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<i>Guilt By Association 2</i> only guilty of being awful

1:22 p.m. · November 21, 2008 · by Andrew Winistorfer

The dubious Guilt By Association series is returning for a second go-round in February, and it seems they re-defined “guilty pleasure” to mean songs that are undeniably great but are liked ironically by people who refuse to acknowledge the songwriting chops of Soft Cell, Phil Collins, and INXS.

The whole album is available for streaming here, and the worse offender, by a mile, are Takka Takka who do a cover version of “In the Air Tonight” that completely removes any of the charms of the original, and replaces the cavernous production with Americana-tinged strums. Even this gorilla knows more about the song than Takka Taka. The second worse song is Max Vernon’s “I Kissed a Girl,” which is so unnecessary, it’s hard to believe it actually exists. [Stereogum]