Do you let music 'grow on you'?

I give every album I buy a minimum of 3 listens. If something is sufficiently interesting to take me to 10-12 listens but hasn't clicked yet, I'll spin it again a year or two later and sometimes that works wonders (especially for classical, since I'm a beginner; surely nobody gets into deeply unfamiliar genres if they skip around a lot and give up early?). Life is indeed short but I really believe challenges are necessary to grow into things and really really really pay off in the long term and will help you fight off the creeping rot of narrowing taste.
A possible alternative (I have no idea if it works) is listening strategically to lots of similar things in a new genre to help you break into it without listening to the same difficult pieces over and over. But would this ease you into those difficult pieces eventually?

But everyone has different priorities and it won't matter so much if you don't listen to much music. I watch a lot less films so I'm not eager to broaden as I used to be.
I think the rot of narrowing taste is deadly if you create some kind of art. Broadening your taste is your health food. But sometimes your favorite genres are so sprawling that it's hard to make time for anything else.

it would turn out to be precisely the unappealing aspects of the music which eventually turned into my favourite parts

― doorstep jetski (dog latin), Saturday, March 28, 2020 1:31 PM

I used to regularly get this when I was young and I loved it, but it rarely happens now. I think that's why I'm interested in trying power metal and glam metal and loving Jim Steinman these days because I used to find that stuff really offputting.

Last classic album I initially thought sounded lousy but ended up agreeing with the classic status was Nirvana UK's Local Anaesthetic.

Right now I'm really puzzling over why Beherit's Drawing Down The Moon is classic (sounds a bit amaterish right now) and doubting I'll come around but we'll see.

Also, we had a similar discussion a year or two ago and a lot of these factors involved contributed to less reading books.

On the other hand, I'm alarmed by how many hundreds of bands I've wanted to listen to for over a decade but still haven't begun and maybe I should be just a tad less attentive.

Genesis - Selling England By The Pound and a couple of their other albums taken a bunch of time for me.

John Peel said he was very aware of the threat of his mind/taste narrowing with age and actively fought against it but Mark Radcliffe said a while ago that he very calmly accepts that his taste is closing its doors and wont be able to understand much new music.

The thing is, there's a positive side to preemptively or summarily rejecting vast swaths of music, at least for me, which is that because I've focused on just a few areas, I have a much deeper understanding now than I did years ago of the music that I do like. I can pop the hood and see how the motor works. And there are still doors opening: for example, I've only recently started to develop a taste for big band jazz, after years of disinterest.

Yeah, there's huge areas of music I think I probably wont investigate much, but if I was a musician I think I would feel more of the need.

I find it quite refreshing when writers insist that writers should read as many styles and landmark books as possible, because too many writers are happy to be insular; but nobody can do it all.

Luckily for me, visual art history is easier to at least glance through and get something out of it. Those 1000 images to see before you die books automatically get you more acquainted than the similar books about music and film.

I very much doubt I'll ever get much into blues, hiphop, skiffle, swing, crooners, mod, country that doesn't have any alt rock appeal and traditional punk but I feel I'm missing out on dance, jazz and world.

can we know what the song was

― budo jeru

"raindrops"

The thing is, there's a positive side to preemptively or summarily rejecting vast swaths of music, at least for me, which is that because I've focused on just a few areas, I have a much deeper understanding now than I did years ago of the music that I do like. I can pop the hood and see how the motor works. And there are still doors opening: for example, I've only recently started to develop a taste for big band jazz, after years of disinterest.

― but also fuck you (unperson)

i'm not one of those people who smugly claims they like "all kinds of music". certainly there are genres i particularly like and genres i particularly dislike. i will grant that there is some theoretical benefit to my having an exceptionally in-depth knowledge of, say, 1970s progressive rock, and honestly? i hate most country music, and don't spend a lot of time listening to it. but for myself... i gotta ask what's of more value to me, being familiar with the 1977 s/t by hands, or being familiar with richard dobson's 1979 album _the big taste_? if i had to choose a record to never listen to again, it wouldn't be the hands lp.

I very much doubt I'll ever get much into blues, hiphop, skiffle, swing, crooners, mod, country that doesn't have any alt rock appeal and traditional punk but I feel I'm missing out on dance, jazz and world.

― Robert Adam Gilmour

there's this young person on rym who went through and did a cursory review of the top-rated album in every genre on that site. it's from that list that i discovered that "world" covers a lot of genres, and also that there are a _lot_ of genres i really don't have any interest in.

My listening habits have def changed. Now with lockdown I have way more time. So yes some shit is growing on me.

This thread may be interesting for some:

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

i discovered that "world" covers a lot of genres, and also that there are a _lot_ of genres i really don't have any interest in.

― Kate (rushomancy), Saturday, March 28, 2020 10:56 PM

Definitely, there's a lot of that music I wouldnt even know if it fell under a kind of classical or folk. I really don't have the foggiest of just how much Dance might cover either.

If I were to come up with two columns – subgenres I like/dislike – chances are the latter would outweigh the former.

i discovered that "world" covers a lot of genres, and also that there are a _lot_ of genres i really don't have any interest in.

Editing a world music magazine for two years taught me a few things:

1) People all around the globe love shitty pop, they just want it in their native language;
2) Music from hot countries > music from cold countries, BUT
3) Music from deserts > music from jungles

1) is true, but 2) and 3) are just... I hope you're being facetious. (Spoiler: there is good and bad music from countries hot and cold; also, some countries are both, some neither.)

i want to hear more world mixtures, like

black metal reggae

Here you go, kind of:

https://oranssipazuzu.bandcamp.com/track/dub-kuolleen-porton-muistolle

of COURSE it'd be oranssi

finland delivers

good, i'm not driving all the way over there for fucking carryout