stereo question

After years of making sure I had the 'L' speaker/earbud in my left ear and the 'R' in my right, it occurred to me Wait. Does it really matter?

So what if the searing guitar solo starts on the right, travels over my head and ends on the left? So what if Chuck D is in this ear and Flav is now in that ear now?

Please name examples where music recorded in stereo must be heard explicitly with the correct left/right channels set.

The only instances I can think of offhand are those where the liner notes specify "x is in the right channel, y is in the left channel" (e.g., the Ornette Coleman Double Quartet's Free Jazz).

i have been told that some bands intentionally mix the drums so you will hear them from the drummer's own perspective (hi-hat and snare on the left, floor tom on the right). i think i would rather hear them from an observer's perspective (i.e. the reverse). but i also think i probably don't care.

this may matter more in classical recordings, where producers presumably want to re-create the experience of being in a concert hall: violins to your left, violas and cellos to your right, etc.

iirc Raising Hell by Run DMC pans "Left y'all / to the left y'all / because I rock upon the mic real def y'all" and "Right y'all / to the right y'all / because I rock upon the mix all night y'all".

would you hang a pollock upside down? no! it'd look stupid!

Most fish look pretty stupid upside down imo

the (I'm surely bullshit) liner notes to pere ubu's st arkansas claim that we hear from left to right.

i have been told that some bands intentionally mix the drums so you will hear them from the drummer's own perspective (hi-hat and snare on the left, floor tom on the right). i think i would rather hear them from an observer's perspective (i.e. the reverse).

I have a couple of jazz records that do this (separate different parts of the drum kit to different channels), and it's a bit disturbing to listen to them on the headphones, with a stereo set it's okay.