Does anyone have phases like this?

It's normal. Your tastes are developing and you are not so easily hooked as you once were. Think yourself lucky. This only happens to people with taste.

Some things only get better with acquaintance. I have loved Mozart for 40 years.

Maybe instead of paying too much attention to how the music works, just sit back and enjoy it.

I've always wondered that about people who have advanced music degrees...do you start thinking about the technical side of songs everytime you hear them?

Not every time; just when we choose to. Like anything else, it depends on our mood.

Re: Does anyone have phases like this?


While I take great pleasure in originality when I encounter it, I also think there is some pleasure to be had in music (or any art) that is not necessarily trying to be pathbreakingly new but is, instead, trying to do something fresh with preexisting conventions. Reinventing the concept of art with every work has its merit, don't get me wrong, but so too, I think, does the ability to exercise originality within "constraints." I don't think Shakespeare's sonnets suffer because they conform to a preset rhyme and metrical scheme; quite the contrary, they are all the more impressive for showing how much one can do within a set of conventions. I liken it to playing Monopoly with an unlimited bank: it's easier to win, but it robs the the victory of its meaning. The truly impressive victory comes when someone stays within the confines of the rules and still comes out on top.

Shapeless, would you mind if I PM-ed you about this?
xxxxx

PQ... I sent you a PM earlier today, but I can't quite tell if I did it correctly. (I can't find a definitive indication when the message was sent, which always worries me.) Anyway, yes, feel free to send me a message.