Way back in the day, when I first started hearing Green Day songs like “When I Come Around” on the radio, I dismissed the band as essentially bubblegum punk pop – the punk rock equivalent of what Poison was to metal. Disposable, transient, insubstantial. Over the years, their ability to stay successful and relevant in such a fickle market, along with their abilty to keep writing hit songs, and their production of one genuinely classic album (American Idiot) a decade after their initial commercial success (and their new album’s not bad either), I have come to really respect and enjoy them, and I can admit that I was totally wrong about them back in the 90’s.
What bands or acts have you originally dismissed or disrespected who have worked over time to turn you around, make you grow to respect them, enjoy them and cause you to admit you were wrong?
Ok diverting from the OP; but Leonardo DiCaprio. 10 or so years ago, he was pretty much the main teenage hearthrob, good for chick flicks, not to be taken seriously. He has disproved THAT theory.
Back in the 90s I went to school with a girl who was really into Hanson, Matchbox 20, and Third Eye Blind. This caused me to basically categorize those three bands together in my mind and assume that all of them were terrible. While I never heard anything from Hanson after “MMMBop” and Matchbox 20 really did turn out to be terrible (probably the worst band of the 90s to achieve massive commercial success), I was completely wrong about Third Eye Blind. They’ve written some damn good pop songs (“Semi-Charmed Life”, “Never Let You Go”, “Losing a Whole Year”, etc.)
Probably the Doors. I didn’t care for their early stuff, but then I happened upon “People Are Strange” and found they were better than I had thought (My brother, who was a big fan, teased me about it). Still, they’re not a favorite, though there are some songs (“People Are Strange,” “The Soft Parade” “Variety is the Spice of Life,”) that I like a lot.
I respect Credeence Clearwater Revival and Frank Sinatra more than I did when I first heard them, but I still don’t really like them.
My Chemical Romance always seemed like the typical band in a category of very generic “emo” pop bands. I wouldn’t say The Black Parade is one of the greatest albums of all times – in fact it has a number of obvious weak spots – but it had some really fantastic songs on it and really made me reconsider them as a band.
Is this limited to just music? Because if there’s anything I’m good at, it’s making rash judgments about something and being completely wrong about them.
As for music. I refused to listen to a friend’s suggestion of **Alice in Chains **because I confused them with Alice Cooper (whom I didn’t care for). Not exactly what the OP had in mind, I assume. But for a closer example, I hated Disturbed after their first album (The Sickness) because the titular track was one of the worst radio metal songs I had ever heard. A couple of friends recently became heavily into Disturbed, for which I made relentless fun of them (“You really should give them a try man, seri…” “GETUPCOMEGETDOWNWITDASICKNESS!!” “Shut the fuck up!” was how it usually went down). When they forced me to listen to Indestructible, I had to admit how much of a jerk I had been. That’s one of the better heavy rock albums I’ve ever heard, and probably in my top 3. Sickness still sucks though.
If not limited to music, I second Leonardo DiCaprio. Same thing happened with Harry Potter (the first book and movie weren’t exactly compelling, or mature). I was very wrong about those two.
Yes but Fleetwood Mac are not really one band at all. They are (at least) three quite different bands who just happened to share a rhythm section and a name. So far as I am concerned the late 70s Buckingham-Nicks Fleetwood Mac were pleasant but mostly bland and forgettable, but the early, bluesy, Peter Green era Mac were wonderful (I don’t know the Bob Welch era stuff too well, which is, I think, when they did Bare trees. I did actually see them play just after Bob Welch joined, but I do not think he had yet really made his mark on their sound by then.)
More on topic: I despised Wham!, but I thought George Michael’s first couple of solo singles, “Careless Whisper” and “A Different Corner” were great. (I kind of lost interest in him after that though.)
I did not think much of early Stevie Wonder either. Mind you, he was just a kid then ,I guess. He got good when he had grown up enough to take charge of his own creative direction.
Oh, and Annie Lennox. Does anyone else remember The Tourists? I thought they were awful. The Eurythmics were incredibly much better. (I still do not understand how they improved so much, and so suddenly. After all, she and Dave Stewart were the mainstays of The Tourists too.)
Hmm, maybe I’ve missed the point there. You don’t want artists who got dramatically better, but ones I radically changed my mind about while they remained the same. I can think of some songs like that, most notably the Stones’ version of “Little Red Rooster” (hated it when I first heard it), but I am having trouble thinking of artists where the change was in me rather than in them. I guess it took me a little while to catch on to Van Morrison, but not all that long.
I bought the Grateful Dead’s “Wake of the Flood” from a bargain bin after I read somewhere that they played acid rock. I assumed that meant they played hard rock and was disappointed. Somewhere in my sophomore year of college I fell in with a bunch of deadheads and eventually developed a sneaking fondness for the Dead, at least a few tracks. Oh, and I got a good price for that album, so go go Grateful Dead.
