Red flag
One of the trickier consequences of blogging over long periods of time (or any means of publishing one’s views, for that matter) is that you look like an ass when your opinion changes. Despite the common truths that people are fickle, opinions are malleable, and everyone is fallible, we expect that opinions, once stated, are relatively solid.
Not the case.
It happens with food, it happens with favorite websites, with cocktails, and with TV shows. But nowhere is it more prevalent than in music. A few years ago I bought K’s Choice’s Paradise In Me and instantly regretted the purchase. The one song I had heard from the band prior to that impulse purchase — Not An Addict — was pretty cool, sure, but the rest of the album left me wholly unsatisfied.
After languishing on a shelf for a year or so I dug it up, gave it a listen with fresh ears, and loved it. Suddenly I considered ownership of a K’s Choice album a pretty good reason to date someone. Still do. As if a knowledge of Belgian rock bands is the kind of character trait one should really be searching for in a woman.
Then there’s Eminem — an intentionally abrasive jerk whose singles are tailor-made Top 40 tripe, sure, but if you can ignore the hype (and the singles, and the overwrought homophobia and misogyny) he has talent pouring from every orifice. I’ve trashed him endlessly in years gone by, but now own several of his albums. By the same token: Gwen Stefani’s solo career was a recent gripe, and within a year I’ve come to quite enjoy it.
This all leads me, quite scarily, to the conclusion that any artist I dislike so strongly that I should express my distaste in a place as public as this, my weblog, I will eventually come to appreciate. The theory is that one must have something remarkable in one’s essence to elicit such strong negative emotions. Indifference… there’s a guarantee I’ll never buy your record. Hate might just be enough to hook me.
That said, I’m terrified of the fact that I find the Pussycat Dolls so appalling. Their single, Beep, makes me want to gag. If Will.i.am weren’t there, the song would be less than nothing. They’re ostensibly a girl band, but only one of them sings — the rest of them being little more than backup dancers — and she’s not even particularly good. Hot, yes, but not good.
Perhaps I wouldn’t care so much if they were called Nicole Scherzinger & the Pussycat Dolls. It would imply some sense of central focus. Instead, I get riled up, and we all know what that means in the long run. It means a year from now I’m going to buy their fucking album.