October 24 2008
5 songs I used to hate but now appreciate
Tagged Under : Alanis Morissette, Counting Crows, Edie Brickell, Flaming Lips, music, songs, The Cardigans, Top 5
Songs sometimes take a while to grow on me, some take years and musical taste certainly evolves over time as well. Here’s a list of songs that I really hated when I first heard it but came to appreciate and in some cases love.
- Thank U (Alanis Morissette / Supposed Former Infatuation Junkie) - Most of Alanis’ songs grated on me when I first heard them. I had a strong dislike for her as an artist, her whiny voice, her sometimes ridiculous lyrics. When this song came out in 1998 I despised it. I didn’t listen to it until about a year ago when I heard her do it live and she killed it. I heard it completely different this time almost 10 years later. Now when I hear the album version I can appreciate the lyrics, although some still bother me like, “How bout them transparent dangling carrots”.
- Lovefool (The Cardigans / First Band on the Moon) - This was all over the radio and of course the Romeo and Juliet soundtrack in 1996. I was a junior in high school and at the time I was a big Matthew Sweet, Smashing Pumpkins fan so this poppy, cutesy, chick song was death for me. The hook in the chorus was too much for any trying to be masculine high schooler to take. But then I started to really dig Gran Turismo a few years later and gave Lovefool another chance. I could tolerate it but wasn’t fully converted. Then Long Gone Before Daylight came out, I got married, had a baby and suddenly Lovefool made sense to me. I don’t know why, but God ordained it so.
- Rain King (Counting Crows / Across a Wire: Live in New York City ) - I can’t emphasize enough how I loath Counting Crows live not to mention anything they wrote after Recovering the Satellites. My fertile dislike for them began when I bought tickets to see them around 1997 at the Bowl in Santa Barbara and they canceled that day. Then I bought their live album Across A Wire only to find out that they completely rearrange every single song I liked and Adam Duritz sounds like he’s making up a mumbling melody on the spot for each tune. It’s terrible! Fast forward 10+ years and somehow this version of Rain King has stayed in my iTunes playlist and I actually like his random, mumbling melody. In fact I like it better than the poppy original. I’m still waiting for my ticket refund.
- What I Am (Edie Brickell & New Bohemians / Shooting Rubberbands at the Stars) - Listening to this song now I can’t believe it came out in 1988. I don’t hear much of any eighties production on this, I would have guessed late 90s just on production. That being said I didn’t get this song at all when it came out, I’m going to chalk it up to just being too young to get. 1988 I was dancing to Michael Jackson and singing to Hall & Oates in the shower, worlds away from this. Now I can really appreciate the genius that went into this song.
- Do You Realize? (The Flaming Lips / Yoshimi Battles The Pink Robots) - The glitter, the balloons, the giant dancing rabbits, it was all too much for me to take in, sensory overload. I thought they were playing a joke on me, no way they could seriously be into this. They just took some acid one night and thought “hey, let’s pretend everyone is on acid, have 20 people on stage dressed in animals costumes and drop balloons on em, they’ll pay for that right?” But after taking a breath, realizing they weren’t trying to play a joke on me, they have some killer tunes. I mean really killer. This was one of the shorter turnarounds, maybe a year or so to go from hate to appreciate.
What are some songs you hated by now appreciate or dare I say, love?
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Jeff Buckley - With this voice the sky is the limit. There’s nothing I couldn’t sing, the pinnacle of flexibility and range. His voice has graced us(no pun intended - his greatest album was called Grace) with some of the most beautiful songs ever written, 
John Legend - When my inner soul, funk, R&B guy comes out and wants to sing about making babies John Legend is the voice I need. I wrote a song for my wife that I played to her on our wedding and it was very much a white man acoustic, John Mayer type thing. Would have been so much more effective if I could have swung behind a piano, shirt unbuttoned, chest hair poppin out(I don’t have any of that either) and sung some sweet soooouuuuuullllllll.
Wind instruments - There are a lot of flute and saxophone players out of work in ministry. I mean there has to be a line around the block for those guys collecting worship band unemployment checks. I really do miss those soft flute intros and funky white boy sax solos that just took the songs to a whole new power pop level. I think it was every worship pastor’s holy dream to get Kenny G saved. Can you imagine how powerfully the spirit would have moved? Unfathomable.
Transparencies - Who can forget the giant glowing box sometimes strategically placed smack in the middle of the stage for the backup singers to operate. I honestly miss the feel and even smell of those transparencies, shuffling through the accordion folder to find the songs and get them all lined up. Was there ever a professional way of handling these? I certainly am familiar with the bad way, the blank transparency with dry-erase handwritten words and the operator who seems to always make the slide appear upside down no matter how many times you try to explain mirrors to them.
