Songs That You've Grown to Love/Dislike

[snowfist]

Happy New Year guys!

Creating a new topic to kick-start the year with some Lifehouse discussion. Just to make the forum more alive hehe

It’s been in my mind for some time to discuss this, as last year I make it a habit to listen to the albums from start to finish, including the b-sides tracks. And try to listen as if it was the first time I hearing them. Then I noticed there were some songs that I’ve grown to be one of my favs. Songs like Cling & Clatter, Fool, Undone, The End Has Only Begun and Clarity. I don’t know why but somehow I resonate more with the songs and it’s been constant repeat ever since.

Ohh and I’ve grown to even like My Precious now @shawn really like the reimagined version Jason did recently.

On the flip side, I grew to dislike some songs on Smoke & Mirrors like Had Enough, Falling In, Wrecking Ball and By Your Side. They’re okay but I no longer have the same level of interest as I was before.

Any of you guys experience the same thing? Rediscovering why you love them and found a new, deeper appreciation with their songs. I know I have.

[peppermint]

Happy New Year to you too! I’m pretty new to the community, so my opinions haven’t had much time to change, but I do have some thoughts…
I’ve never been a very romantic person, so I used to dislike songs like Whatever It Takes and First Time, but I’ve recently come to enjoy them. All the romantic songs on Who We Are are now tolerable/enjoyable for me (and of course I love the rest of the songs on that album also). Smoke and Mirrors, on the other hand… I agree with you @snowfist about disliking some of those songs. A couple of them are alright, like It Is What It Is and All That I’m Asking For, but most others are… not my favorite songs (and this pains me to admit because I have a very difficult time criticizing things).
It seems that some songs people don’t care for are some of my favorites. I’ve seen people on various discussion boards I’ve read over the past couple months (including here) saying that they dislike Cling and Clatter, My Precious*, and/or Nobody Listen. For some reason, those three songs are some of my absolute favorites. If I had to choose two favorites from No Name Face, I’d choose Only One and Cling and Clatter, and for SCF I’d include My Precious, and probably Empty Space. I remember the very first time I ever heard My Precious (about a year ago) … I had just discovered Lifehouse; I shuffled their music and when it came on, I stopped everything I was doing and just listened. I don’t know what it is about Nobody Listen, but I’ve always loved it. Same thing with all of the songs off of Almeria. I’ve always loved that album in all of its strange robot-cowboy/UFO glory. Except Moveonday… the one-word name has always bugged me.
Also… Stardust. I used to not like that song, but after some time I’ve actually come to enjoy it. The lyrics are interesting enough and it is pretty catchy. It is a lot different than most Lifehouse songs (understandably) but I much prefer it over Wrecking Ball. I love the little moments where Jason sings his “cause we’re just a speck in this world…” and I think Bryce’s voice fits the lead vocals well. I like it more than Alien, which used to be a favorite of mine just because it was the first song that I heard off of OOTW, but now it just seems quite repetitive and dull to me .
Anyway… this paragraph is a lot longer than I expected it to be… so goodbye

[shawn]

Hey @snowfist! Happy new year!

I think it’s pretty cool that you’ve been listening to albums start to finish. I think that’s the hopes of many artists to see the “whole picture” as it were. I’m an album guy myself and i honestly don’t pay any attention to people that drop singles all the time. When I put on some music, I typically put on an album - not a song. Just my preference or maybe a product of my generation? Haha

Songs I’ve tried to grow to like would be most of Almeria. It’s such an interesting record but no matter how much I try, I just can’t get into it. The lyrics felt almost “generic” on this record… it seems as though Jason did less solo writing on that one but I can’t recall specifically.

There isn’t a single song pre-S&M that I don’t like (OK, YaM got old but to be fair, I knew the song already thanks to that old clip from Ean Merring’s movie).

If there’s anything I’m growing to love, it’s more of JW and ØZ. Ode to Silence was hit or miss at first. I didn’t like the way he release each track as singles because I heard each track on their own, which made them sound “weird” as a cohesive unit at the end. Weird, I know. Now, that album is honestly one of my very favorites.

