Entertainment For Lively Minds
Songs you fell in love with when you were young but wouldn't fall in love with now
So I was reminiscing on the "Great lesser known songs by really famous artists" thread about tracks by the House of Love and Morrissey that I adore but which never became well-loved parts of either artist's repertoire.
And the thing is, even I probably wouldn't like those songs if I heard them for the first time today. Yes I Am Blind by Morrissey struck a chord because I was going through a Kevin-the-Teenager phase and had just been dumped by a girl who happened to be a Christian. So when Moz sang "Little lamb on a hill, run fast if you can/Good Christians want to kill you and your life has not even begun", I thought - and this makes me cringe - "That's me that is."
But the song itself doesn't make me cringe - I still love it. And I just can't tell whether it's only because I'm still listening to it through my 17-year-old ears. Are the lyrics horribly trite? Does the song have appalling 80s production? I don't know, but I'd probably think so if I heard it for the first time on Spotify.
What songs can you not help liking but probably wouldn't stand if you heard them for the first time today? (And does anyone else actually like Yes I Am Blind?)
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When I was about 12 my uncle gave me a single by a South African
singer that was very catchy and the lyrics appealed to a 12 year old boy. It was something about fighting the wild Matebele and scratching a living from the hard land. I doubt if it would appeal today. I wish I still had it though.
Tricky one
I love a lot of music that I loved when I was younger. And some of it I'm pretty sure I would like if I heard it with fresh ears today.
What I did really like (that fits with this) when I was 12 was Queen's soundtrack to Flash Gordon. I've never liked Queen much apart from that and Under Pressure, and I really don't think I would like it if I heard it new. It's as much for the associations it has as the music that I still listen to it today.
Ah... Queen!
Queen pretty much sum up to me music I liked as a kid but can't take anymore. And indeed many fourteen year old boys (especially in France, Spain, Italy and Germany) seem to love them. They certainly have something that appeals to foreign male adolescents, which could well the very reason why they're so unattractive to me now!
Ah, Morrissey
There's quite a lot of Smiths/Morrissey stuff that I liked when I was 17, but, even though I still sort of like it, it certainly wouldn't grab me at my current 'tender' age of 30. The music reminds me of how horribly self-absorbed I was, and how Morrissey still is.
I've got a mate who worships Mozza, but he's basically a drip who still thinks that the world is against him, and he's too delicate and deep for relationships. He needs to start listening to Leonard Cohen - the exact sort of music you wouldn't like when you're 15 but do when the years roll by.
i liked Leonard Cohen
when I was 15. I think that there LC appeals to all ages. You can tell this by the way they used his song (though covered by Rufus Wainwright) in Shrek.
I'm nearly 30 now and I still like Morrisey but I don't think I'm too delicate and deep for relationships.
I found The Smiths hard to get into when I was a teenager actually. I only really got into them properly in my early 20's.
I think both Morrisey and Cohen touch universals in many of their songs. And they are also spot on with the specific details. They both chime with some people and not others. Such is music.
With good lyricists and tunesmiths like Morrisey and Cohen if you like them then you return to their songs at different times in your life and find they mean new things to you.
And they come upon you at different times and for different reasons.
The top 3 Cohen Songs to appeal to teenagers:
1. Suzanne - all that sex and need
2. Chelsea Hotel #2 - all that sex and need
3. First We Take Manhatten - all that bombast and attack
...
4. The Future - this is totally right for an angry teenager, as seen by its use in the film Natural Born Killers. A couple of Cohen songs were used in that film.
5. Hallelujah
I wonder if I could make it to 10 LC cohen songs that are perfect for teenagers. I'll keep thinking, feel free to help.
I was trying to think of three Smiths/Morrisey songs that are perfect for appealing to people in their middle ages. It's hard though because he appeals to the inner teenager in a way. That's why I had to stop being a teenager to get him. If you see what I mean.
But here are my tentative first attempts:
1. Panic - the reactionary take on the hang the DJ line, the older we get surely the less the DJ's speak about our lives, they've moved on to the young.
2. Cemetery Gates - a song dealing with mortality and requiring at least a vague knowledge of poetry, definitely one you get more the older you get.
3. Please, Please, Please, Let Me Get What I Want - this is appropriate to the teenager of course, with the melodrama and whining of it. But hang on isn't it more the voice of the mid life crisis. "Haven't had a dream in a long time. See the luck I've had, would make a good man bad." That's got to mean more when you're lonely in your 40's or 50's. Perhaps its the sound track to approaching a girl half your age in a bar and embarking on a disasterous affair that will only serve to ruin your life and your childrens oppinion of you.
Fell in love with "Marie Marie"
by Shakin' Stevens. Not on your nelly now, BUT introduced me to the whole big world of music, vinyl, record shops and life. Wouldn't change it for the world!
I'm embarrassed to say
that when I was about 20 I thought that Sade's "Diamond Life" album was the height of sophistication. Whereas now I'd no more listen to it than the latest offering from Whitney Dion or someone equally bland
Ken Masters & Sade
What lost it for me was when watching Howard's Way (..yes I know but I live where it is set, so that was my excuse..) slimey lothario Ken Masters played it as his seduction music
Huh!
