Turning Points

[katstevens.livejournal.com]

Everyone's music taste changes and evolves over time. Do you have an album or song that was a 'turning point' for you, musically? Perhaps you've had two or three turning points, or found that the combined power of a handful of songs made you think differently about a whole genre?

Are musical turning points always in the form of "OMG!" revelations? Were yours gradual or sudden?

Comments

[friend-of-tofu.livejournal.com]

Important turning points at various ages;

- seeing Duran Duran doing 'Wild Boys' on the first *evah* TOTP I got to watch, age 8. It was just so daft and overblown and hammy and fabulous.

- A-Ha, for several reasons, mostly the revelation that very popular pop wot got shown on kids' tv could also have 'proper songs' (so I was a bit rockist at 9, I fully admit it)

- the Pet Shop Boys, from the first time I heard 'West End Girls', for similar reasons

- De La Soul, from my aunt, who got me into some other reggae too. this was definitely the start of an interest in off-beat hip hop.

- the whole of 'Faith' & 'Seventeen Seconds', which I listened to religiously as mood music and really got me thinking about the subtler effects of music

- Prince, who dragged me out of an "all pop is rubbish, I'm just going to listen to classical music" phase in my teens

- the X-Ray Spex and the Ramones were way more important to me in punk terms than the Pistols, tho the Pistols had been a good early teens thing. Getting into my fiance's record collection made me less sniffy about rawk history, the sniffiness being something which came about from being a teenage goth in the suburbs where glammies were pretty much yer only other subcultural alternative, and the realtionship was an uneasy one. L7, Hole and Babes in Toyland were more important to me than Nirvana - I had Jennifer Finch all over my A/S level biology folder!

- Bauhaus' 'Kick In The Eye' and the 2nd Fields of the Nephilim album, which were simultaneously scary and thrilling.

- The Chameleons, a gift to me from a lovely and long-lost penpal.

- the realisation at the age of 20, upon listening to some of Morrisey's solo work, that I didn't have to hate The Smiths.

- various realisations about being able to enjoy electronic music, r popular music

These are all from when I was quite young, but I think that's probably enough for now! I couldn't say which was most important but they were all very influential in different ways.