While it’s easy to use up one’s lifetime listens of mediocre songs (i.e. the ones you could tolerate and not change the station because you figured the next song would be better), increasingly that’s been happening with me with even the better stuff from the classic-rock era. For example, Who’s Next is, IMHO, a fucking GREAT album. I can’t stand to hear its songs on the air anymore; I’ve just heard them too many times. And this is starting to work its way into the 1980s: a year or two back, The Police’s “Synchronicity II” went overnight from a song I really liked, to one I couldn’t stand to hear one more stinkin’ time.
So I’ve pretty much abandoned listening to classic rock stations anymore. Pretty much everything I listen to these days is stuff that came out in the 1990s or later, or if it came out earlier, either was never part of the classic-rock canon, or dropped out of the classic-rock canon early on enough that it didn’t get played to death over the decades. But mostly the post-1990 stuff.
I know, it sounds stupid, but why not? It wouldn’t be hard at all to come up with a playlist of really good songs by classic-rock artists that never got played on classic-rock stations that was way bigger than the typical playlist of a classic-rock station.
Somebody else would have to do it, though. Ten or fifteen years ago, I’d have had a great time working on a playlist like that. But in the time since, I really have burned out on classic rock.
Re “Hotel California”: the verses are in ballad meter. So the lyrics can be sung to the tunes of “Yellow Rose of Texas,” “Pop Goes the Weasel,” and the rest of the panoply of ballad meter songs.
Probably the best thing that can be done with the song at this point.
I’d give him a break on this one. He wrote it in 1972, years before he became a commercial success with “Night Moves.” It’s about being a struggling artist in that zone of being just successful enough to tour, but a long way from fame, because that’s where he was at the time.
The song still sucks, though, just not for that reason.
I don’t listen to the radio much these days because of the repetition of “the hits”. And some artists I just can not stand to hear any longer. I’ll almost hurt myself trying to turn off The Who ( the C.S.I franchise and commercials have killed them), The Police, Genesis and U2. These days my play list is what would probably be called deep cuts. I always bought albums instead of 45s (ya I’m old) so came to enjoy a lot of music that never got air play. I have it all on the hard drive and just click shuffle. Thumb drive for the pickup and bike.