When “Undone” and “Buddy Holly” came out I figured Weezer was OK but probably not worth buying their CD. I now have several, which is a strong endorsement for me.
My knee jerked in reaction to disco, so I turned my nose up as a teen at acts like the Sugarhill Gang and Parliament. A buddy of mine used to play them at parties and I made fun of him for it. Oddly enough, I think he’s into country music now.
A buddy of my wife’s made her a disc with the Horrors on it and I thought they sounded lame. I think what sold me was when I saw the video for “Sheena is a Parasite” and I went back and listened to it again. I like them at least as much as I like the Dead, anyway. I wonder what I could get for the disc?
I thought Willie Nelson was cheese ala Charlie Daniels until I happened across a copy of “The Red Headed Stranger”.
I’ve hated Rush my entire life - too synthesizer-y and Geddy Lee’s voice was like nails on a chalkboard. As Dave Barry said, I would poke holes in my car radio from trying to change the station as fast as I could when their songs came on.
After having played their songs on Rock Band, and being forced to actually listen to the musicianship of their music, I now love them.
Hah! Same here, although I wouldn’t go as far as to say I “love” them now. Respect them for their musicianship and enjoy their songs, though, absolutely. And it’s all thanks to Rock Band’s inclusion of “Tom Sawyer.”
Although I really loved the Decemberists’s first album, I cooled on them dramatically after that, as they seemed to be abandoning any pretense at being a “rock” band and began to wade into straight-up gimmicky territory with the whole “we wish we were in Victorian England” schtick. Then “The Crane Wife” came out, and although the Victorian England nostalgia was still present, it seemed that they hadn’t abandoned their rock roots after all. After listening to “Crane Wife” on repeat for weeks, I decided to cautiously revisit their previous few albums, and suddenly found that the folky schtick didn’t bother me as much, and that under the sometimes-laborious literary references were damn good songs. I now love all of their albums, including their newest, which might actually be their best.
Interesting topic - and yeah, Dio, I suspect you have read my threads prior to this where I have tried to stick up for Green Day…
For me:
I could never deal with **Bob Dylan’s **voice, but finally bought The Essential Bob Dylan and dug in. I was listening to Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright when it hit me how brilliant he is and how his voice worked with the songs. Seeing the Scorsese doc and Don’t Look Back further strengthened my impressions but reading his book Chronicle’s Volume 1 really did it for me. I can listen to him all day and find layers and layers in his songs.
Unfortunately, this means I have to - at some point - go back and really dig into Neil Young, another artist whom I respect from afar, but whose vocals have presented a prohibitive obstacle to me ;). I have always “known” his stuff is worth it - at least some of it - but I haven’t wanted to dig in.
But I don’t know if I will ever overcome my issues with the Grateful Dead.
Willie was one of them. My fiancee likes a lot of classic country and alt country… and I hated it all when we first got together. But the more I get to know about it and listen to it, I’m actually starting to like it. Stuff like John Prine, Todd Snider, Jack Ingram, (alt country) and classics like Hank Williams, Willie Nelson, Patsy Cline, Merle Haggard, David Allen Coe, etc.
I also hated Rush, but they’re growing on me… can’t say I like them, but Geddy Lee’s voice isn’t as annoying as it used to be.
When I heard when the Rolling Stones did what they did they did gain more respect for being groundbreaking (I had assumed their popular stuff was a couple years later than it actually was.) Doesnt mean I like them musically any more than I did before.
I only own the Green Album: once in awhile a song comes on that I want to buy immediately without knowing who it is, and it turned out to be in this case Island in the Sun. (I too did not think they were worth buying up until that point as all I liked from them up until then was Buddy Holly and No One Else.
Incubus for me. I had always dismissed them as just another generic top 40 nu-metal-ish group. Finally my friends sat me down and had me watch the Alive At Red Rocks DVD(which they got to see live), it was then that I came around.
Turns out they are all a really talented group of musicians. They also did a nice all instrumental side project called the Time Lapse Consortium. Though I am a bit disappointed with their latest work, I was hoping it would be more prog-ish, like their four-part ‘Odyssey’ they did for the Halo 2 soundtrack; that was really nice work and even featured a little in the A@RR DVD too. As well, many of the lyrics ended up being a lot deeper dive than I was expecting.
It also helped that my introduction to them was highlighted by the single greatest concert venue ever. A few years later I would be fortunate enough to catch them there again.
They are still often(and unfairly) scoffed at, but IMHO, I think they are a vastly underrated band.
I forgot about Incubus (and Matchbox 20 for that matter). I disliked both of those bands until I heard some live acoustic stuff by them, and now I think they are good musicians that can write decent songs, that just happen to perform songs in styles I don’t like.
