We indulge in “guilty pleasures” every day — activities that we do in secret, knowing we may be a little frowned upon by the outside world for doing them, but enjoy anyway. Binge watching poorly-made reality TV shows, impulse buying unnecessary items on Amazon or endlessly scrolling through your For You page for hours on end. Music can fall under this category too. We all have those songs that we would never dare to play on the aux in front of someone. 

We all try to keep some kind of “image” of who we are. We all have those facets of us that people never see. Music is one of those facets. You may tell people that you love rap but secretly your middle school emo phase never really died. Sometimes our guilty pleasures seem way different than how people preserve us but there’s no shame in jamming out to early 2000’s throwbacks. 

On the @cshs_chargers Instagram page, we put out a question sticker asking students what their favorite music to listen to was, and then their favorite “guilty pleasure” music to listen to. Perhaps the most polarizing of responses was country music, a popular answer for both stickers. Another strong candidate was rap/hip-hop. From these responses, it is easy to assume that we all really listen to the same things, at least sometimes — it’s just a matter of the level of shame that comes with saying that you listen to certain music.

Among the outliers: the Wreck it Ralph soundtrack, Christmas music, The Beatles, “early” Taylor Swift, Glee, smooth jazz, and “non-worship music”. Surprisingly, three secret classical music fans even emerged from the shadows in our responses, one of which specifically naming Beethoven as their go-to guilty pleasure listen.

No matter what you listen to, we’re all the same and all have those guilty pleasures. Honestly, it’s really nothing to be ashamed of. So what if you sing along to the Hannah Montana soundtrack? Don’t let anyone judge what you do because they secretly have their own weird interests. Have fun and rock out to whatever you listen to.