computer monitor, typing away at this entry while I listen to Laura Branigan's "Self Control" on repeat, breathing in the song, absorbing it, letting it become a part of me. I can feel it heal the confusion and heartache resident inside me. I can feel it working on all the little self-doubts and inferiorities inside me as it returns me to the more self-assured individual I now understand I was back when I was 16 and thought I knew everything about how the world works. But most importantly, this song washes away any aspect of inauthenticity about me. By constantly being exposed to this song and reawakening the excitement that I used to connect with it, I can no longer hide the person I really am, the person to be revealed after peeling away the layers of pretension and pretend coolness. Inside of me lurks a girl who has spent her whole life not being cool enough to hang with the cool kids, a geeky, awkward kid who spent the majority of her spare time with her nose stuck in a book, and even though I've gotten LASIK done, gotten rid of the glasses, sport stylish hairdos and clothing, and breeze about through real life as though I have infinite stores of confidence, I am still that tall-for-her-age, bespectacled nerd type who studied too much and spent too little time concerned with the popular crowd to actually be "popular".

I will always be that weird teenaged girl who adored '80s things and acted like she was 30, so she was to be looked at with suspicion. Songs such as "Self Control", which were so much a part of those years for me, remind me of that. And as odd as it might sound, those reminders build my confidence as I reconnect with that same young girl, living now under layers and layers of "self" I have built up over the years in various attempts to try to fight against that kind of legacy. As a Real Adult, with all the Real Confidence that I've been unknowingly earning through the processes that greet any Real Adults, I can now say to that girl to keep her chin up, that things will get better, and that the things that make her "odd" will eventually be considered assets. So Laura Branigan, "guilty pleasure" figure? Not in this instance. In fact, it is the self-consciously "cool" that is to be considered a "guilty pleasure" here, as the authentic takes over and reawakens the parts of me that had been rendered unconscious due to inattention.