I’ve said, essentially, the same thing on these boards before, but I’ll belabor the point anyway.
The songs (and, movies, books, poems, whatever) that are most likely to make us cringe a little when we recall how much we once liked them are the ones that struck as as incredibly profound in our early adolescence.
Teenyboppers who once loved the Osmonds or Shaun Cassidy or the Backstreet Boys or New Kids on the Block probably WON’T be all that embarrassed to hear their old favorite songs on the radio today. But those of us who loved Seventies art-rock bands sometimes shake our heads and laugh at the stupidity of lyrics we once thought were deep and insightful.
Hey, I STILL love the music on most of my old Seventies ELP, Crimson and Yes albums… but I remember how I used to analyze the lyrics of Jon Anderson and Pete Sinfield, and wonder now how I EVER took them so seriously.
I actually saw Jon Anderson in concert here in Austin some months back. AFter one of his old, incomprehensible Yes songs,someone in the audience asked “What does that song mean?” To his credit, Anderson answered, “People always ask what my songs mean. I don’t know what they mean.” He then took a puff on an imaginary joint, everyone laughed, and I thought, "Yeah, that’s what I figured. Wish you’d told me that in 1975, though, and saved me from all that time trying to understand Close to the Edge."
I was too old to be a true Nirvana fan, but I expected that a lot of teens who embraced Kirk Cobain would eventually grow up and think, “The guitar riffs are still cool, but you know… those lyrics aren’t as awesome as I remembered, In fact, Kirk is kind of a whiny drag sometimes.”