Guilty pleasures are interesting things, and I’m old enough not to actually feel to guilty about music I like. I could have gone with some obvious answers like ABBA or some mid-70’s schlock, but now that 70’s music is nostalgic, it’s kind of cool. Also, as I’ve stated before, the point of this exercise for me, is to post about some good music, so the song and band I have chosen I would defend as being good music. I went through a phase in the 80s of liking some unabashedly poppy stuff fronted by “pretty boys” and my guilty pleasure pick comes from one of those. I think I could have picked guiltier pleasures (I do own a couple of Corey Hart albums, and here comes a guilty admission… I was a member of the Glass Tiger fan club… as an adult!) but I’m sure some people will think I have plenty to feel guilty about regarding this band.
The band is Cutting Crew, primarily knows for their hits, (I just) Died in Your Arms Tonight and I’ve Been in Love Before. Cutting crew got the guilty pleasure rap largely I think because of that, “Ah, ha” sung before the line, “I just died in your arms tonight,” and the fact that lead vocalist Nick Van Eede was quite the pretty boy (hey, Scot, doesn’t he remind you a little of Daniel from Days of Our Lives?). But along with Mr. Van Eede (who still performs using the band name Cutting Crew) was lead guitarist and co-songwriter Kevin MacMichael, who happened to be Canadian, played with Robert Plant on one of his solo albums, and was pretty deft with the melodic, rock guitar lick. Tragically, Kevin has passed away in 2002 as a result of lung cancer. The song I’m choosing is one that probably a lot of people never heard It was the fourth single from their debut album Broadcast and didn’t crack the Top 100, although this video did get some airplay on MTV. It’s called Any Colour, and I really love this song still to this day. It’s got some great melodic guitar licks (see above), has nice lyrics, has a great tune, a nice video and gotta confess, I like Nick’s voice and he’s wearing an awesome pair of boots. Hope you enjoy!