Can You Force Yourself To Like A Record Through Blunt-Force Repetition?

That was one of my other considerations, Sarahell, so am interested to see how you get on with that.

it's possible to like anything when blunts are involved

This is such a great idea. I've done similar experiments in the past, like two summers ago when I forced myself to understand country music by checking out every c&w record in our local library system. I'm not sure what album I'm going to pick, but starting with something I hated from the singles poll results seems like a good idea.

i might try this with savages

at the very least it will make for interesting conversations with friends -- "sorry, I'm gonna have to skip your droney noise show, have to get home to listen to the Kanye album for the sake of science."

I am particularly looking forward to my upstairs neighbours absolutely *hating* me for the course of this, but I guess they put up with 2 solid weeks of The KLF over Xmas, so...

but the KLF are awesome

I think being subjected to music you didn't choose for that intensity is never fun. (Granted I think they were away.)

well yeah, my downstairs neighbor would practice funky keyboard jams for hours at a time a few years back.

the worst example of this was a roommate when i was in my early 20s who listened to "The Girl from Ipanema" over and over again, and ever since that song evokes the anger and anxiety of a trapped animal.

Imago Listening Club with his permission.

I find the idea of dictating to adults what experiments they should or shouldn't find the time for pretty pathetic, myself, to be honest.

― I'd rather be the swallow than a dick (Branwell Bell), Sunday, January 26, 2014 3:03 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

sorry i was just being a dick & hadn't actually read the thread now that i have its actually a cool experiment good luck

i've done this several times btw

it's something I had a lot more patience for in the pre-internet years, when music was harder to get hold of, so I would make more of an effort with rare things which had entailed difficulties to get hold of

ha yeah - this was mostly financially motivated i think. if i'd dropped FIFTEEN QUID on an album - a lot of money for a teenager! - i'd damn well convince myself i hadn't thrown money down the drain. especially if i'd bought it on the strength of reviews and unheard.

i'm not sure about blunt force repetition as a way into an album - forcing myself to listen to anything over and over again would make me hate albums i loved, i think. one thing i'm always conscious of as a critic is giving an album a chance when i'm the specific mood to be receptive to it. this is usually weather-based but also dependent on time of day, level of hangover/endorphins, general emotional state. forcing myself to listen to yeezus on repeat if i'm ill would be pretty stupid and pointless: why not wait til i'm pissed off or energetic?

repetition bearing in mind the above can be pretty fruitful and i would read people's experiments in that with interest. like BB, i pretty much did this with the knife and dawn richard albums, both of which are so dense and so packed with sounds and ideas and so uncompromisingly the artist's hermetically sealed vision that it did take that time so find my way in. i also tried to do this with the paramore album, as was illustrated by my periodic whining on its thread throughout the year as to why i couldn't hear what everyone else was obviously hearing. (eventually it was paramore placing on the trax poll that made them click, all the repetition in the world couldn't have helped)

I have to review the new Malkmus, and quick because it's been out for a few weeks now. But much as I'm a historical fan of his work, I just can't get up the enthusiasm or mood to listen through to it enough for it to sink in (and usually it takes about 3-4 listens of a new Pave/Malk album for it to click).

yeah, I get what you're saying, Lex - the thing is over the course of a week, my mood & energy tends to shift a *lot* (really Did. Not. Get. King while bouncing around on a Thursday evening or whatever, but loved it on a Sunday morning, feeling lazy & relaxed) so that listening to a record repeatedly for a week means if there is a mood to get that record, I will probably hit that mood at least once. Ditto the English weather.

It's funny, how quickly times change and how you get used to a new normal. I remember, as a kid, buying things with ENORMOUS amounts of money, it was the only album I'd be able to afford that month, and if it wasn't good, I would have to force myself to like it because of the investment. And now I can't even imagine doing something like that, the idea of buying an album without hearing it is ludicrous. Like, I am really feeling it as an imposition to have shitty internet access and be unable to stream the new albums that are currently coming out at the moment. (I always miss a huge chunk of current music while unemployed.)

Anyway, I haven't started because I now have to find this thing, I suppose.

Now really want to start a thread on "Image Bands" and bands that, by rights, you should be able to tell if you like them, just by looking at them. And the resulting disappointment when a band *doesn't* sound as stylin' as they look. That's the kind of thing I don't think would fly on ILM any more. Oh, fuck it. Doing it anyway.

