Ten Guilty Pleasures

[amw]

I assume the title just refers to kitsch (i.e. music possessing "exaggerated sentimentality or melodrama", making use of clichés or a camp aesthetic—sometimes knowingly or ironically—and/or representing a more "lowbrow" genre such as light music, incidental music, opera fantasies/pasticchios, or soundtracks). Some examples that come to mind immediately:

Poulenc - L'embarquement pour Cythère - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tenjvgh8fOk
Poulenc - Improvisation No.15 (Hommage à Edith Piaf) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GETFcTMU1JA
Shostakovich - Waltz No.2 from the Suite for Variety Orchestra - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mmCnQDUSO4I
Ravel - La Valse - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mqv0U_D5OZY (obviously, more in the "ironic" category)
Dvořák - Slavonic Dances - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VZD_GzPRv4
Dvořák - Romance in F minor - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6W7Zv3WhSPE (arguably)
almost any of Mendelssohn's Songs without Words - e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ievpSwyvxoE
almost any of Grieg's Lyric Pieces - e.g. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dlBM96hZ4ew
Tchaikovsky - Serenade for Strings - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-go-FDlOMEY
Fauré - Sicilienne - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U5Y0uQLgriA
Liszt - Réminiscences de Don Juan - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JI6JfJXcUjU

... etc

[Jaakko Keskinen]

The only type of guilty pleasures I usually have are concerning non-musical attributes of the work (Plots of an opera, oratorio, cantata etc.) Rarely if ever I have guilty pleasures where the guilty part becomes from the music itself.

Do those count (I mean, while obviously a part of the musical work, it is not music itself.)

If those count, I could mention many of the absurdities from the world of opera such as La trovatore, Turandot (for God's sake, Ping, Pang, Pong!) Fanciulla del West (well, I think for the most part it's not cheesy at all but lines like "Whiskey per tutti!", random english words and some of the clichés while handled in my opinion very well, are STILL clichés, they are cringeworthy) and Die Liebe der Danae.

If those do not count, I've got nothing.

[Daverz]

Dvořák - Slavonic Dances - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1VZD_GzPRv4

The Slavonic Dances are exquisite miniatures.  I suppose they are lighter music, but to me light music is stuff like Leroy Anderson and Ketelbey.

Looking over some the choices here, it seems the subject has morphed into "music with hummable melodies".