whose recorded music would you most like to unhear?

which one artist would make the greatest improvement to your time here on this planet if you had every single bit of their music erased from your brain?

Lou Reed. I love Metal Machine Music but I would gladly sacrifice it if it meant that everything else, from the Velvet Underground to Lulu, vanished forever too.

TOTO

Is the erasure an ongoing thing? Like, will I continue to unhear it … or is this just historical? If I am at the store and said music is playing, will I just not hear it at the time … or will I immediately forget it … is this something about creating new memories, as in, all past hearings are erased, but any future hearings will be like it’s something I have never heard before?

… I think I would go with Journey

good call

post-Justice Metallica

arcade fire

Poison
post-Shout at the Devil Motley Crue
The Eagles, other than "I Can't Tell You Why", but my brain CAN'T KNOW the name of the band

idk maybe Pitbull, I mean I actually like his music, hell I've even seen him twice...but his songs get stuck in my head a lot and it's pretty obnoxious. Linkin Park for the same reason

definitely zappa

eh I'm glad I heard all that bullshit, it was all part of life

i very much appreciate that you acknowledge that it is indeed bullshit.

his music's interesting enough that I dont regret hearing it but I do wish I didn't have to care about Frank Zappa the person or even really know about him at all so yeah good answer

Who?

your's

Oasis

randy newman. except for will sasso on mad tv as randy newman. that i would want to hear forever. even if i didn't know what was so funny about it because i didn't know what randy newman sounded like because i had magically unheard randy newman.

imagine dragons

mostly so I don't have to lie to students that want to learn their songs. I keep trying to tell them I don't know who they are and haven't heard anything by them so they must not be worth learning to play. Sadly the little trotters see through my ruse

Don’t know if I’ve ever heard a single other note by the Baha Men besides the obvious but I might have to pick them for that one song alone

who?

who who who?

yes quite

Why you hate dogs?

I love dogs, but even I get very annoyed when they get out so I can understand the sentiment Lavator

blur

albarn faux cockney park loif-ing, probably the most inhospitable sound in existence

Man, I dunno. I'm not sure how unhearing stuff I don't like would improve my life in any way. I've worked in local radio and there's a lot of repetitive playlisting of lousy pop songs I've had to endure, but if I got rid of that artist, e.g. Ed Sheeran, they'd only have filled it with some other shite

I'd almost rather unhear something I really like so I can listen to it with fresh ears perhaps

Oh that's a good answer!

Lou Reed. I love Metal Machine Music but I would gladly sacrifice it if it meant that everything else, from the Velvet Underground to Lulu, vanished forever too.

This is the ilm-iest challop I’ve seen in a long time, congrats!

If this is about unhearing the entirety of an artist's catalog and also never hearing them again - Billy Joel. Nothing I've heard of his has ever brought me joy; it's kinda like that Nick Cave quote about the Chili Peppers. Drunken singalongs of Piano Man have put a damper on otherwise acceptable parties I have attended. And Billy Joel megafans always seem so incredulous that I don't like him.

U2 if it meant all their progeny go with it.

xp

yeah, Nick Cave is a good one. Him and his Lightning Seeds can fuck right off.

Queensryche

would like to unhear my own music so i could be less self-conscious about it

would also like to unhear eminem. could've learned a language maybe instead of memorizing the lyrics to the marshall mathers lp, unfortunately i was 13 years old in 2000

xp

I don't remember now
I don't remember how it started...

Oooh, Eminem is another good one.

i like the lou reed answer because to me, it's more about musicians i've had a complicated relationship. often the musicians themselves, not the music. music that i liked but i kind of hate that i liked.

so zappa, austin's pick, is a good one for me. i was a hardcore zappa fan for, like, a decade, and i _still_ listen to his music a fair bit, usually when i'm talking about how much i hate frank zappa, which is even more irritating. i'll talk about how badly zappa sucks and then listen to, well, one of the two "hot rats" deluxe sets, because they're his least "problematic" stuff.

there's also magma, who i was a hardcore fan of for maybe 15 years and then i found out christian vander wasn't an ironic fascist, he was an actual fascist. and again, i still really love that music and listen to it.

there's the grateful dead, who aren't actually very problematic at all, but who i hated for decades and then i just broke when i moved to oregon and spent two years painstakingly cultivating a collection of my favorite live dead performances, and then my hard drive crashed and i lost the whole thing. i do kind of regret spending three years of my life listening to nothing but dead bootlegs. well, no. i don't _regret_ it. i radically accept it. it was just where i was at that time in my life.

phish, on the other hand, phish is a better candidate. the thing about the dead is that they do actually have good songs. they're not all good, mind you, but a lot of them are. phish songs are just about the worst bullshit ever recorded by anyone. just the apex of cringe. i fucking love their jams, though. i can't help it. i genuinely think the two forms of instrumental interplay they've developed over decades of playing together are... you know, it's not something anybody else has been able to develop within the "rock" idiom the way phish has. their music hasn't been a constant part of my life, i don't love them the way i loved zappa or magma, but it's an important part of my life. i woke up from my GRS and one of the first things i listened to was the july 14, 2019 performance of "ruby waves" (i hate that i have to talk about them like that), so now it's not just transcendent but transcendent in a way that has _profound personal meaning_ to me.

