BS”D
Just to clarify, what I mean by the beis kisse is not necessarily literal, but that if you need to read them you need to think of them as beis kisse literature, something that isn’t ossur but is “past nisht”.
It is 2.30 AM here and thanks to a power outage that killed my day I am working for another couple of hours. I might just click on an old Haim Moshe, or Enrico Macias, or even Farid ul-Atrache video on You Tube to stretch a bit and stay up. When I do that I know I’m not doing what I’m supposed to, and I don’t buy such music or even download the videos because I know it isn’t the right thing to listen to – but I just might want to listen to it to help me stay up. I certainly don’t excuse myself by saying that Haim Moshe’s old lyrics come from Shir HaShirim (they do but they’re not kedusha or quality either for that matter), or that Enrico Macias’s lyrics are all about peace and tolerance and love (they are, but the universalist PC kind that has no place in Torah and they’re sappy besides) or chas vesholom anything positive about the words ul-Atrache sings which I don’t understand really anyway.
Secular books and harmless secular music have the same spiritual value as diet soda has nutritional value, and are harmless so long as taken the right way, not in excess and not to supplant anything of value. But if you don’t know the difference, or you let your kids access it too early it is like putting Diet Coke in a baby’s bottle.