Have you hated a song so much that it negatively impacted how you view an artist? If they have been around a while, their back catalogue and the memories you have associated with that artist may stay the same, but after that ONE song, anything that comes afterwards is subject to major scrutiny. Or has that artist done something that in a way taints your perception of them, and thereby affects how (or even if) you listen to their new music. These random thoughts have popped up into my mind on several occasions as of late.
It all started when I heard Carly Rae Jepsen‘s “Call Me Maybe” for the millionth time. I don’t finish the song, mind you – it just pops up in commercials and whatnot, then annoys the hell out of me. The only song of hers from this period that I like is “Curiosity”, but due to the ubiquity and radio overplay of “Call Me Maybe”, it has caused me to have a certain distaste for every other song she’s done since (add to the fact that her album is not the pop music I like). It’s a shame because I was somewhat of a fan of her initial debut album Tug of War, released after her time on Canadian Idol. So while it was cool, for a little while at the beginning of all this nonsense, to see another Canadian artist get massive success, it annoys me now that it was for THAT song.
Rihanna is an interesting case study. When she first came onto the music scene, with ‘Pon De Replay” and then a little bit later with “S.O.S.”, I didn’t make much of her. It was a little fun to listen to at the time, but nothing felt special. Then she released her album Good Girl Gone Bad, buoyed by the release of “Umbrella” as the first single, which we can all agree was a complete game changer for her. That album, and its subsequent re-release, spawned numerous hit singles and she followed it up with Rated R, an equally solid effort that saw Rihanna get darker and edgier. But then she kept churning out a new album every year, and I got increasingly tired of hearing her songs on the radio. It’s like, take a break already!
It only makes sense now to include Chris Brown in this list. I was never a big fan of Chris Brown; he had a few songs in his earlier days that I enjoyed and only really cared for because we used them for Dance Crew back in my high school days. And then the pre-Grammy incident happened with Rihanna. What we thought we knew about him changed completely, and yet he continues to make more music and sell records. I have a friend who tried to get me to listen to one of his newer songs “Fine China,” but I couldn’t do it. I can’t stand him really and even a supposedly great R&B track, won’t change my opinion of him.
You want to know what really pains me to have to include in this post? Britney Spears. I’ve been a Britney fan from the beginning and love her style of pop music. Now to be honest, I have to admit that I was not a big fan of her last album, Femme Fatale – it was veering into the dance pop/EDM that I’m not into at all, though there was a handful of tracks that I legitimately liked. But then she was featured on the will.i.am song “Scream and Shout” and I honest to goodness hated it. I think it took me two (maybe three) months before I could listen to the song IN FULL, and that was because I couldn’t change the radio station. Yep, I hated the song so much, I could not listen to more than 20 seconds at a time. I think it was the Britney sing-talking(?) in a fake British accent that threw me off…well, that and I didn’t really hear much of substance in the lyrics (what lyrics?!). Now, she’s released a song for the Smurfs 2 movie and I could not care less about it either (doesn’t help that it’s for the Smurfs 2 soundtrack! THE SMURFS! Give me the original animated stuff, not this CGI stuff! Talk about tainting my childhood…Sorry, tangent.) Point is, I’m not particularly liking the direction that Britney is taking with her music. I still love all her old music (the Britney/Dream Within A Dream era was by far my favourite), but her new material really leaves something to be desired. Maybe that’s part of the problem: Britney’s music changes with the times and right now the big thing is dance pop/EDM. My musical tastes have changed and though I’m still a sucker for a GOOD pop track, my dislike of electronica/dance/techno pop still hasn’t changed over the years.
So are there any artists out there who you may have liked in the past, but now hold different views of? Has this happened in regards to other celebrities? What caused the change? Let me know in the comments!
Pop Cultured Randoms 