Songs you changed your opinion on

So are there any songs that you used to like but now hate, or vice versa?

For some reason, there was a large chunk of country songs from about 1998-2003 that I hated when they were out, but now don't understand why I ever disliked them. Among them:

• "I'll Go On Loving You" by Alan Jackson (I think I was put off by "long after the pleasures of the flesh")
• "If You See Him/If You See Her" by Brooks & Dunn with Reba
• "I'm Already Taken" by Steve Wariner (the "mommy will you marry me?" line made me cringe, but a little kid's not gonna understand marriage!)
• "Grown Men Don't Cry", "The Cowboy in Me", and "Angry All the Time" by Tim McGraw (I really only disliked "twenty years have came and went" in the latter, which seemed like bad grammar for the sake of bad grammar. But I can overlook that.)
• "Burn" by Jo Dee Messina (Didn't get the title since I usually thought of "burn" in a negative context)
• "Bring On the Rain" by Jo Dee Messina (again, I didn't understand what the song was about. Why do you want rain anyway? Oh, 'cause it's about dealing with hardships. I get it now.)
• "The Good Stuff" by Kenny Chesney (now I think it's one of his best; I guess I didn't "get" it at the time)
• "I'm Movin' On" by Rascal Flatts
• "Long Time Gone" by the Dixie Chicks

Afterward, I waffled several times on "My Give a Damn's Busted" by Jo Dee Messina. I was used to the original version by Joe Diffie, so I found hers off-putting at first. Then I grew to like it.

Likewise, with "What Hurts the Most" by Rascal Flatts, I was put off by the very poppy production at first, then liked the song. Then it got overplayed as all hell. Then I didn't hear it for a couple years and realized there is a decent song there.

Also, God help me... I think I'm starting to like this song a bit. I thought it was execrable at first.

The only songs I can think of that went the other way, from like to dislike:

• "Who's Your Daddy?" and "I Love This Bar" by Toby Keith. I was pretty big on Toby at the time, so I think I gave these a pass because he had other songs. Now, looking back, I find them horribly banal and among his worst.
• "Stand" by Rascal Flatts. I liked all the metaphors and similes in it, until I realized that they forgot to put any sort of narrative. It's just a bunch of vague "stand strong in the face of danger" lines that have nothing tying them together.
• Finally, most of Lady Antebellum's third album. I was huge on Lady A for their first two albums, because I loved all their singles to that point. But after a while, I've realized just how boring "Just a Kiss" and "Dancing Away with My Heart" are in particular, since all they wanted to do was sleepy, string-soaked ballads.

edited 7th Jul '14 7:38:08 PM by Twentington

"Push" by Matchbox Twenty. When it first came out, the chorus irritated me so much from both a structural and thematic point that it immediately turned me off the song and the band. However, the next few songs made me do a 180 on the band, and in the last few years I've come around to liking "Push" now that I've paid more attention to it as an entire work.

edited 8th Jul '14 4:06:36 AM by Willbyr

Some of Wire's deeper cuts initially did nothing for me, but I have at least come to enjoy most of their catalogue for what it is. Even Manscape, as badly sequenced as the CD version is, has some very pleasant points. And the one song that I initially just didn't get on 154, "Indirect Enquiries", I now count as a classic, in content and context.

I'll hide your name inside a word and paint your eyes with false perception.

Another one that I changed my tune on was "American Soldier" by Toby Keith. At first, I thought it was just an obligatory "see, I'm not always mean and nasty when I'm patriotic, that whole 'boot in your ass' thing in 'Courtesy of the Red, White, and Blue' was just a fluke" type song. Then I heard him say in an interview on Bob Kingsley's Country Top 40 that he set the song up with a twist: at first, it sounds like he's just describing an ordinary family man trying to raise a family and work to put bread on the table… until he hits you with "I'm an American soldier…" And I thought that was actually a pretty well set-up twist that I didn't notice before. Still not one of my all-time favorites of his, but now I see that it's a pretty darn good song IMO.

edited 10th Jul '14 2:12:50 PM by Twentington

I just realised that I need to be in a good mood to enjoy any song I've never heard. I felt lousy when I first heard "Heart and Soul". I quickly dismissed it as trite 1930s trash. I gave the song another chance when I was in a better mood. I'm glad that I did because it became one of my favorite tunes.

Of course there are times I can't "get" songs in a good mood simply because their music seems too inaccessible to me in the beginning. There was a time when I find Bjork's music, such as "Human Behaviour" and "Oceania", uninteresting. Later, I returned to the songs for their videos on Youtube and became a Bjork mega-fan.

The entirety of 21st Century Breakdown. I first thought it was a duller rehash of American Idiot, but I eventually came to love it, as it's actually a more detailed and intelligent exploration of the punk attitude than its predecessor.

Please help out our The History Of Video Games page.

So you're saying your first time hearing that wasn't via 20,000 amateur pianists banging it out on an out-of-tune piano?

Insert witty 'n clever quip here.

Apparently, plenty of people online seem to know the song very young via someone who have played them that on piano or TV shows or movies. Perhaps I have heard of it in my youth. I only knew about its title while looking up popular songs composed prior to the Rock and Roll revolution ignited by "Heartbreak Hotel". I did that 2 years ago and I'm already 19 years old.

