Truly? I would never write a song off after only one or two listens. There’s too much context to consider. Time and experience can certainly change an attitude. I personally never enjoyed WLCTT when I first heard R&H but I now consider it a great song. (Not looking for an argument of the merits of the song; merely stating an opinion - that an opinion can change). Have you never reheard a song in a different light?
Truly. Of course it's contextual. A song I dislike on an album I do like will get incidental listens; a song on an album I don't like, or a stand-alone song that did nothing for me, won't get much of a chance at further listens. And why should it? There is so much great music out there that I want to put on repeat and play compulsively, why waste my time with a song that doesn't register? I average about 250 new albums a year, and I'd like to think I know my own tastes pretty well by now. I'm fairly generous in what I add to my Spotify library or download; if it doesn't even make me think "yeah I might want to hear that again at some point", I'm unlikely to change my perspective.
And sure there are a few songs where my initial impression and my current one are different, like your WLCTT example. The most dramatic is Pinback's Grey Machine, which I hated on first listen and is now one of my very favourite Pinback songs. Part of the reason it got more of a chance is because the rest of the Offcell EP clicked with me immediately, and one day I left it playing and halfway through Grey Machine was all "wait I thought this song sucked? This is awesome!" (It's 11 minutes long and too much of my initial dislike was based on the intro.) But the other part was that I was a teenager obsessed with prog metal; Pinback were basically the only indie rock band I listened to, and Grey Machine was just a bit too far beyond my predominant listening. Once my tastes expanded in my early 20s, it fitted very neatly and I doubt I would have the same initial reaction now.
Closer to home Interference-wise is A Man and a Woman, which I thought was a superficial ditty at first but now rate as one of HTDAAB's better tracks, and continued exposure helped there. But usually my opinion of songs towards which I'm initially ambivalent (or worse) goes
down through exposure, not up, so I'm not worried that there are more than a few good songs I'm missing out on by moving on quickly - and whatever few I'm missing out on are more than counteracted by all the great ones I've found by moving on. I do wonder if all these people urging more listens to U2 songs to fully appreciate them would accord the same generosity to other bands. If you hear a song you don't like on the radio, do you think "maybe I'll like that after the twentieth listen"?
The volume thing is a good point Kieran - I'm going to have to change up how I listen to new music next year, because this thing of making a shortlist and trying to listen to them all is just not working for me at all. This is more suited to RMT, but I cannot listen to 100+ albums in a year. I've tried this the past couple years, I've heard quite a few albums this year and a lot of have been in the "good but not great" category and I'm finding that the LM-style approach of listening to everything is just resulting in me not connecting with more music and it's a bit depressing.
It's funny, you can tell just by looking at my RYM stats that 2015 is my favourite year of the past decade because it's actually one of the years from which I've listened to the
fewest albums. I think it's just short of 250 albums, while 2010 and 2011 are both above 300 and this year is set to crack that mark too. That's because there are so many albums from 2015 that I fucking adore that I spent heaps of that year just playing them, and less time seeking out other stuff. 2017, on the other hand, hasn't been as strong, so with fewer albums I'm playing on repeat excessively, I've spent more time trying to find
that album. You can tell I've fallen in love with Blood Command's album and Young Ejecta's latest single because I've not rated a whole lot of new stuff in the past week (it's kind of embarrassing that I've got about 80 scrobbles of Build a Fire in that period, but goddamn it's so good, miles ahead of Young Ejecta's previous work).
My listening selections are very much on instinct, I don't try to expose myself to a certain amount of albums. But like LM my job and lifestyle allows me to listen to
a lot of music. And in a way music is like a drug and albums I spin a lot are the really good highs. I'd have shared before my story of listening to Anathema's album Judgement for the first time in 2006. I'd never experienced an album quite like that before, such an intense emotional response. After the initial high passed - when I played it for hours a day and even rigged up speakers to listen to it in the shower - much of the rest of my music listening has been trying to replicate that high.
Very, very few people should listen to music the way I do because a good chunk of the population has jobs and social lives, whereas I spend most of my time doing online courses for my teaching credential and writing. You'd be surprised how many re-listens of my favorite 2017 albums that I've managed to fit in despite hearing nearly 250 albums on the year. I've probably heard DAMN and Everybody Works by Jay Som 10-20 times each.
Just a quick scan of my last.fm stats indicates my favourite albums this year have had about 15-20 listens each, and my favourite songs over 30 (three over 80).
Having music on at any waking moment and working a solitary job sure helps here. And I wouldn't say I've have a quiet social life this year either; if anything quite the opposite.
