Why did I think I couldn’t stand Supertramp?
I don’t know; who knows why you develop musical prejudices. But for whatever reason, when they were popular I looked down on them.
Yesterday I needed some music to get me to walk faster and Spotify suggested “Give a Little Bit,” and I tapped the playlist. Walking to it made me inexpressibly and unexpected happy! And to my surprise, the list included some old Cat Stevens, whom I did like quite I bit when he was younger and hadn’t yet converted.
My turnaround made me think of a limited doc series on soft rock that I skimmed recently. Even some of the hard rockers interviewed conceded that the mushy, awful songs have stayed in their heads for decades, though the song from which the series takes its name — “Sometimes When We Touch” — was mercilessly and justifiably panned:
Here’s a playlist about other prejudiced audiences who changed their minds: