You hear a song for the first time in years. You think, how the HELL did I ever like this crap?

Cafe Society
1

Just by coincidence (honestly!), I was just about to start my thread before I came upon this one.

The other night, for some reason, I suddenly recalled the Rembrandts’ “Drowning in Your Tears.” I thought it was a great song back when it came out in 1995 or 1996, but then forgot about it. So, I decided to listen to it again the other night. What a load of crap! I’m embarrassed to admit I ever liked it.

What other formerly-loved songs have you recalled after years, and absolutely hated them after listening to them again?

2

Since I was a teen in the 80s, this happens often, due to the resulting mismatch between “objectively good music” and “music which strikes an emotional chord” (I exaggerate – the 80s weren’t THAT bad, really – but you get the idea).

Let’s see…I think the most recent occurrence of this for me was the other day when I heard Manfred Mann’s version of “You Angel You” for the first tine since about 1981, and realized how awful it is. The camp counselor who DJ’d the dances back then (Chad Green, are you out there?) evidently liked the song, and so the sweetness of the place and time stuck with me by association – but the song actually sucks.

(ETA – The version of the same song by New Riders of the Purple Sage, on the other hand, isn’t bad at all. Nor is the composer’s own version – Bob Dylan, that is.)

3

Looking through my collection of old vinyl, there are a few 16", 33-1/3 rpm extended play single dance songs in there. (best as I can put it, but album size, one song per side). Edwin Starr “Contact”. Patrick Hernandez “Born To Be Alive”. etc. From the 70s. Rather repetitious, don’t translate well off the dance floor into the living room, and I can sort of understand why some people say disco sucks!

4

I’ve been thinking about starting a “lifelong playlist” journal to record the memories I have associated with certain songs. I’m a lot less into screamcore than I was for a(n extremely brief) period, and if I heard a different song by the same artist I could easily think, “This is such crap!” But the right songs - even if objectively shit - can bring back great memories.

5

Some of the death metal I listened to as a teen is not only objectively horrible it is unlistenable to me now. Playing a guitar as fast as humanly possible while stabbing Cookie Monster in the testicles and recording the resulting screams of pain and rage is not music.

6

I had a couple of Sigue Sigue Sputnik cassettes back in the 80s that I wore out from repeated play. Then I recently created a Sigue Sigue Sputnik channel on Pandora radio for old times sake. Ohhhh boy, was that some awful garbage.

7

Pretty much everything that was popular in the late 90s/early 00s.

8

Listening to Nevermind recently I came to agree with Kurt Cobain’s opinion of it: a bit lame.

9

For some reason, I had a hankering for Grace Slick’s “Dreams” back in the day (which I see was 1980). Cannot for the life of me think why.

10

Fortunately everything I buy becomes an instant timeless classic even Wild, Wild West.

11

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.”

12

I’d have to pick 19 by Paul Hardcastle. N-n-nineteen. When I was a kid it was utterly wicked. It had a really good, menacing bassline, and lots of samples from the coolest war of all time. Nowadays I hear a weak, limp jazz-pop fusion track with some of the most distracting backing vocals of all time. “Destruction! Of men in their prime / whose average age was nineteen”. If it had saxophones on it as well it would be the worst song of all time.

Also, everything else Paul Hardcastle put out. He was a light synth-jazz keyboardist who lucked his way into becoming the mainstream media’s face of electronic dance music for a few years. Also, this. It has a little postcard you can send to Ronald Reagan.

A lot of early-80s electro sounds limp nowadays. Not because it was rubbish at the time, but because it was done on a low budget and the tempos have picked up since then. E.g. Planet Rock. But that doesn’t really fit the premise. I can understand why I liked it. It’s just that a lot of the power has faded since then. But 19 was rubbish then and it’s rubbish now.

Shows you what a good name can do, though. Paul Hardcastle is a really good rock name. If you didn’t know who he was, you’d guess he was a top remixer or something. He should hire it out.

13

Ponch.

You are making the assumption that the opinion of the now ‘you’ overrides the opinion of the ‘then’ you.

I am not so sure about that when it comes to myself and I am in the same situation.

14

Not that I ever thought it was a particularly great song, but the Andrew Gold song “Lonely Boy” was one I liked back in the '70s when I was a kid. I recently heard it and actually listened to the lyrics and was astounded at how stupid it was. I have a hard time even listening to it anymore because it’s just so dumb.

15

Funny, I had this same revelation about 19 the other day after looking it up on YouTube. I can listen to it and kind of understand why, then, I thought the song was so neat, but it really didn’t age well.

Too, I have come to feel the same about any of the electronic dance music I’ve listened to from the mid-1980s to <current year - 5 or so>. Loved loved loved Hi-NRG pop dance stuff in the 1980s, like Cathy Dennis, and now it’s just something I cringe at. Stock-Aitken-Waterman-produced CDs imported into iTunes forms a huge portion of my collection, but I have to specifically block those from being synced to my iPhone, because I know I’ll never want to, y’know, actually listen to them. I still think Cathy Dennis was hot as hell, though.

Same kind of thing with early house (Black Box? La Bouche? No thanks!) that I thought was impressive in the day, or the stuff that used to make me dance for 8 hours straight in the early 2000s (did I really think Darude’s Sandstorm was all that awesome?). Any dance music I ever listened to that features hand claps, whistles, kookaburras, loons, or the scream of any kind of wild cat is automatically embarrassing now.

Funny thing is that the popular 1970s funk and disco hits still remain danceable, and seem more timeless than the newer stuff. Overall, I prefer the newest-of-the-new in electronic dance, but no longer think “yeah, I’m gonna love this stuff forever!”

16

In the Year 2525 was horribly fraught with meaning for me, when I first heard it on the radio in the late 60’s.

What was I thinking???!

(well, I was 11 years old, but still…)