In the spirit of that other great thread, Not “liking” legendary bands or artists, let’s turn this around. What about bands or artists which are not well regarded by music lovers or that you yourself had derided in years past as rubbish - maybe even been overly snobbish about - only to find later that you like them.
The guilty pleasures of music or the shame of eating humble pie after disregarding an artist as a joke.
I’ll go first. Growing up, I’d unplug my mum’s turntable whenever she put on certain music that I regarded as uncool and a few of those opinions survived into my 40s. To this day country and western is largely fingernails down a blackboard to me. However, I have found, despite all the mean things I’ve said, that I really like this guy. A lot.
Nice thread idea - much more preferable to music taste trashing. Will have a look through my records later, as I’m sure there’ll be a few gloriously unfashionable howlers.
This is a great idea for a thread and I’m sure that many forum members will have had a wry smile upon reading it. We’ve probably all bought music which was a little bit outside of our normal genres and/or the “acceptable” music of our peer groups. I remember that, at school in the 1960s, there were definitely some no-go areas for young, hip music lovers. To err was to invite ridicule.
Possibly at the top of the no-go list was Country and Western (C&W) - often with good reason. However, for me, one C&W track overcame this barrier - possible because of its sheer corny-ness. This was “Deck of Cards”, by Tex Ritter. A cousin inexplicably bought me the LP “Songs of the Golden West” for my birthday and it contained this track. All of the other tracks are long-forgotten, but this one remains etched in my memory, particularly the final line - “… I was that soldier …”. Even to this day, if I use this phrase in conversation, meaning that I have experienced or done something similar to the topic being discussed - and the other person in the conversation understands the concept, then I know that we can be friends!
I hope that you will allow a little bit of drift from the topic for the sake of a couple of anecdotes. I am a long-term rock, pop, jazz and blues fan, but I do have one or two other “likes”. One of these is Frank Sinatra. I had a party once, in my house in the 1980s and, as everyone does, one of my guests had a good look through my record collection. On finding the Sinatra “My Way” album, he said something like “It’s great to be in your 30s and you can admit to liking all sorts of music”. Of course, my liking of Sinatra was more than vindicated when I later came across Van Morrison’s line “… when Sinatra sings against Nelson Riddle’s strings …”. Now, if anyone asks me which artist I would have loved to have seen, it would be Ole Blue Eyes, with one of his great backing big-bands.
At some other point in the 1980s or 1990s, I was at a party in my father-in-law’s house and he, I and one of his friends were discussing music. I should point out that both men were much younger than I am now and neither showed any particular interest in music. However, when I talked about the kind of music I liked, both of these older men said that I would eventually grow out of it! It was one of the most pompous things I have ever heard!
On the side of the pompous fellows, this reminds me of a time growing up where the absolute king of uncool was Tom Jones. Just a laughing stock.
Anyway, after mentally casting this uncool crooner to the dustbin, I had an epiphany. It was the late 90s. Tom was on some chat show. Perhaps Johnathan [W]oss or Chris Evans’ TFI Friday. Anyway, the host was trying to bait Tom a bit and make fun of it and Tom was far more skilled in the situation. I remember thinking, this dude has more cool in his little finger than these other bands do in their whole body.
Wham, I liked them even when my friends, all metal heads like me at the time, would have disowned me. Ballroom blitz, superb record that I still play often
In terms of embarrassed, the first was when I came to like the Beatles as their music progressed, as when they first hit the charts I hated them, and as a kid I made that known by making a point of putting my hands over my ears and walking out of the room whenever they came on the radio. The difficulty then as a teenager was being able firstly to accept myself that I liked them, and then, even harder, allowing others to know. At that time my mistake was the common one of equating the music with the people and not yet understanding that many artists’ art develops over time so not liking at one stage and liking at another is actually unsurprising.
Again reflecting on when I was in my teens in the latter half of the 1960s, some music was a matter of fashion (for want of a better word), and though not a follower of fashion some things did influence me, and reggae was the music style adopted as theirs by skinheads (the predominant antisocial gangs around at the time), so I hated reggae as a matter of course, and it was only with reluctance some years later that I found some reggae was actually likeable.
In more mature adulthood there have been oddities over the years that I’ve liked that have surprised me being contrary to my expectations. One I recall a few years ago was hearing a couple of songs by Lily Allen and quite liking them - a sister-in-law learning that bought me a her CD for Christmas. I doubt I’d have ever been moved to buy for myself, however I have played it a few times and enjoyed.
Not mine - I didn’t much like his stuff.
Only listening to MJ Beat it the other day and decided to watch on YouTube the old video of it.
Only to realise the pool tables had no pockets.
What were they thinking ?
Debs played Seasons in the Sun by Terry Jacks a day or two ago, I really love that song while accepting it is maudlin.
I’m a huge fan of Adele, I think she is one of the top-rank singer songwriters, but I gather from several err “temperate” opinions stated here that it’s a taste which gets loudly challenged.
As a teenager I was a bit ashamed of my ABBA Gold tape which was played enough to wear out totally, I’m now totally happy to say I think they’re one of the great bands. (I’ve lost track of whether that is currently an acceptable position.)
Is it ok to mention Coldplay? Plenty of good stadium anthems. Recorded material not great in terms of SQ showing tons of compression on my set up. Also ignoring the overly produced mixes on all bar their early stuff I do enjoy their tunes
