Results: Their Music? Over It!

Turned to them by an Anglophilic clerk at an independent record shop, I enjoyed '80's English indie popsters The Smiths for many years. But last I heard them, I thought about how theirs isn't really necessarily lyrically upbeat, life-affirming art much of the time. Lead singer Steven Morrissey's public pronouncements in recent years giving the unfortunate impression that he's a racist haven't abetted recapturing my appreciation for his old band either. Have you ever once enjoyed the work of a musical act that once spoke to a state of being you no longer inhabit?

When Sha Na played the Woodstock music festival in 1969, they were plying affectionate pastiche of music that was less than 20 years. The band's popularity grew alongside nostalgia for the sort of pre-Beatles rock & roll throughout the '70's and into the '80's, but their shtick never really changed. Looking back at how my eyes were practically glued to the TV set whenever I could watch their 1977-81 variety show, I could ask myself "Really?!" Have any musicians' output become more silly and ridiculous to you over time?

By the time I reviewed a retrospective of their work some years ago, New York City new wavers Talking Heads were leaving me a bit cold. Though their combination of elements such as bubblegum, funk, and punk should have had me rooting for them, there was a while when singer/lyricist David Byne's emotional distance bugged me. But a recent hearing of their first US top 40 hit, a remake of Al Green's/Syl Johnson's "Take Me To the River," hit me with how strange it is 43 years after they recorded it that I'm now encouraged to revisit their catalog of originals, too. Have you ever second-guessed your enjoyment of a musical act only to come to the conclusion that you really do like their work?

Then there are those musicians whose ideology got in the way of my enjoyment. There may be no better example of this than Public Enemy. Chuck D's rapping, Flavor Flav's goofiness, Terminator X's turntablism and The Bomb Squad's production coalesced into a revelation of the sonic power hip-hop could wield. But I believe lyrics lauding troubling figures such as Louis Farrakhan and Joanne Chesimard taint P.E. with racism vile as anything Morrissey has uttered. Have you ever stopped supporting any musicians you enjoy musically but oppose philosophically?

If you've anything more to add about musicians you once liked, no longer do and why you changed your mind, hjow abnout sharing your thoughts in a comment (accompanying this question is a video by a band whose expansion of metal's musical vocabulary I admire but whose lyrics I find nigh uniformly dire)?