Oh, Manchester, So Much To Answer For

As a rule, I don't believe in guilty pleasures; there should be no guilt whatsoever in pleasure. That goes triple for music - but if I'm really honest, there's probably one genre regarding which I do often feel some shame, and that's tacky Italo-house/Hi-NRG - the contemporary stuff. It's easy to praise '80s Italo, but much harder to extol the virtues of today's fromage. I find most of it hit-or-miss, more often than not "miss," but the good stuff is so full of cheesy goodness. UK comps of "club hits" are larded down with the stuff (if you've got a Virgin Megastore nearby, you can generally pick up a couple of recent vintage for a tenner, which is good educational value); a pretty good US sampler is last year's Energy 92.7 Presents Pure Dance, which I've already praised.

So now I've got to admit - and it's all John fault (and you really should check his blog, folks, for excellent photography and fine, pithy writing on a number of topics) - that I've harbored a crush I didn't want to confess to having for quite some time on Bananarama's "Get on the Floor," in its Angel City configuration. This is buoyant, it's a bit cheesy, it's totally pop and totally-er gay, but it's soooo much fun. Hooky as hell, too. I've no interest in hearing Drama, the album from which this hails, but this is a cracking single.