I heard the song “I Want To Break Free” by Queen for the first time yesterday. I’m totally in love with that song and have listened to it at least 20 times since. I’m not sure exactly when the song came out, but I can’t believe I missed it.
Supertramp is another one. I’d never even heard of them til the mid 1990’s, although they were popular in the mid to late 70’s to 80’s. Now, I think they’re one of the best (IMHO) bands of my lifetime.
Any other examples of songs/bands that you didn’t appreciate until years later?
Madness. I (just like everybody else) really liked “Our House” in the 80’s, but that was pretty much it. I recently started listening to their stuff again and have just been amazed at how good it is.
Men Without Hats, though, are still pretty weak, no matter how much nostalgia I have for them.
My brothers played Dire Straits, Genesis, Enya, allkinds when I was a kid. I never liked any of it. Then I grew up a bit and those three, amongst others, became my favourite.
I still don’t like the Beatles. Liked some of Paul McCartney and John Lennon’s post-beatles stuff though.
Dwight Yoakham and Johnny Cash. I was raised mostly by my mom who had more of a Top 40s and Motown perspective on music but I also had constant contact with my dad who listens to nothing but country, mostly the old stuff. And by old, I mean stuff from the 20’s onwards.
I eventually became a country fan myself (but am no longer… I’m pretty much an alt, metal, and prog rock fan nowadays \m/) but could never get into the older or more traditional stuff… Marty Robbins was about the only older artist I liked and Alan Jackson and George Strait were as traditional sounding as I got. 'cause of that, I never got into Cash until a few years ago and, for some reason, I always LOATHED Dwight Yoakham but have come to appreciate him in recent years as well.
I need to pick up some albums of theirs… I’m sure they’d go nicely with my Tool, APC, Metallica, and Chilli Peppers CDs.
After you’ve listened your way through the Supertramp catalogue, I strongly recommend Roger Hodgson’s debut solo album “In the Eye of The Storm”. It’s deeper / less formulated than most of the stuff he did with Supertramp - and like John Fogerty & Mike Oldfield - he played (almost all) the instruments on it himself
I hated the Beatles when I was younger because it was “that weird band that my dad liked” and liking music that your parents listen to is of course a big taboo. But lately, I really like them.
This probably doesn’t count since I wasn’t even born until over 20 years after the Beatles became popular.
A few years ago my friend was listing some bands for me to listen to, including Thrice and From Autumn To Ashes. I got into Thrice. About month ago I just got in to From Autumn To Ashes.
I used to occasionally listen to Rage Against the Machine back in the days when their songs were on Tony Hawk’s PS 1 and 2. Then I just got into them quite a bit about 6-10 months ago.
I didn’t really like the Doors when they first came out. “Light My Fire” was OK, but the rest didn’t do much for me. I listened to their stuff later and realized it was pretty good.
The Soft Machine was another group that grew on me. I bought their “Volume 2” album, and listened. A few of the cuts on side one were interesting, as was the lack of rhyming lyrics, but the rest didn’t interest me. But, from time to time, I’d play the album again and discovered that more and more of the songs sounded good. Then, I realized they were great music. I went out and bought “Third” (praised at the time as one of the greatest rock albums ever) and loved that.
I didn’t care much for Creedence Clearwater Revival when they first came out (no one I knew did – they were too top 40 to take seriously), but I’ve come to realize they did pretty good stuff.
There are numerous bands, esp. heavy metal bands, that took me a long time to appreciate, but the champ has to be AC/DC. Over the course of a decade, they went from HATE to BARELY TOLERABLE to GRUDGINGLY LIKE. It wasn’t until their double live CD was released in '92 (15 years after I first heard them) that I suddenly realized, “Hey, this is a great band!”
I just bought their greatest-hits album and I’ve been listening to it a lot.
In that same genre, I’ve been listening to The Specials too…some of their more overtly-political songs sound a bit dated now (and would probably be incomprehensible to some), but they sound great too. To think I never listened to ska at all even a year ago…
as a Nugent/Aerosmith/UFO teenager in the late 70’s, I first heard the Pretenders’ first album. I thought it was…okay. As a record reviewer on my school newspaper, I gave it 2 out of 4 stars…
Two years later, in college, my roommate played the album. What the hell had I been thinking?! What a great, perfect amazing album! To my dying day, I will not understand how the quality of that album didn’t jump out at me, even as a lunkhead hard rock teen…(and by the way, the first 4 Aerosmith albums still rock amazingly hard - I didn’t give up style of music for the other; I just allowed more styles in under the tent…)
I never really liked U2 that much. Yeah I listened to songs on the radio, but never thought of buying an album, even during those couple of years when they were the Biggest Band on the Planet
However… my friend was cleaning out some stuff and gave me a Joshua Tree tape, which has been sitting in my car’s tape deck for many months now as my emergency music backup.
(Also, I will always love Bono for that American Flag bit during the SuperBowl. Cheesy, but there it is).
I can’t believe it took me so long to get into The Smiths. Morrissey’s voice got on my nerves at first, and I thought the production was too dated. In the past year, though, I’ve learned the error of my ways.
I bought Joy Division’s Closer a few years ago, but I’m just now discovering how completely brilliant it is.
I bought the 9/11 NYC Tribute Concert and it has a few tunes by John Mellencamp. I think I didn’t appreciate him because I’d never heard him play live. He really has some great songs.
Fleetwood Mac
I have learned to be more mellow about Stevie Nicks’ lack of articulation. I actually bought a greatest hits cd and am quite enjoying it.
