The Art of Longevity Season 12, Episode 86: Guilty Pleasures, with Sean Rowley

I gave Sean Rowley a call after writing up an article on “Unguilty Pleasures” (see Chill Gonzales episode 64) - Gonzales' campaign against music snobbery and treatise on the pleasures of Enya's music. It became clear that the story of Rowley's own creation, Guilty Pleasures, was very much a candidate for the Art of Longevity. 

Guilty Pleasures became that wonderful thing - a content brand (before we called them that) that grew octopus arms. The club nights quickly grew by word-of-mouth, expanding to multiple venues, festivals, and international events, and becoming a fixture of the UK nightlife scene. Then came a series of successful compilation CDs, at a time when compilations still did big business in music. It went on to radio, live tours, and special events (including opening for George Michael at the new Wembley Stadium), helping to popularise nostalgia-driven and feel-good music culture. In Rowley’s own words “nostalgia is a fucking wonderful thing”. Well, he did make a career out of it, so he would understand. 

For an idea to build the way it has, and to last so long, it needed to be something deeper. With Guilty Pleasures, Rowley challenged prevailing ideas of musical “taste” and helped normalise the celebration of mainstream pop, even in alternative spaces. He gave music snobbery a good clobbering and in doing so, established a legacy on DJ culture and the wider acceptance of joyful, communal music experiences. 

The evidence is everywhere: the enormously popular Despacio Disco launched by James Murphy (of LCD Soundsystem) and the Dewaele brothers (of Soulwax and 2ManyDJs). And then James Gunn of course, with the Guardians of The Galaxy soundtrack, which mined similar territory. The pandemic brought us Sophie Ellis-Bextor’s Kitchen Disco. Tik Tok has of course done wonders for the “genre”- famous for making Matthew Wilder’s “Break My Stride” a sensation, now with 500m streams on Spotify. 

And on it goes, the sprawling influence of a simple idea that is underpinned by the even simpler concept of the joy of music. 

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