I Think something like that's been done before (what hasn't?). I remember being disappointed by Devendra Banhart when I found out he wasn't an old whiskery lady.

It is rare that I finish work on a song/record and feel "I'm not so fucking tired of this". There are maybe ten or eleven clients' songs I could but won't name that I worked on that would still thrill me to goosebumps to listen to today, having listened to them 100+ times in the work process. But bad songs, working on something bad can make me fill physically terrible around the tenth time. I've burst into tears, punched walls, written unsent resignation e-mails over some songs. (This is part of the reason I don't get why a handful of listens can drive people to the rage I've seen on EOY polls; you know not true pain.) And yeah, I don't think that blunt-force repetition makes me like a song any more or any less, any more than I could get used to eating cardboard around the twentieth time. My like/dislike of a song is far more susceptible to influence in hearing/reading the opinions of others.

That said, context is the most important thing here. I'll listen to the same song in the morning and think it's too slow, or in the evening and think it's too fast, too reverberant on headphones, too dry at a mixing desk, vocals too high in the car, vocals too low in a coffee shop, too bassy in my kitchen, too trebly in my living room, too emo when I'm driving, too aggro when I'm cooking, etc. etc. If blunt-force repetition is gonna succeed for anybody, I'd guess it'll succeed because you've found a way to position that song in the correct location in your life. (Interestingly I've found that that Amel Larrieux song works so well in every possible context that I've been trying to listen to it in a situation where it doesn't sound good and have been failing every time, it always works.)

This is an interesting idea, but I'm not sure you can force yourself to like something, even through repetition. First of all there has to be a glimmer of curiosity involved, even if its a glimmer of a passing spark, but this curiosity varies wildly between genres and listeners. I've been in situations where I've had to listen to an album again and again, and really if you're A: not interested at all B: don't have a frame of reference for it to fit into or C: it's just not very good music, it won't reveal itself any more after the fourth listen. On the other hand the inherent value in a good bit of music will reveal itself. For example, I had to review the album Mala in Cuba for a site. The concept was interesting - dubstep pioneer using traditional Cuban sounds to augment his style - so naturally my curiosity and enthusiasm were peaked. The first listen proved to be really rewarding as my enthusiasm levels were high. By the third listen, the crack were beginning to show. I couldn't help but notice some of the project's limitations. By the 7th or 8th listen (seriously I must have listened to it well over 20 times in the space of a couple of weeks), the album's weaknesses felt so glaring they threatened to assimilate any of its good points. IT's not a bad album really, but I never want to hear it again and in my mind it's become very little more than a travesty.

Conversely, I wasn't struck by the Amel Larrieux song at all on first listen, but I'm pretty confident that if I heard it a bunch of times (maybe sequenced around some other suitable tracks) and heard it in a few different contexts outside of cursory YouTube sessions, that its qualities would start shining through. I think the qualities that make this kind of music appealing to people are secondary to me and therefore aren't likely to register with me the first time round. I think, personally speaking, the 'message' of a song (the lyrics or sentiment) has a tendency to ingrain itself a bit later on than other factors might - texture, concept, (huge) hooks or whatever.

Larrieux song intrigued me on first listen, blew me away on second. If I love something it's *usually* got to have a very strong effect on me from the get-go but there are many counterexamples.

I heard it on Lex's mix and had that rare feeling of familiarity-on-first-listen. Lex's criteria for music-evaluation is so alien to me that it feels especially good when there is intersection.

^this, although I do declare he and I intersect a good deal more than is logically plausible, usually in the region of slow, spacious, slightly artsy R&B

I think my take on this is similar to jmm's - the best way for me to get into unfamilar or off-putting music is to take the long way around and listen to other things that put it into context. When I'm getting into a band I'm usually drawn to the songs that aren't too far away from things I already like but then I grow to like the rest of their stuff on its own terms - like when I first started listening to Creedence my favourite song on Cosmo's Factory was 'Who'll Stop the Rain' because it was mellow and had nice harmonies like Neil Young or The Byrds or something but I definitely wouldn't pick it as a standout now.

