I don’t subscribe to the idea of a “guilty pleasure”. That’s because I don’t think one should feel guilty for liking something (OK, at least not most things…). Have I in the past felt said guilt? Yes, your honor, I have. Back in a distant time called “the 20th Century” we held to some dumb ideas like guilty pleasures and selling out, things that seem to have mostly disappeared in this, the year of our lord 2026. Today you’re more likely to hear someone use the phrase for something like, “sometimes I like to have a cookie after dinner, it’s a guilty pleasure.” No it isn’t, Karen. That’s just dessert.
Back in 1984, however, the concept of a guilty pleasure was real, with emphasis on the guilt part, and I certainly felt it with regards to Duran Duran’s Seven and the Ragged Tiger. You see, scrawny teenaged me identified as a “rocker” because I built my identity around bands like Van Halen, Ratt, Quiet Riot, and Mötley Crüe. But MTV was my radio station, so between videos by those rocking bands I also sat through lots of songs from Debbie Gibson, Madonna, the Romantics, and Weird Al. And yeah, I liked some of those videos and some of those songs. But the one group I couldn’t get enough of was Duran Duran. And when Seven and the Ragged Tiger came out I thought “The Reflex” was the coolest song ever. So cool that I actually went out and bought the cassette.
But even though I loved that Duran Duran tape, my newly-raging hormones and the accompanying lack of confidence meant I was embarrassed to like Duran Duran. Only girls liked them, or guys who were made fun of for it. So… I didn’t keep my copy of Seven and the Ragged Tiger with my other, cooler, personality-defining cassettes, but instead hid it away, lest a friend coming over to hang out would see it while browsing through my tapes (which probably would have taken less than 30 seconds to do). Being made fun of in my room would have been bad enough, but god help me if they then told people at school. I’d have never lived it down.
This story of course seems impossibly stupid in 2026. But that was, to a great extent, the way things were 40+ years ago. So Duran Duran was a true guilty pleasure at the time. Today of course I couldn’t give a shit what anyone thinks of any artist I like.
Which brings us to Sugar Ray.
People really seem to hate Sugar Ray. Sugar Ray is one of those bands like Nickelback who it’s seemingly OK to dislike simply on general principle. It’s safe to dislike them.
I, however, like Sugar Ray. I like them a lot, actually. In fact I like them enough to have seen them live not one, not two, not three, not four, not five, but six times, across three different states. Sugar Ray concerts were the anchor points to two long weekends, both of which involved air travel. I’ve seen them headline, and I’ve seen them open for other artists (Hootie & The Blowfish, Matchbox 20). I’ve seen them in a casino (twice). And I’ve enjoyed the show every single time. And I don’t feel even the slightest amount of guilt.
I think the overall image people have of a Sugar Ray fan is a 30-45 year old woman who likes chardonnay. And when you consider their biggest songs, like their Top 10 hits “Every Morning” and “Someday”, I can understand why. Hell, this is a band that titled its 2009 release, their first album in six years, Music For Cougars. So I get it. What most people don’t know, however, is that Sugar Ray’s early sound was a lot harder, leaning into the sort of nu metal thing that was happening in the mid-to-late 1990s. Some of their songs were almost, dare I say, (looks both ways and leans in to whisper…)… punk.
Sugar Ray’s debut, Lemonade and Brownies, came out in 1995 and did moderately well. By mid-1997 Soundscan numbers had sales at about 48,000, and by the end of the next year the LA Times put sales at 69,000, the increase driven no doubt by the remarkable success of their 1997 sophomore record Floored, which went double-platinum. Lemonade and Brownies never got the vinyl treatment when it came out – by the late 1990s vinyl had mostly given way to CDs, and a label wasn’t likely to go through the expense of pressing vinyl for a non-established band, especially when they were still price-gouging us on CDs that probably cost less than $1 a unit to make that were sold to us for $15. But in 2015, its 30th anniversary, Lemonade and Brownies got that record pressing thanks to our friends at Music On Vinyl. And it must have sold OK, because they did a numbered (of 2,000) re-press in 2021, and yet another repressing in 2022.
Arguably the most “famous” thing about this album is the cover shot, featuring a nude, bent over Nicole Eggert, who had at that time just finished a two-year run on the TV show Baywatch (prior to that she was in two seasons of Who’s The Boss? and four seasons in its spinoff Charles In Charge). Sugar Ray singer Mark McGrath was dating Eggert’s friend at the time, which is how she came to model for the cover.
It’s probably been a decade or more since I listened to this album all the way through, and hearing it again, it definitely feels like a relic of its time, a mix of funkiness, scratching, and attitude. But that’s not to say Lemonade And Brownies is a collection of really similar songs. “Rhyme Stealer” is the love child of Faith No More and Kid Rock; “Hold Your Eyes” is straight-forward sexy funk jam, not even the remotest rock influences to be heard anywhere; “Big Black Woman” is pretty close to hardcore; “Mean Machine” is a rocker that samples Commander Cody And His Lost Planet Airmen (The brakes are good / Tires fair); “Drive By” is pretty much a Beastie Boys skit. For my money, “Rhyme Stealer”, “Mean Machine”, and “10 Seconds Down” are the high points, but all of it is a lot of fun.
Am I going to convince Sugar Ray haters to give Lemonade And Brownies a chance? Probably not. And that’s fine. And I certainly won’t feel guilty for liking it.