The Smiley Smile Message Board

A friend and I were discussing this a few weeks ago. 

Are there any bands / artists that you like that, for one reason or another, you just can't bring yourself to listen to anymore?  It's not that you don't like them, but you've grown tired of them. 

For me, I have to say it's Aerosmith.  I worked in rock radio for four years, so I was overexposed to their hits.  But, I can't even bring myself to listen to the album cuts there days (not even from their stellar mid 70s albums). 

Maybe one day, I can go back to hearing their music again.  I had gotten this way when Queen for a little while. 

Honestly that's the majority of the music I've loved over the years. More often than not, by far. BY FAR.

Currently, I would say 50-70% of my music-listening is of that year's music. I'd say since 2012, 2013 or so, that has been my trend. But prior to that, my music-listening habits were the deep-dive obsession style of music. Whether it was KISS in junior high, Hendrix and Zeppelin in high school, Queen, Zappa, Miles, and Monk in college, then the Beach Boys, Beefheart, VU/Reed, etc., I was always into obsessing deep catalogues. I just don't do that anymore. And frankly, most of those bands and artists--all of whom I still love--I just don't turn to all that often anymore. I do now and again, sure. And I always love them. But I very rarely put in an album (much less binge on a catalogue) of a long-beloved band.

I've done that with several bands.

- The Beatles - was into them huge in High School but really burnt it out, I even learned several of the songs on guitar, etc.  Haven't listened to a Beatles CD in 10 years.

- The Doors - was big into them in College, same story, got burnt out after hearing everything hundreds of times, haven't played a Doors CD in 5 years

- Michael Jackson - I've been a Michael Jackson fan my entire life, I can remember listening to him sing when I was 5 years old.  When he died (after years of child molestation allegations, the drug abuse, the circus his life was) I was basically done, I haven't listened to any of his music purposefully since his death.  For years I defended him but eventually I got to the point where the whole damn story is so sad that I'm tired of even dealing with it.

That's probably the three main ones that I've really burnt out, although there were other 'minor' periods where I listened to the White Stripes for instance... or Oasis!  U2 as well. 

I've noticed with me, a lot of times, if I get away from a band/artist/song for awhile, I'll grow to appreciate it again.  Sometimes, hearing a song in a movie or TV show will be a trigger. 

I really hadn't listened to Styx in awhile, but I heard Renegade during the credits of an episode of Ash V Evil Dead.  Due to overexposure, I forgot how great of a song that is. 

I hope I can get back to Aerosmith one day, as I really like their first five albums a lot - especially Toys in the Attic and Rocks. 

I have a habit of zoning in on a particular band/artist and immersing myself in their catalog and obsessing about collecting each and every album.  I really got into Styx about 25 years ago but got burnt out on them after playing their stuff incessantly. 

I did the same thing with Floyd in college, even getting Gilmour and Waters solo albums.  Got burnt out, but went back to them.

I did the same with The Beach Boys in 2012.  Burn out hasn't happened yet. 

Now that you've made me think about it: I have loads of Springsteen (up until Tom Joad, anyhow), Jackson Browne and The Eagles. The Best of the Eagles still gets a workout, but their full albums do nothing for me any more. I hardly ever play Browne and while I love The Pretender, a lot of his stuff is hot and miss for me. I've actually given my latter day Springsteen away and while he hasn't been played lately, I'd find it very difficult to part with anything between and including Born to Run and Tunnel of Love. John Hiatt's another. I have loads of his albums; in fact I had them all at one point, but I just haven't found them interesting after Master of Disaster and haven't really played the stuff I do like in some time.