For a long time I pretty much hated Bob Dylan, thinking he was a mumbler and an indifferent songwriter. The only song of his which I had on my iPod was “Things Have Changed,” from the Wonder Boys soundtrack. Then recently I decided to listen to some of his early stuff, and wow! “Highway 61 Revisited” and “Desolation Row” blew my socks off, 40-some years after their release. I’d never heard them on the radio or anywhere else in my entire life.
It had been a little over 10 years after “A Girl Like You” by Edwyn Collins came out that I heard the song. I never heard it before, and when trying to Google who did it, a lot of people thought it was Iggy Pop.
I do this all the time - go back and dig out some artist I hadn’t heard when they were big, typically because they are being mentioned later and someone makes a case that they were actually worth a listen and not just hype.
Recently I just stumbed across this song I’m Not an Addict by K’s Choice (YouTube link) - can’t get it on iTunes, near as I can tell. Given the subject matter, it could easily be the soundtrack to an ABC After-School Special, but the singer’s voice (she’s Belgian I think) and the basic feel of the song are excellent, IMHO…
ETA: Euro version of video - it features the singer better: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cklb7L0OA1c&feature=related...is it just me, or does she look like Buffy’s mom? 
Songs? I discovered entire bands way past their prime. I somehow survived high school in the 90s without knowing Nirvana, Weezer, or Red Hot Chili Peppers. And I was 21 when I discovered Cake and Rush.
I never paid attention to them in the 80s, but in the past 5 years or so I have come to really enjoy The Fixx.
Oh, Hell, yes. I didn’t hear Dylan’s Blonde On Blonde until about 10 years ago. I didn’t hear the young Frank Sinatra sing Polkadots And Moonbeams until most of the musicians were long dead.
I still don’t understand why You’re Not Drinkin’ Enough by Don Henley wasn’t a huge hit. I didn’t hear it until long after it was new.
I guess I can be forgiven for not loving Bach, Haydn, Mozart, Beethoven, and Wagner until after their music was fresh was and the latest thing in the all-night raves of those days. The angry daddies of Mozart’s time were burning violins in religious revivals. By the time I was born, angry daddies had moved on to hating the sensuous sirens of jazz and blues. No wonder Bessie Smith was buried in an unmarked grave.
If you weren’t kicked around, were you really a pioneer? Sometimes, I wonder.
I love that whole album, Building the Perfect Beast. I don’t think there’s a bad song on it. Be sure you get the tape or CD with the extra song, “A Month of Sundays,” too, that IIRC wasn’t on the original album.
For some reason, I never listened to PJ Harvey’s first two CDs even though I really liked her later albums. I just discovered “Sheela-na-gig” this year.
Ooh. K’s Choice. One of my favorite bands. The title of that song is actually “Not an Addict”. Sarah Bettens – the lead singer – is Belgian as you said, but she lives in Tennessee, and I saw her in a solo concert in Atlanta a couple years ago. Met her after the show, too, and got a picture and an autograph. Absolutely lovely woman.
Also, speaking of Buffy, she actually has a cameo in *Dopplegangland *singing “Virgin State of Mind” during Vampire Willow’s entrance to The Bronze. It’s great, too.
…and a third favorite song is Everything for Free.
I’ll stop now, promise.
“Your Wildest Dreams” is one of my favorite songs but, although it came out while I was in high school, it wasn’t on my radio until a decade later.
I somehow missed “Midnight Train to Georgia” until they did it on 30 Rock.
I somehow missed all of Mozart’s music when it first came out. Guess I was busy with other things.
Probably listening to The New Kids on the Block I reckon.
Just last month I got into discovering the genius that is YYZ by Rush. I knew of them, I liked Tom Sawyer, I just never really thought they could make another song that cool… and of all things an instrumental. But I think i like YYZ even more than I like Tom Sawyer sometimes. Which is pretty damn impressive for an instrumental for me.
Don’t know how much this counts, but there are songs I’ll hear, and love, only to find out later that it’s a remake, and I never heard the original song.
For example, about 10 years ago when Orgy came out with Blue Monday, I never had heard the original version by New Order before then.
I came to discover the brilliance of Leonard Cohen waaaaay too late in life.
The Clash
The Who
The Kinks
They’re great!!
Who knew!!
I never heard “The Breaks” (1980) by Kurtis Blow until about 2 or 3 years ago. I first heard it on an episode of “Crap from the Past,” a weekly radio show of semi-obscure pop music originating from a nonprofit radio station in Minneapolis. “The Breaks” really knocked me on my buttocks the first time I heard it.
I discovered Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross about a dozen years after they had broken up.
I hadn’t heard “Western Union” by the Five Americans until about five years ago; the song dates from the mid-60s.
I didn’t hear 30’s blues musicians until I was into my twenties, that’d be the 80’s, and, it really changed my whole life and attitude, forevermore. Those guys and gals were way muy cool, and, then, to learn the following tide, even better.