O, although I haven't mixed or worked on any music that isn't mine own in over 5 years, so I'm at a disadvantage, I don't really count "songs you hear 100 times in the course of doing session work or mixing an album" in this kind of repetition, for the simple reason that I listen to music I am *working on* with a specifically different part of my brain than music I am listening to (either for pleasure, or to review an album). Doing recording/mixing work is listening with the question "what does this need done to it?' in mine, listening for pleasure or evaluation is "what is here right now".

(And I've seen how the two modes of listening can lead to terrible differences of opinions - I've certainly been in a studio where the band and producer, who have heard the album 200 times, have one idea of which song should be the single (i.e. the only one they're not all sick of, after 200 listens) while the record company dude or manager, who has listened to the demos twice, will think it should be a different song entirely.

The Image Band thread I was thinking about was mine own Syllabus Band thread:

Artists With A Syllabus - is this or is it no longer A Thing?

But I wanted to discuss more "image" that works, and improves a band, as well as image that doesn't work/is disparate from the band's sound (because lord knows we don't need another shrieking thread of "OMG, Justin Timberlake wearing an MC5 t-shirt, the world will end!" etc) but I'll do more of a search and see if I have started one already over the course of the years, because I find it hard to imagine that I didn't start one over e.g. the Strokes.

My experience of repetition causing me to hate music that I'm actually making is that it's the hearing of the tracks in pieces and especially the way those pieces often don't fit together the way I want that makes me hate. Whereas disliking other people's music through repetition is more because the overall feel of the song doesn't work for me, rather than individual elements. There have been exceptions ('oh that closed hi-hat is really too loud'), but even then it has to be a major flaw for it to bother me.

OK, this is starting to take on the aspect of a mythical quest, where ~obtaining the album~ is becoming so difficult that I'm going to force myself to like it through scarcity value!

Because I've looked through all the charity shops in Streatham and though every other goddamn landfill indie band of the early 00s is in there (why didn't I pick Franz Ferdinand? Or the Strokes? Or the Yeah Yeah Yeahs? They're all really easy to find!) I can't find this one.

I will end up going into town to see if Fopp has it, because I refuse to pay full price for it. Hmmmmmmm.

Which one are you going for? The debut? I'll post you our copy if you want.

Yeah, the debut. That seems oddly in keeping with the spirit of the project, to have a friend post it. (I can post it back to you when I'm done if you miss it.)

But I am actually going into town tonight anyway so I could very easily just go to Fopp (I'd be embarrassed to buy it at Rough Trade, to be honest).

If you'd be embarrassed to buy it at Rough Trade, you should buy it there - that seems even more in keeping with the project spirit!

Well, in spirit, yes, but mostly not, because they'd make me pay full price, which I am currently refusing to do.

Heck I should just download it off a blog and stop whinging.

if repetition arrives prejudiced as "blunt force" and "pick an album you know you don't like in a genre you're not into" then no, nothing will be gained because there is nothing to gain

Can You Force Yourself To Like A Record Through Blunt-Force Repetition? [Started by I'd rather be the swallow than a dick (Branwell Bell) in January 2014, last updated 1 minute ago by r|t|c] 115 new answers
Paul Simon's 'Graceland' [Started by dave q in December 2001, last updated 4 minutes ago by lag∞n] 13 new answers

(really Did. Not. Get. King while bouncing around on a Thursday evening or whatever, but loved it on a Sunday morning, feeling lazy & relaxed)

and like this is a misapprehension straight off the bat? it's so not a cosmic chill out record or whatever. begs the q does repetition mean cumulative understanding or actually taking millions of goes to hear it once properly

xp heh must concede that is v well played imago

I'm not sure what your point is?

If you think that this is a pointless and stupid idea, then yes, you're absolutely right, there is nothing to be gained from doing it, and you should probably not participate.

I do not know if it's pointless or possible for myself - I just know that it was mooted on another thread as a guaranteed way of making a person like "anything" - so I wanted to know if it would work on me.

Lots of other people have posited opinions on whether it is/isn't possible, or suggested alternate things that could change a person's mind on an album (context, friends' opinions, reforming one's ideas either of the self or the "kind of person that listens to this music). All of these are helpful, but for me, the single most helpful thing would be, to actually *try* doing it.

What is not helpful for me, is making blanket statements like "nothing will be gained because there is nothing to gain."