i mean that's something, like. you ever think about the idea that terrible music can have profound personal meaning? i once knew someone and the metallica song "king nothing" was so important to him, so important to helping him frame his relationship with his abusive father. what the fuck am i going to say to that? it's a terrible song. a fucking terrible song, but i mean, it's deeply meaningful to this guy, so the fact that it's fucking awful isn't _relevant_. art, you know? art.

anyway. right now my pick would be radiohead. because jonny greenwood's a terf. i mean there are other reasons, i don't mean to dismiss all of the other very very good reasons to wish one had never heard radiohead. with me, you know. i'm a trans woman, he's a terf, that might _sound_ like the pitch for a high-concept romantic comedy but it's not. i've loved their music since, like, 1998. whether it's "good" or "bad"... music kept me alive for decades, before transition it was the only way i could _feel_, and radiohead was one of the most important bands to me during that time. i don't know what to _do_ with that now.

should i wish i'd never heard led zeppelin? they were the first band i loved. jimmy page is... i mean, we all know what jimmy page is and nobody talks about it, because he's Too Big to Fail, because his music is too important to acknowledge what he did. i fucking hate that. i hate that so fucking much. i've loved their music since i was 12.

fuck it. i'm gonna listen to the july 14, 2019 version of "ruby waves". i don't listen to it often because it's fucking 45 minutes long.

Can't think of anyone tbh

^big primal scream fan

Where would I be without Boaby?

randy newman. except for will sasso on mad tv as randy newman. that i would want to hear forever. even if i didn't know what was so funny about it because i didn't know what randy newman sounded like because i had magically unheard randy newman.

― scott seward, Thursday, 2 May 2024 04:12 (nine hours ago) link

Yeah, basically the only reason I wouldn't choose to unhear Randy Newman is that it's so much fun doing a Randy Newman impression. My brother and I were absolutely dying one weekend improvising tracks from a theoretical Newman Sings Newman album (wherein Randy Newman sings in-character songs as Newman from Seinfeld).

i would like to unhear all of the instruments other than the vocals in Six Feet Under albums so all of their songs sound like an old stoner yelling and barking angrily on his front porch about stupid shit

There are a couple Cat Power songs that really bum me out whenever I think of them and it'd be nice not to have to think of them ever again, but I don't know if it'd be worth unhearing all other Cat Power songs just to unhear them. Maybe.

I do not believe that U2 has added any musical value to my life, and anything half decent they've ever done has been ripped off from someone better, so them.

i'd like to hear U2 but with Gary Shandling singing

I love dogs, but even I get very annoyed when they get out so I can understand the sentiment Lavator

i'd like to hear U2 but with Gary Shandling singing

― ain't nothin but a brie thing, baby (Neanderthal), Thursday, 2 May 2024 15:35 (seventeen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

cosign, but just go a step further and cut out U2, and we're good

Steely Dan tbh

Red Hot Chili Peppers, who haven't got a single song that would be better than sitting in silence for the same amount of time

never forget...

Defend The Cringe-Worthy: G Love & Da Special Sauce

Easily it is Elbow's One Day Like This

Don't move
Don't talk out of time
Don't flip
Don't worry
Everything's just fine
Just fine

Don't grab
Don't flip
Don't hope for too much
Don't flip
Don't flip
Or flip just don't flip

Oh entire careers. Yeah, see ya Elbow

Perhaps not the best note to open my time on this forum with but I really like Elbow

Steely Dan tbh

xp hmmm. thinking about it, i think that's actually a pretty good note to open on!

-

being able to not remember what steely dan sounds like is one hell of an achievement. wish i could manage it!

Aerosmith (1987-present)
Drake

xp hmmm. thinking about it, i think that's actually a pretty good note to open on!

-

being able to not remember what steely dan sounds like is one hell of an achievement. wish i could manage it!

Timbuk 3

It just doesn’t stick with you in the same way… also nowhere near as common as Journey

Journey was my first thought tbh bc I have been plagued by ear worms of “any way you want it” and “wheel in the sky” that drove me to my breaking point. I do have a decent journey memory or two tho and I want to keep those. No Steely Dan song has ever accompanied me on my life’s important moments and I don’t like anything about their music.

good call, steely dan also a viable candidate for me. not out of dislike though; more indifference. but like... angry yawn energy.

Sixpence None The Richer - I don't hate them but the grocery store I worked at in high school had "Kiss Me" and "There She Goes" on the store radio twice an hour each and parts of them will still pop into my head randomly two decades later

I don't know what Steely Dan sound like, for many years I had them confused with Duran Duran

Hungry Like the Years

stelly dane rulez yo guyz droolz!

the thread's premise is fascinating, to unpop one's cherry poppin' daddies cherry - but how?!

