Albums you didnt like at first, but learned to love?

Are there any albums you disliked at first listen, but eventually warmed up to? For me it would be Nimrod by Green Day, i dont know why, but when i first heard it it didnt really connect with me, but after a while i grew to love it, while Insomniac is still my favorite, Nimrod has some all time classics on it IMO (Nice Guys Finish Last, The Grouch, Worry Rock, Scattered, Walking Alone).

Hum… At first I really didn't like Recovery much, remembering only Rihanna, the dance beats, the cheesy chorus of "I'm not afraid", and Eminem screaming for an hour. But when I listened to it again a few years later, I was like "…wait, were there this many awesome tracks the first time?" I kind of had the same reaction to The Marshall Mathers LP 2, though it had more tracks that I immediately remembered.

They're still not my favorite (that would be The Slim Shady LP), but their sound is somewhat refreshing compared to the somber atmosphere of his other albums. Also, he finally dropped the mom-dissing songs, which doesn't hurt.

edited 18th Feb '16 4:06:34 PM by Lyendith

I didn't like Living Things by Linkin Park because I thought it had a bad indietronica sound. After giving it a thorough listen, I've seen how it hearkens back to elements of the old sound while still being new. With that, it's my favorite post-Hybrid Theory/Meteora album by them.

I'm just gonna mention anything by Neutral Milk Hotel and leave immediately.

Nimrod is exactly the album I think of when this topic comes around. The first time I tried to listen to it, I couldn't make it through the first song before yanking it out of the CD player. It sat on my stereo for months before I decided to give it another go and the second time, something clicked and it became one of my favorite albums for quite some time.

Nimrod is super underrated for how diverse of an album it is.

Anyway, for me, I couldn't totally get into Cage The Elephant's Melophobia at first, since the shift in sound seemed a bit too "wannabe MGMT" to me, and the songwriting didn't feel up to snuff compared to their prior albums. After repeated exposure, though, I grew to enjoy it, though I still don't like the song "Telescope" (which seems to be a fan favorite).

The best part is that MGMT is what a lot of psychedelic rock fans call "Flaming Lips wannabes," so that would make Cage the Elephant a wannabe wannabe.

That'd make a lot of rock music in the 2012-2014 era wannabe wannabes.

That's a very specific era. ò.Ô

I recall my first year of college, where some kind of switch flipped in my head, and I suddenly found myself appreciating more laid-back, minor-key music—you know, depressing stuff—where before my tastes had favorited fast rock, punk, and third-wave ska almost exclusively. As a result, I found myself suddenly loving several albums that had confused or annoyed me before: off the top of my head, The Crucial Conspiracy by The Dingees, Mezzamorphis by Delirious, and Much Afraid and The Eleventh Hour by Jars of Clay.

When I first listened to 13 by Blur, I thought the two halves really didn't sound like they belonged on the same album, and that the one hit single, "Coffee & TV", sounded particularly out-of-place. About five years later, I relistened and found the whole thing fitting together a lot better than I remembered. (Also, it has some remarkable similarities to Spiritualized's Ladies and gentlemen we are floating in space.)

Most recently, I got Daniel Amos' Mr. Buechner's Dream, listened to it once... then promptly forgot about it. About a year later, I gave it another listen and was blown away. The issue is, it's a double album, and it suffers from Double Album Syndrome (aka "If they had just edited it down, it would have been a great one-disc album"). So the first time I listened to it, I had a vaguely favorable impression of some songs, but was just overwhelmed by 33 kinda samey-sounding tracks. On my later listens, I figured out that disc 1 is solid all the way through—DA didn't run out of good songs until partway through disc 2. And that disc 1 actually works just fine as an album all by itself.