Just reading this thread, which I think is interesting, but wanted to pick up on this:

i posit the theory that in order to like a record - or to be able to say we like it with something approaching sincerity - we have to be able to assimilate extra-musical elements of it into our worldview, either by refining our worldview or re-categorizing the record

I don't think this rings true for me, there are records which I love which I neither agree nor identify with, and in fact feel enduringly alien to me (examples are some of the country music I adore and some of the religious music I love, too), and I don't feel the need to re-categorize them in order to like them, I feel I can like them on their own terms.

I would have to do some kind of wriggly thinking to make your point right, like "I want to think of myself as the sort of person who likes Toby Keith without having to assimilate his world-view", or similar sophistry.

I'm going to say a very predictable Branwell type of thing here, but I think this may be more of a concern for the Cis-Het Dude who uses music and Taste as his way of establishing a narrative about who he is, and the kinds of things that he likes? I mean, this idea of "projecting personality through music" is something that I mostly associate with young people - but then I have indeed met Cis-Het Dudes who literally are afraid to admit to being The Kind Of Person who likes pop, or certain kinds of dance music, because it would make them literally "like a woman" or "like a gay person" to like that kind of thing.

There was an article a while back about predicting music taste based on prior plays - I seem to recall a man who was trying out Pandora or some streaming radio service like that, and he was upset that it kept trying to play him (I think it was Celine Dion or something like that) and he kept complaining "why are you playing me this? Do I look like the kind of person who would like Celine Dion?" and the man at the streaming service kept talking about their algorithms and predictive programming and actually, it fit in with everything else he was listening to. And after grumbling a bit, then sitting down and just listening to it (for the sake of the article he was writing, clearly) a bit, he realised, actually, yes, he liked Celine Dion, and he had to change his worldview to conceive of himself as The Kind Of Person That Likes Celine Dion.

I think if you have already either a) detached your musical taste from your sense of identity or b) you have an inherent identity which puts you outside the demographic of "cis-het white dude" which "Objective" "Taste" is configured around, then you are less likely to fall prey to this kind of thinking. But I have indeed met many people who do.

I agree, but that was kind of the point of my last sentence: if there are people who are scared of being "the sort of person who likes pop" there are surely also people who enjoy being "the sort of person who looks like they wouldn't like pop but actually does like pop", right? I mean, we can play with and enjoy layered ways of thinking about ouselves and perceptions of ourselves.

Anyway, I'm basically saying that the universal law posited by NV is a dicey business.

Day 1 Check-in: still hate this album, but I've gone from the nebulous view that "it's just like those parody songs on 'Not The Nine O'Clock News' but not funny' to more specific complaints (there's not a lot of variation in arrangements, all the tracks are kind of sedate sounding).

pardon my ignorance but what is cis/het dude?

identifies as same gender as 'born' into, doesn't like the cock v much

he likes the only one that matters

This is becoming a ridiculously epic quest just to FIND a physical copy of this album.

1) THERE IS NO MORE HMV ON OXFORD STREET. When did this happen? How did this happen? Have I really not been in central London for this long?

2) Berwick St. Sister Ray only had a Japanese import double disc limited edition for £16!!! no way am I spending that for a hatefuck of a listen

3) Second hand record shops. Not only are there far, far less of them than there used to be, but they are so picked over it's barely worth bothering.

I am beginning to wonder if this record even exists at this point.

Closed a couple of weeks ago.
http://metro.co.uk/2014/01/12/flagship-hmv-store-at-150-oxford-street-closes-4259775/
The very same store where in 2001 a young professional couple mistook me for a member of staff and asked me where the easy listening section was.

Oh god that went with a whimper and not a bang. RIP :-(

Once the Virgin Megastore closed* the HMV faded out gradually over several years. I tried to drop in every time I happened to be in Central London for job interviews or whatever, and it just seemed to get bleaker and bleaker. Like the Tower Records store in Piccadilly Circus just before it was sold to Virgin.

(* I don't count it re-opening as Zavvi as competition)

I can remember when I first started coming to London as an adult to buy CDs, and the walk from HMV to Virgin (with a stop for the billion shops of Berwick Street) was such an exciting adventure. Gone, all gone now. So depressing.

(I think HMV opened up a new store up the other end of Oxford Street a little while ago fwiw, in the building which was the HMV flagship store when I first started record shopping in London in 1982 or whenever.)

I don't know why I'm saying "store" not "shop", it'll always be the HMV Shop to me.