Soft spots for certain things he's written but probably Andrew Lloyd Webber for me overall

"unhearing" is different from "not hearing" or "forgetting". To unhear a song, your eardrums would need to actively play the song out of phase with the song's source. So as your lover leans in for a first kiss, they faintly hear "zoot suit riot" emitting from your ears.

“what a wonderful world”
“life in a northern town”

If I'd never heard Judas Priest I probably wouldn't have shot myself in the head.

Train.

^good call, especially “meet virginia”

if I could unhear a lyrical theme, it'd be "superman", which would cover the Five for Fighting and 3 doors down songs

yeah but you’d miss out on that goldfinger jam

Aw, I still like "Life In A Northern Town".

It's Bob Dylan for me. Love his songwriting, hate his voice.

I think I might choose to unhear all the songs from Rent.

If you get rid of Superman you'll never be able to listen to the classic Black Lace song ever again. OR the adult version Supercock

All of the late 90s, early 00s UK Indie Landfill/BritRock shite, King Adora, Hell is for Heroes, Symposium et al.

but nobody can even remember any of their output? even when their songs had just finished.

if I could unhear a lyrical theme, it'd be "superman", which would cover the Five for Fighting and 3 doors down songs

― 145 feet up in a Jeffrey Pine (Sufjan Grafton)

mel torme singing "sunshine superman". i can't do without it.

I think the entire output of Andrew Lloyd Webber is a great answer to this. I too wish i could unhear "Masquerade" in particular. Absolutely loathe that song.

He’s got some hits, I like most of Phantom, but most of his oeuvre clings like unwanted barnacles to my consciousness

For a while I was seeing somebody who was super passionate about Drake. After I broke things off with him, I said “thank god I don’t have to keep pretending to like Drake, it’s exhausting”

Would have to think about who specifically
but my answer to this would prob be someone whose music had an outsized impact on my life that turned out to be for the worse, *because i loved it so much*, and forgetting it would amount to like a do-over

rather than something that annoys or offends me.

I love 70s ALW, but Phantom just irks me.

also his use of recitative was often lazy and mishandled. I adore "Evita" but they beat the same melodic motif to death in it.

School of Rock was good but he reused a lot of his old ideas on it (shocker!)

i could NOT live without Jesus Christ Superstar in my life but i could live without the rest of ALW. though i do have a nostalgic fondness for Evita because i saw it on Broadway with my sister. #originalcast #pattilupone4ever #mandywasgoodtoo

You know what, lets turn this around - indeed maybe it should be in a new thread - but whose music would you like to unhear so that you could REDISCOVER them all over again with fresh ears?

yeah I was intrigued by that post as well

Limp Bizkit (shudder)

I wish I could hear again for the first time: Disco Inferno D.I. Go Pop; Bruckner’s 9th Symphony; “West End Blues” by Louis Armstrongs’s Hot 5; “Ascension” by John Coltrane; the list could go on.

those are really good ones but otoh i'm glad i heard DI Go Pop when it was new, i'm glad i got to experience the shock of it in the context of its times. and also... it did influence my subsequent listening and inform my tastes, i might not even be the same person without it. it's nice to have lived a life with that as a constant companion. it's an interesting paradox!

You know what, lets turn this around - indeed maybe it should be in a new thread - but whose music would you like to unhear so that you could REDISCOVER them all over again with fresh ears?

― Toshirō Nofune (The Seventh ILXorai), Friday, May 3, 2024 4:42 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

that's what I thought the point of the thread was at first. dangerous game though, I do pretty often listen to stuff I really loved back in the day and wonder if it's something I would get into had I just been hearing them for the first time now. I hear a lot of good music that I just don't pursue for whatever reason. I'm reasonably sure that if I heard Can for the first time all over again I'd geek out pretty hard

tbf the thread had a title before it had a point, but I like the positive spin you're putting on it :)

I'd almost rather unhear something I really like so I can listen to it with fresh ears perhaps

― your mom goes to limgrave (dog latin)

This is a great answer. Music or artists I find obnoxious I can just ignore, the thrill and excitement of hearing music I love for the first time again tho… that would be something.

Then again, I imagine that albums that were magical to me idk 10 years ago would probably impact me way less now that I’m older. They’d probably have to be somewhat recent albums to not create a butterfly effect in my music taste.

right this is kind of the thing, like I wanna say it would be cool to hear all the YMO stuff for the first time again but this would affect like half of my record collection. had I not gotten into them who knows maybe I'd be a metalhead or something

I think I might choose to unhear all the songs from _Rent_.

I want to be a wise guy and say "Anything that was ever meant to make me a better person," but I know I could immediately refute that with a couple of hundred counter-examples.

in terms of music i want to unhear in order to hear again for the first time... basically everything i hold dear, on repeat. i'd go into hounds of love with a clean slate every single time if i could.

don't really need to unhear anything so i can hear it with fresh ears again, a record is a hard thing to pin down, it sounds different every time you hear it, or you change and it changes along with you.

all Mike Patton, but if it can only be one Faith No More