OT: Music we loved to hate . . .

[Winston Psmith]

Sorry I haven't checked in as often, but I've been buried in work since Thanksgiving week.

 

A little while back, I had a perfectly silly thought that I wanted to share here in the Forum, because I thought it might bring a laugh, or at least a smile . . .

 

You're listening to your car radio, or favorite streaming service, or what-have-you, and song comes on that you know all too well, because back in the day, you really hated that song/group/artist. "Oh, man, THIS THING!" you say to yourself. "I haven't heard this in FOR-f'ing-EVER!"

 

And then . . . you turn it up, and maybe even sing along! Why?!?

 

Maybe it's because it reminds you of the friends you had, or a time and place that you miss, or maybe back then, it was just so much fun to hate that song, and hearing it again reminds you of that feeling. Maybe, hearing it again without feeling like you have to hate it to be cool, you can even hear what other people must have liked about it . . . but maybe not.

 

I'm not going to "name that tune", because I don't want to call out what might be someone else's favorite; this isn't a "your taste in Music sucks" thread. It's just about a quirk of memory, and maybe a bit of nostalgia.

[p90jr]

There's hundreds of top 40 hits from the beginning of the rock and roll era to present that fall into this category for me... and to make matters worse, I've probably had to play and them sing them at a cover gig at some point.

 

One that rockets to the front of my mind is "Sex and Candy" by Marcy Playground, a one-hit wonder from the '90s... I hated it, had to perform it, ended up having a perverse love for it...

[KuruPrionz]

I will name names, I used to dislike the Carpenters. One day I heard "We've Only Just Begun", one of the songs I loved to hate.

 

And I thought it was fantastic. Karen Carpenter was an amazing singer and a good drummer too.

 

And, doesn't everybody hate/love "Lime In The Coconut" by Nillson? A one chord song with the stupidest lyrics ever, it cracks me up that it was a hit. If you are ever signed up for an open mic night (if they ever have one again!!), recruit a bunch of random people to go up on stage and do Lime In The Coconut. It's in C, just one chord and it is impossible to f*ck it up. Karaoke, same deal, make it a group slam dunk of absurdity.

 

There's 2, looking forward to the thoughts of others.

[p90jr]

The Carpenters are embedded in my brain from childhood... I can't dislike their better tracks, but they have some cheesy stinkers, too (their version of Klaatu's "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft" might be why no extraterrestrials have made contact with Earth... and people post a vid of them doing "Jambalaya" which is an offense to my home state).

 

Nilsson was brilliant... and out of his mind a lot of the time during that era. I think I love his first 3 records more than "Nilsson Shmilsson" and "Son of Schmilsson (which is such a brilliant mess it could be argued to be a punk album). I pulled together some friends and played a tribute show to go with the local premiere of the documentary "Who is Harry Nilsson," which a friend here worked on and helped produce... we did a more Doctor John-like version of "Lime In The Coconut" that got everybody grooving along.

[KuruPrionz]

Here's another one I hated and then loved.

 

Brass In Pocket by The Pretenders. Something about it just bugged me at first. I remember eating at a favorite Mexican food place in Fresno and somebody put that song on the juke box just as I was finishing my meal.

I went over to the juke box, dropped a couple of dollars in it and set it up to play Brass In Pocket 10 times.

 

Then I left. Oddly, I've always been a huge Pretenders fan and that song just irritated me. I resolved that, now I think it's awesome.

[Scott Fraser]

Hatred is an attachment. Maybe hearing those songs as, ahem, mature adults allows us to let go of those bonds. Maybe that song wasn't so bad after all. Maybe it was actually bad for real, identifiable musical reasons which we can now articulate as objective violations of aesthetic & theoretical rules. And sometimes (cue "Puff the Magic Dragon") it's because the sappiest, most simperingly emotionally manipulative, junior-high-school-poetry-class lyric is tied to a memorable melody which sticks like epoxy to our idle brains.

[Dannyalcatraz]

I was in the 8th or 9th grade when the J. Geils Band had huge hits with 'Centerfold' and 'Freeze Frame'. I liked the songs and (SPOILER ALERT!) I do have a 'Best Ofâ¦' CD of theirs with those tracks on it.

 

â¦.I"ve never played it.

 

The reason is that those songs were- like most hits- a bit overplayed on the main radio stations our family listens to. But in addition to that, they were THE most popular songs among the girls in my school. This matters because the girls were doing a month-long Phys Ed unit on aerobic dancing while us dudes were doing things like archery, handball and other sports in our school"s gym. We could hear the music they were playing.

 

After the initial intro day, the girl"s teacher opened up use of the 45 to singles her students wanted to listen to while doing aerobics.

 

For the rest of the month, 3x per week, for the entire PE class, the only two songs they played were 'Centerfold' and 'Freeze Frame', over and over and over again.

 

Essentially, it was like this:

[video:youtube]

 

So, while I genuinely like those songs, I cannot to this day voluntarily play them on my sound system. I won"t change radio stations if they come on, and I might sing along, but I can"t grab that CD off the rack.

[Larryz]

Once I put a song in my sucks category, it pretty much stays there. I refuse to play it no matter who requests it or how big the tip might be LoL! I won't turn it off when it comes on the radio though as it brings back memories that confirm my initial sucks ratings and it still gives me a chuckle!

[desertbluesman]

I simply do not listen to music I don't like, and there is plenty of that. I am not a fan of Metal, I go as far as Hard Rock in that style which was where Metal evolved from. I stuck mostly with blues based rock as my favorite music, and it still is.

[KuruPrionz]

Well, I still hate Danke Shien by Wayne Newton and that will never change.

 

I've never liked Sweet Home Alabama either, probably because I've played it so many times at gigs and Linnard Skynnard had much better songs like Gimme Three Steps.

[Dannyalcatraz]

A lot of bands that annoy me still have a song or two I can enjoy. Alas, it"s not usually the ones that get airplay. So I get to be reminded of how people around me really enjoyed Spin Doctors, Green Day, or whomever, and it just makes me a tad grumpier, because I"ll rarely get to hear the songs I think they got right.

 

Similarly, there"s bands I bought an album of based on he strength of one song, only to be profoundly disappointed by everything else on the recording. Worse than that, though, were the times when I made such a purchase only to find out the song I liked was a REMIX version that wasn"t even on the album*. That got me to buy a few more EPs and singles than I had intended to over the years.

 

 

 

 

* the worst offenders in that category were almost all by various sub-genres of rap & electronica artists.

[RABid]

I used to hate an entire genera, country. Now there are several songs I would love to play live. (T.R.O.U.B.L.E.) Hated Lynyrd Skynyrd for a long time, mostly because my first band was so into it. 10 of the first 16 songs we learned was Skynyrd. Just now getting to where I can listen to Bob Segar again after playing so much of him in the 80's. One song that I hated when we played it and will always hate, Cocain by Captain.

[Sharkman]

Back in the Seventies, I really could not stand Robin Trower. He played a Fender Stratocaster through a Marshall stack with an Electro Harmonix Big Muff pedal, which is what Jimi Hendrix used. But even though Trower sounded a lot like Hendrix, he kept on saying that he wasn't trying to sound like him. Of course Robin Trower was trying to sound like Jimi Hendrix. There is nothing wrong with that, Hendrix was a great guitarist who was way ahead of his time. But, to use a favorite saying of mine, don't piss on my shoes and tell me it's raining. But now, I like listening to Robin Trower's music. He is an excellent guitarist who has fallen off the radar, but still sounds good.