Give it Three Spins

This is a post about listening to music, but first I need to tell you a story before any of it will make sense.

While my parents were visiting me here in Jacksonville back in September we made a trip 30 minutes south to St. Augustine.  It’s a beautiful city with a lot of history, a lot of great sites to see and things to do.  We took a guided trolley tour, which I would recommend doing if you ever visit the city, and stopped off for a wine tour at the San Sebastian winery.  It was my first wine tour, and frankly I was pretty excited to drink a bunch of free wine in the middle of the afternoon.

Upon starting the tour we were introduced to a very passionate winery employee who gives us our first sample and also gives us a lesson on how to taste wine.  I had no idea there was any science to it, but apparently there is.  And it actually works. 

The secret to truly tasting a wine is to take three sips.  The first sip you take in and swish around your mouth like mouth wash and then spit out.  The purpose of this is to cleanse your pallet of any existing flavors and wipe it clean.  The second sip you allow to sit in your mouth for a few seconds to help acclimate your taste buds to the texture and flavor of the wine.  The third sip is the true tasting of the wine.  Your pallet was prepared to accept the flavor of the wine by the first two steps and can now completely appreciate all that the wine has to offer.

I’m not writing this post though to tell you how to sample wines or how to prepare yourself for a wine tour.  Like I said before, this post is about music.  I’ve actually found that the same process for properly sampling a wine can be used to listen to an album.  Let me explain.

Have you ever picked up a highly anticipated album by one of your favorite artists, only to be greatly disappointed upon first listen?  I know I have.  Many people will write the album off as a big failure and bury it in their collection never to be listened to again.  Maybe it was the same thing as their last album.  Maybe it sounded nothing like your favorite song or album of theirs.  Maybe it really was just a bad album amongst much better work, Weezer being a perfect example.  No matter what your reason for disliking an album, one listen is not enough to make that judgement. 

This is where the wine and the music get tied together.  Give it three spins.

The first listen will help clear away your preconceived notions for what you think this album will be.  If you’re expecting it to be like their last album, which you loved, or you’re looking for something different, let the first listen wash that away.  Now that you’ve come to the realization this album is not their last album, or your favorite album, take a break from it and give it another listen.  Let the second listen sink in through your ears and settle in your brain.  Get an idea of how it sounds and what it’s about.  Now on the third listen you’re ready to actually enjoy, or not enjoy, the record.  You’ll notice that you will start to hear things about certain songs or the tone of the album that you didn’t hear during your first two spins.  And just like with the wine, it really works.  At least it does for me.

Remember that doing this doesn’t mean you’re going to love every album you hated upon first listen, it just means that you’re ready to make a sound judgement of it, good or bad.  Now usually this process is only necessary when you don’t like what you hear the first time through the album.  If you really like it the first time around then listening to it a few more times probably won’t change your opinion, but it may give you a greater appreciation for how good it is.

I’ll give you an example from my personal experience with this, which is really the album that lead me to this epiphany.  Death Cab for Cutie is one of my favorite bands, they’ve had a few great albums and lots of material that I really enjoy.  I was eagerly awaiting the release of their most recent album, Codes & Keys, and upon first listen I was pretty disappointed. I remember talking with someone else after it came out about how we were both felt let down by it.  So I did what most people do, I didn’t touch it for weeks after that.  Then one day while updating my Ipod (I have a 16gb Ipod and more music than can fit on there so I’m constantly cycling what’s on there) I decided to give it another try, and to my surprise I started to enjoy it more and more with each listen.  I remember thinking how weird it felt to enjoy what I was listening to when all I could think about was how much I didn’t like it the first time I listened to it. 

What had changed?  Why didn’t I like it the first time around?  Why did it suddenly sound so much better to me?  I think my expectations and feelings of what it should sound like were different than what I actually heard on the first listen, so I immediately concluded it was a bad album.  This doesn’t sound anything like Plans or Transatlanticism, so it can’t be good.  After the first listen those expectations were gone, and I didn’t really expect much from listening to it again.  That was the key.  I could begin to accept the album for what it was, not what I expected it to be.  Then every subsequent listen after that I could appreciate what it was and actually enjoy it.

The fact is, artists change their sound and style with every album they make.  If they didn’t, you’d have more Nicklebacks, the same sound every single song, everytime.  We don’t need anymore Nicklebacks in the world.  So next time you listen to an album, try and go into it with an open mind, and if you don’t like what you hear, listen to it again, and again.  You’ll be surprised at how your opinion may change after each listen.  And if three listens later you still don’t like it, then maybe it is just a stinker.  Even the best of artists and bands put out a stinker every now and then.  I mean we can all agree one of the most anticipated rap albums ever, the Carter IV, was pretty bad right?

If you’ve had this kind of experience, think this idea is crazy, or just want to share a story about a really awful album, leave a comment below.  Thanks for reading.