Asklemmy

We'll do this in layers.

I used to worship at the altar of Smashing Pumpkins. Some (though not all) of their stuff holds up pretty good still, I think. They're good at concepts and imagery. Er, were. Teargarden by Kaleidyscope was kinda the last thing of theirs I bothered with, and I'd started to fall off well before that, too. Shame level 3/10 just because I was obsessive about deep-diving every single one of their tracks (from their first few albums anyway).

I was gonna say Linkin Park at first blush, and would have followed through with that, except that just a couple of weeks ago I played through Hybrid theory and thought "y'know, this isn't my style of music anymore but it's not bad, not bad at all." Still, the supposed emotional resonance I had with them puts this at Shame Level 4/10 because, looking back as an adult, most of them are pretty pandering towards angsty teens.

Felt the same about Weird Al. I mean, okay, I cringe at how UPROARIOUS and CLEVER and SUBVERSIVE I thought he was as a kid, but the music is fine for what it is and I feel it accomplishes what he, as an artist, set out to do. And while corny it's not quite cringy. Shame level 4.5/10

Glenn Miller and other mid-20th-century big-band/swing stuff. Not bad on the face of it, really - still good, in fact, if that's your thing. But as with the others, my reasoning behind liking them is the reasoning for the Shame Level 6/10 - yes, I segued into your typical fedora-tipping "le gentleman" Humphrey Bogart wannabe around 2005-2009. Urgh. At least it was before the REAL BIG WAVE of that swept over the Internet and everyone was doing it. Shudder to think of how I'd be if I'd gotten REAL caught up in that wave. But maybe that'd have been a preferable alternative to what happened...read on, if you dare.

Testament is perhaps my greatest shame since I was desperately trying to become a metalhead but really didn't care for their music all that much? I figured if I listened to it enough times it'd eventually just all click. NOPE. But I kept on with that for several years. Shame level 8/10. Throw Metallica (esp. Death Magnetic, which I slavishly adored) and your other typical Guitar Hero RAWK EDITION tracks that your typical identity-less 00's teen woulda latched onto. You get the picture. (Slight redemption: I did discover Gamma Ray through this phase and, as with Smashing Pumpkins above, I relistened the album Heading for Tomorrow and honestly really appreciate the positive/happy/hopeful messages in songs like Heaven Can Wait. A bright little happy diamond among a genre inundated with DEATH AND PAIN AND SUFFERING IS ALL THERE IS.", and it helped me kinda realize that "hey, you don't gotta be all doom and gloom all the time, man. Light only shines where you let it in." Here's the lyrics if you don't wanna listen to the long song.

However, they are dragged down by some of their other stuff which is weirdly Christian-leaning (nothing wrong with that, well, at least not on their spin on it, since they aren't really in your face about it. A mention of "God" here and "Satan" there but not, like, Christian rock's repeated mantras of "praise Jesus" over and over as a "refrain". You can tell their religious beliefs but they don't make it front-and-center. Anyway) and anti-government (which I think they did more as a concept for their No World Order! album than anything else, but), which I ran with all the way into the conspiracy-idiot hole for a few years. IT'S THE JEWS MAN. Ugh. A coincidence of unfortunate timing that I watched the "documentary" Zeitgeist at just the right (wrong) time to coincide with my discovering of that album. GREATEST SHAME. 11/10 (but that's on me for how I interpreted and interacted with their artwork, not really the art itself)

DLC: Why did I like I My Me Mine so much? I'd blast it everywhere as a teen because I saw it on the Gaia Online profile of some lolsorandumb e-girl -- not that we had the term then. Probably just to annoy people.

Speaking of pre-e-girls, there was this other online girl whom I was head over heels with who really liked the uh...weirdly soft "let me fill this emotional void of yours" sort of music, from bands like The Spill Canvas and Jason Mraz and Owl City. OUCH but I didn't need to remember that, but I did, and I'm putting it down here at the deepest circle of hell. SHAME LEVEL 12/10

Edit: My adoption and subsequent abandoning of anything approaching consistency on my 1-10 shame scale earns a shame rating of 15/10.