If I do not like a song in the first five seconds I will not like any other part.

Cafe Society
#1

I find this is true of every single song I have ever heard.

There are songs that I think are good, then one bit is great. But there are no songs which I think are rubbish, but one bit is good or great.

There is a minute chance this is because I skip a song if it hasn’t engaged me in those critical first few seconds (well to be more accurate, I jump to around the middle, then jump to the 75% point… every single time I do this I still don’t like what I’m hearing) but the reason this is minute is because most of the songs I know I know from my past and/or from TV where you can’t fast forward to see if it remains to be crap.

Do you have any songs in your playlist(s) that start out rubbish (to your ears) but either become good or have good bits?

The good song I have which has a better bit is the enigma song which they used part of in the trailer for ‘The Matrix’, particularly the bit where Neo and Trinity enter the lobby of the building where Morpheus is being held.

Edit: For the pedantic amongst you I am being fairly loose with my numbers. When I say ‘5’ I mean when the music starts proper. I.E somewhere between 0 and 15 second in. Some dramatic songs make a deliberate point of taking a long time to start the meat of the music.

#2

*Stinkfist *by Tool. Hated it the first time I heard it and honestly wondered if my CD player was malfunctioning for a few seconds because of the proggy sound effects at the beginning of the song. Still didn’t care for it much after listening to it a while longer but on repeated listens, I came to appreciate it and now consider it one of my favorite songs by one of my favorite bands.

See also: every early White Stripes single sans Seven Nation Army. They’re another favorite band.

#3

I tend to find the opposite - most songs I like don’t have particularly great beginnings. I often wish my ipod had a “skip to chorus” mode so I could tell which song it was playing.

#4

Elton John’s Funeral for a Friend, except in reverse. I really like the dramatic opening, but once he actually starts singing it drops from awesome to merely ok. I know it is the opposite of what Lobsang was talking about, but I think it’s the same principle.

#5

Definately, not everyone’s taste, but I found myself almost loathing Panda Bear’s Bros for the first 5 minutes. Suddenly it morphed into an explosion of oddness the likes of which I’ve rarely seen. It was almost as if the 5 minutes of annoying had to be there in order to truly appreciate the madness the song devolves into.

As to why I would listen to 5 mins of a song I hated without turning it off? It was playing on my outside speakers and I was too lazy to go in and switch the song. Sloth pays off on occasion

#6

Most of Destroyer|Dan Bejar requires patience - something interesting builds up in the middle, but the opening bits can be challenging.