I've noticed that I appreciate older songs that I didn't like when they were current (or current to me). Songs seem to get better with time. If a song is attached to a memory, and I see those memories through rose colored glasses, its easy to forget all the bad stuff and remember more of the good. If there is a song with that memory, its gonna sound better over the years.

Some recent examples: "Every Morning" by Sugar Ray. I didn't hate the song, but I never liked it. I recently heard it and was surprised at how pleasant it was to hear. Once.

"Never Been to Spain" by 3 Dog Night. I never card about this song, but I saw 3 Dog Night at a free concert in the park or something in the early 90s. Now the song brings back that glorious memory.

"Foolin' " by Def Leppard. This song got lost in the shuffle in the 80s, but somehow its still around and better now than it was then.

Some songs are good if they're only associated with bad times, because I can listen to them now and realize I made it through the bad times. The song represents a victory. "My Own Prison" by Creed isn't a great song in my opinion, but its a song I heard a lot as I was going through a ****ty period. Now I like hearing it.

There are a lot of songs that were "of there time", and that I had some great times with, but they did not age well. I'm looking at everything by Motley Crue and 90% of Poison. I still like those songs, but they are getting worse with each passing year.

Is this unique to me, or is it a real deal?

Part of it for me is I was much less likely to get outside my genre (hard rock/metal) when I was young. Now, I'm much more inclined to like all sorts of music.

Edit-one example. I wouldn't have been caught dead listening to Hall and Oats back in the 80s but I love them now.

Definitely agree.

Part of it could be that back in the day, hit songs were often overplayed on the radio. So you'd get tired of them.

Now, you hear a song you haven't heard in 20 years or more and it sounds fresh.

I was also a pretty devout follower of metal and hard rock growing up, and wouldn't explore far outside of the boundaries. And if it was remotely commercial sounding, no way. Now I am very eclectic and diverse. I will listen to anything if it's good. Which also has meant reaching back to bands in the 80's and '90's that I wouldn't have been caught dead listening to and having a genuine appreciation. Good news us that it's like discovering them for the very first time when they already have a timeless catalog.

Frok said:

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Taste changes over time for sure. Some of the music I loved when I was young sounds ridiculous now. Songs I thought I was too cool for sound great now.

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This. I was big into the hair bands of the late 80s/early 90s. Although a handful of it passed the test of time, most of it sounds like complete garbage to me now.

A couple things have really made this true for me the last few years.

Since around the time Covid hit I have been on a streak of reading music books. Tons of autobiographies and some about general scenes and I've made it a practice to listen to the music I'm reading about. For instance I'm reading "Born To Run" right now and he just recorded his second album, so today I fired up Apple Music and am listening to Springsteen's first two albums. This practice has opened me up and caused me to revisit a ton of music from the past I otherwise overlooked (Sonic Youth, Mark Lanegan, 80s indie bands), and given me new perspective on albums I already loved.

Also over the last year I've become something I never thought I'd be... a Dead Head. I'm a big John Mayer fan so last fall I went to a Dead & Company show at The Woodlands and the hooks set in. I ended up downloading the nugs app and listening to the entire tour, then ended up buying a couple Dead albums and a box set, reading "A Long Strange Trip", and now listen to them all the time.

One thing on the journey that really struck me was an interview I saw with Mayer about when he got into the Dead. We are the same age and he said (paraphrasing) "when I was in high school, listening to the Dead made you something that I didn't want to be. I had to kind of finally get through all the artifice of the band to finally hear the music."

That hit so true to me. I think you could make an argument that the Grateful Dead could be ranked as high as 3rd all time in band NAME recognition behind the Beatles and The Rolling Stones. I mean you go to Target and the youth section and they have those three bands in shirts (and maybe Nirvana). Everybody has heard of the Grateful Dead. But I also think if you flushed that out to a top 10 list of recognized bands (Zepplin, The Who, Queen, U2, Coldplay, Foo Fighters, Radiohead). I'm talking globally popular bands of the last 50 years. In that list, I would also argue that The Grateful Dead might be dead last in SONG recognition. Hell I listened to texas country at A&M and have listened to the Pat Green/Cory Morrow album "Songs We Wish We'd Written" a hundred times and had NO idea "Friend Of The Devil" was a Dead song. In fact, outside of maybe "Touch Of Grey", I don't think I could have named a Dead song off the top of my head before this journey. They are known more for their fans and being a hippy jam band and generic stuff much more than for their actual music, at least to the general public.

My rambling point is that sometimes with age and time you have to get past what you THOUGHT a band was and actually take the time to listen to them to discover what they're about.

Head Ninja In Charge said:

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Where does "Running Up That Hill" by Kate Bush fall into this conversation. It was already an absolute banger when it came out, but exposure through new IPs gave it fresh life - does that constitute a song getting better with age? Or are we distinguishing "better" from "bigger"?

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Placebo's cover is 1000x better than the original. I can't even listen to Kate Bush's version at this point. Probably an unpopular opinion, but her version isn't that great.

AggieOO said:

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Head Ninja In Charge said:

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Where does "Running Up That Hill" by Kate Bush fall into this conversation. It was already an absolute banger when it came out, but exposure through new IPs gave it fresh life - does that constitute a song getting better with age? Or are we distinguishing "better" from "bigger"?

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Placebo's cover is 1000x better than the original. I can't even listen to Kate Bush's version at this point. Probably an unpopular opinion, but her version isn't that great.

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I find that cover to be, in fact, 1000x worse than the original.

Duncan Idaho said:

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I completely understand why 50s style dinners were so popular back in the day.

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One factor is modern music is almost designed to be hated by old people. Each generation desperately wants to get out from under the last in what is 'cool/rad/sick/tubular/supergreen/whatever. Case in point. As such, new music mostly sucks ass, making older songs sound even that much better.

Also, frankly, society was much more respectful of actual talent, and no one was going to spend resources publishing songs that didnt have big talent on display.

Now, digital sound cures talent deficiencies, and anything that gets out on social media and strikes the right nerve goes big, even if it sucks.