You were lucky. In a fit of teen suaveness, I bought the follow up to Diamond Life, Promise. Listened to it about 10 years ago. Terrible.
Ugh.
The thing is, sometimes you can listen to stuff like that and know that you'd taken leave of your senses (last night I tried to listen to Carter USM for the first time in almost 20 years. Good god. What the hell was my 16-year-old self thinking?)
But with certain other songs from your youth, your normal critical faculties are suspended. You have a suspicion that you should have outgrown these tracks by now or that perhaps they weren't much cop to start with, but you can't help loving them still. I suppose that's what I was getting at with my post.
And the thing is, I really can't tell. Sometimes when I'm knocking up a CD-R for someone I want to put 'Fade Away' by the House of Love on it but think - wait a minute - is this a song only a 16-year-old in 1992 would like?
I still like most things
I liked back then. Even Silver Lady and the hits of Boney M, though it's taken a long time to get round to allowing them back into the fold.
Don't care if I never hear anything from the Grease or Saturday Night Fever soundtracks ever again though.
REM
I don't know what's happened, but somewhere in the last few years I have rather fallen out of love with the early REM albums. Having not listened to them for some time, I tried recently to listen to them all again and somehow the magic had just gone. I also find myself flicking past them on the ipod shuffle.
I still love some songs like Perfect Circle, Fall on Me, Gardening at Night, but the whole albums now just seem a little strange and distant and yet I loved them at the time and for many years after. Maybe my tastes have changed but if I heard them for the first time now I wonder what I would make of them.
Fascist Groove Thang
Thought I was the coolest person in the sixth form common room when I put on my newly purchased copy of Heaven 17's Fascist Groove Thang
Now sounds dated, poorly produced with embarrassing lyrics
No, no, no
Although you'd have to drop the "Democrats are out of power" verse, a remix would be great and very relevant at the moment. That voice is amazing still
Yes, yes, yes
I agree with The Amorous Hum (who couldn't?)! A fine record, and cooler than ever! I still listen to Penthouse And Pavement in the car.
Penthouse & Pavement the
Penthouse & Pavement the track is OK..but Groove thang is too frenetic and the words don't scan
I have fond memories of the tune but it doesn't stand up (methinks). Same actually for most Heaven 17 - Human League pre or post their departure has lasted better.
(And then there was that awful BEF album)
Erm
Still sounds good to my ears.
BEF
Weren't they responsible for ressurecting Tina Turner's career? They should be shot for that alone.
oh dear
Stingono has inadvertantly reminded me of something I'd much rather forget - another track on BEF's Music of Quality and Distinction album was Paula Yates covering These Boots Are Made For Walking.
For covering, read murdering.
Bernie Nolan
covering You Keep Me Hanging On
Shivering giggles
I seem to remember hearing that Glenn Gregory had to go and sit in the outside lavvy as they recorded this one - he was cracking up so much at just how bad she was.
Alice pressed
I still like everything I listened to when I was young (well maybe not Mud) and I've got the ipod to prove it.
BUT "Alice" from the Sisters of Mercy, would not grab my attention the way it did back then - tinny production and annoying drum machine.
Tell you what, thinking about it, a real drummer would have improved them 1000%. Can't believe I thought it was cool they used a machine AND gave it a wacky name.
Stil love "Floorshow" though
10538 Overture
I first heard this when I was about 12, maybe 10 years after it was released. Descending chords, muffled vocals, brilliant. I heard it recently, and all I could hear was the awful strings.
A lot of punk
But not all. Punk, when it was just about still happening (late 70s), was my first real musical "bag" (hem hem). As a Peel-lovin', Sounds and NME-readin', record-buyin', parent-annoyin', ever-givin', cool-buzzin' teenager I amassed a collection of records which I bopped about to in my bedroom on many an evening when I should have been doing more homework. Most of said records are still stored away at home, but boy do a lot of them sound awful now to my middle-aged ears.
Not allofem, though, I must add. For example, I still hear the first few Ramones LPs as fantastic, ground-breaking records. And a few still make me play air guitar. But sheesh, there was a lot of crap released back then.
Yes, I Am Blind
is a great song - Moz's work from 88 to 90 is among his best - scattered across a clutch of 12" singles. I was 18 when it came out, it was a bit adolescent lyric wise but it holds up well. Production wise it was Langer and Winstanley's first with Morrissey, so the engineering and arranging was of good quality to say the least,andnot particularly 80s, the eighties were over by 89 weren't they :-D, ..(i'm probably a bit late for this post but just had to share the enthusiasm for that song,... there, i feel better now)
The obverse
is songs you hated then, but love now.
I mentioned in another thread that Don't Say You Love Me from Free's
Fire and Water is a song I used to loathe. I couldn't understand why they'd wasted the vinyl, but now it's one of my favourite Free songs.