A long time ago I downloaded Double Nickels On The Dime by The Minutemen because I was starting to get into some older Hardcore Punk (specifically Black Flag's Rise Above and Minor Threat's Complete Discography) and had heard it was supposed to be a famous album of the genre. I don't think I listened to the whole thing because it sounded nothing like any hardcore I'd ever heard... Though I could have anticipated this because I knew they did "Corona", the Real Song Theme Tune for Jackass, which also sounds nothing like hardcore punk. Years later, reading the book Our Band Could Be Your Life made me try the album out again; The book gave me a better idea of what the band were trying to do, and I guess by then I was just generally more amenable to genre hopping in my punk rock.

Ah, yes, the Minutemen. Weren't they the Paranoid Chant guys?

Yes.

On the topic at hand: Basically everything by Death Grips up through NO LOVE DEEP WEB, and really the entire genres of psytrance and black metal.

I'm going to say Weezer 's Green Album. At first, I didn't like it at all since all the songs have the same structure (verse, chorus, solo that copies the verse vocals, verse, and end), and the songwriting wasn't the greatest. But then it started to really grow on me; the catchy licks, the heart-on-sleeve lyrics didn't grate me so much, and I fell in love with "Glorious Day" even with all it's earnestness. Oh, and "Hash Pipe" is a guilty pleasure.

edited 1st Mar '16 3:39:26 PM by LongTallShorty64

Leonard Cohen - I'm Your Man. This was my first Leonard Cohen album, and I just wasn't expecting anything so heavy on drum machines and synthesizers. Probably adding to that impression was hearing Alternative Rock cover versions of two of the songs first, namely R.E.M.'s version of "First We Take Manhattan" and Pixies' version of "I Can't Forget". Years later I got The Best Of Leonard Cohen, followed by his first few albums, and the folkier arrangments appealed to me more. When I gave I'm Your Man another chance, I ended up finding the synthy-ness part of the appeal.

DJ Shadow's Endtroducing..., kind of. I really only care for two songs out of the whole album, but I love them both to death.

edited 15th Mar '16 7:45:37 PM by PhysicalStamina

"Chill Out" by The KLF. The name of this album is apt. One needs to listen to this with the intent of relaxation. And bear with the final third of the album which sounds out-of-place at first. This is an album that can only be enjoyed by listening to the whole thing in one go. It's only the third complete listening session of the album that I finally get it. From then on, every listening session of this album feels like moving into the dream world at the start and leaving it at the end.

Sonic Temple by The Cult. I'm not sure why I didn't like it the first time, but I warmed up to it on my second listen.

edited 21st Jan '17 3:03:45 PM by DreamCord

I suppose Power Windows, by Rush. I didn't dislike it, but I wasn't sure what to think of it at first. It was very different from the stuff I was familiar with at the time, being much synthier and having more active and slightly dissonant basslines. It pretty quickly grew on me, though, and now I'd say it's among my favorite Rush albums.

Destroy Erase Improve by Meshuggah. Years ago, I was try to get into heavier forms of metal and I tried to listen to this album. At first the only songs I liked were Future Breed Machine and Acrid Placidity. However, as I listened to other Meshuggah songs and listened to Chaosphere(which I liked), I decided to give DEI another chance. Now, I can say it's a great album and it has some really awesome songs.

This is probably tantamount to blasphemy among some music circles, but I really wasn't a super huge fan of the Beatle's Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band at first, or Magical Mystery Tour for that matter. While I wouldn't say either are my favorite albums of theirs, I've definitely grown to love them much more over time, and my favorite Beatles song (and possible favorite song ever) is on Magical Mystery Tour (Strawberry Fields Forever, to be exact).

Black Flag's Damaged was my very first punk record. I absolutely despised it. The funny part about this is I listened to My War and I loved that record (at the time). What makes it even worst is that I tend to forget why I like either album and only ever end up enjoying one or the other.

Blur's Think Tank definitely is an album I came to take my time to understand and then like. There's also Uplifter from 311.

Nick Cave's Skeleton Tree, strangely enough, considering it's acclaim. Probably due to the fact that as with many ambitious works, it's not that easily accessible as his some other albums.

Edited by Millership on Sep 18th 2018 at 4:41:40 PM

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