I'm not sure whether I have heard it. I don't know any movie and TV show that features it. Never heard of it on the radio. Never heard of it from my pianist friends. Malaysia tends to look down at old-time music. The "oldies" radio stations here more often than not play (dreadful) 1980s adult contemporary fluff than anything else. I suppose that's why I only knew about the song so late and not in the way most people do.

Originally, I thought Miranda Lambert's "Automatic" was a decent song about nostalgia, nothing wrong with that. Maybe a couple lines that flow poorly, but that's about it.

Then I thought it was slightly overrated, since I didn't think it was amazing, yet everyone else thought it was Single of the Year material.

Then I got interested in life enhancing technologies, transhumanism, all that jazz, and thought, "you know what, screw this song. Tech advancements are an awesome thing, especially if they're improving our ways of life. Enjoy paying for gas with cash and navigating with a Rand McNally, I'll zip right past you in my driverless electric car."

It's a song commonly used to teach people when they're learning to play the piano, since it has that common four-chord pattern and a simple melody. Basically, no self-respecting pianist would probably ever play or talk about it unless they're teaching a child how to play the piano.

People who think they can play the piano, on the other hand...

edited 16th Mar '15 8:59:07 PM by Odd1

Insert witty 'n clever quip here.

Also it showed up in Big:

Insert witty 'n clever quip here.

Unintentional repeat.

edited 6th Feb '17 9:42:55 AM by Willbyr

I am the only piano player in the world who never learned to play Heart and Soul. Whenever we were in choir class and the teacher was out, someone would walk up to the piano and play Heart and Soul, and I'd be like "wait, I don't know that one!"

Never learned to play Chopsticks or Für Elise either.

Even if you've never learned how to play "Heart and Soul", if you can play the piano at all, you can play that song.

Insert witty 'n clever quip here.

True, but I might play it a little differently since I am almost completely incapable of playing piano without ad-libbing. (Apparently people who can sightread are poor ad-libbers and vice versa, but I seem to be good at both.)

Anywho, back to the subject. Am I crazy for thinking that way about "Automatic"?

edited 17th Mar '15 12:05:04 AM by Twentington

I think "Automatic" isn't shunning the latest technology. Its main theme is about how older technology is less convenient but it makes us more appreciative of the things we use. Nevertheless, the lyrics could have spent more time on revolving around its main theme. The lyrics states too much of old technology that it suggests Miranda, or the character she portrays in the song, is hopelessly nostalgic. I'm sure that's not what Miranda and her co-writers had in mind when writing the song.

edited 19th Mar '15 5:03:25 AM by tropeslave

I also think the second verse shunning divorce, while well intentioned, doesn't fit thematically. Still not a fan of the song.

Probably the biggest case of this is "Smells Like Teen Spirit". I was 10 or 11, happily watching a top 40 video countdown show, when suddenly amid the dance pop and r and b I was mostly into at the time, there were these unwashed, long-haired guys standing there in a gym and playing this depressing-sounding, noisy, unintelligible song - I just couldn't understand why anyone would like something like this. A few years later, I started getting interested in alternative rock because of Green Day and Weezer, I'd started listening to a local rock station and heard some other Nirvana songs there, and I noticed the Nevermind cassette in a sale section at a record store. Now Teen Spirit isn't my favorite song of theirs, but I like it because I appreciate Nevermind as a whole, and I really could not imagine that album having any other song as the first track.

edited 19th Mar '15 10:38:01 PM by MikeK

This has happened to me a few times. Two songs I didn't like on first lesson but liked on later plays were "Jessica" by The Allman Brothers Band and "Closer" by The Chainsmokers featuring Halsey.

edited 5th Feb '17 9:36:08 PM by DreamCord

Hey.

White Pony by Deftones is overall a good album. But Digital Bath and Teenager were my least favorite songs on the album. While I still don't care for Teenager, Digital Bath has grown on me. I like it a lot more than I used to. The chorus is pretty great as well.

edited 5th Feb '17 9:49:47 PM by pointless233

I used to really like "It's a Great Day to Be Alive" by Travis Tritt because I just liked how happy it was. But now I can't stand it. I think because it reminds me of how much a pollyanna my mom is.

I used to be flummoxed by the fact that so many people in 2002 actually liked Time for Heroes. Now I believe it's one of The Libertines best works.

• Anything from Brazilian band Dead Fish after I became a Libertarian/Anarchocapitalist. Note that Dead Fish is a Socialist Punk Rock band, and Libertarians in Brazil are completely averse to Socialism.

• Charlie Brown Jr., another Brazilian band, after a certain event involving its vocalist insulting his bassist for shits. I never managed to hear another song from that band after realizing how rotten that vocalist had become. Good thing he died, victim of his own hypocrisy (Drug overdose. He was super against doing drugs in his songs.).

• Pretty much any Brazilian musician and band that's not Legião Urbana thanks to their Socialist leanings.

• Rage Against the Machine, AKA "Zapatista Metal". It's hard to even look at Tom Morello nowadays.

I became an antithesis of my 2012 self.

Edited by ZeroDozer on Sep 17th 2018 at 3:37:29 PM

Growing up, it's like a civil war, don't turn away, it's something you can't ignore...