ØZ on the other hand took a couple of years to get into, beyond the early singles like Technicolour Sky, Dream Child, etc. I didn’t get into them again until after Young Suburban Minds came out and I put the whole lot of it on. I still haven’t grown to like Born/Head Movies/Polly Anna much yet. Knowing Georgiana became For Polly Anna kind of annoyed me because that song kicked ass when they played it live as a rock track lol

As far as songs I’ve grown to dislike (or not really love to be fair) over the years… basically SaM and OOTW tracks… It Is What It Is and All In were probably my faves from SaM but I kind of wore them down.

I think my musical tastes have evolved quite a bit which affects my perception here. WWA and prior are all gold to my ears, the older the better! Something about Jay’s early writing just resonated more with me I think (and again with his solo work!)

I too, hope Anchor gets a reimagined version. That’s one of my all time favorites and the album version always felt too “compressed” musically. Would love to see a fresh spin on that gem.

Sorry, got a bit carried away here and slightly off track!

[peppermint]

@shawn

I didn’t like the way he release each track as singles because I heard each track on their own, which made them sound “weird” as a cohesive unit at the end

That’s really interesting for me to hear because I wasn’t around back before Ode to Silence was released so I first heard the album as a single unit, and I’ve always loved it. Super interesting to see how releasing songs in different ways leads to different perspectives… I hope Jason doesn’t release every track off of A Likely Story individually because I’d prefer for there to be some newness to it when it finally releases.

There isn’t a single ØZ song that I don’t like… I especially love Born in a State, and Garden of the Sun, of course, seeing as it was the first album released after I became a fan. I’ve actually been listening to Øzwald a lot more than I’ve been listening to Lifehouse, recently.

Sorry, I’ve gotten carried away again…

[snowfist]

@peppermint yes Almeria had potential. I’ve mentioned somewhere here that the concept of space-cowboy music excite me when I first read of the album preview. But IMO, the lyrics really let the record down.

Same goes to SaM if you think about it. The concept of mixing two great sides of Lifehouse (live performance + radio friendly songs) really bodes well for the album. But the combination of lyrics + overproduced songs made SaM falls short of my big expectations. The conspiracist in me (hehe) think the studio meddle with the production too much. Put simply, the bonus tracks here just so much better and would make the album in line with the classic Lifehouse we know and love.

There isn’t a single ØZ songs you don’t like? Oh wow, I definitely have quite a few that I don’t care for. I think for most of us old Lifehouse fans, the stark difference between the two style of music was off putting especially in ØZ first two-three albums. Now that we hear so much from ØZ, at least for me, I know what to expect musically.

But I agree with you, I somehow find myself putting ØZ more often than not.

[snowfist]

Another songs to mind where I’m not having the same level of obsession is Take Me Away. Many styles of the song; album version, single version, official acoustic, Carson acoustic (more often than not, it’s my favourite one), live versions (which also a few variants). I was amazed with how a band can have different versions of a song, yet each version sounds so good, and yet have a unique feel to it. I remember it’s around that time where I gone down the rabbit hole with Lifehouse.

@peppermint you mentioned a year ago you just dicovered Lifehouse. Care to share the story here? I imagine there’s an interesting story there I find it interesting how there are still new people listening to Lifehouse even though they’re no longer active

[peppermint]

Haha, the story isn’t that interesting @snowfist, but I’ll share it.
My dad was in a lot of bands growing up, as a lead guitarist. (Funnily enough, his face looks super similar to Steve Stout) He still occasionally plays live shows with his friends. I grew up listening to all of the songs (mostly cover songs) that he would play with his various bands. One of those songs was You and Me. About a year ago I decided to make a playlist of all the songs I could remember from my early childhood because my dad hadn’t been playing as many shows recently. I stumbled across You and Me when I should have been doing Geometry homework, but I was instead distracted, adding songs to my playlist. I saw the name “Lifehouse” and thought it sounded interesting so I shuffled their songs. I fell in love with their music, and in the last year I’ve grown obsessed with them and convinced my dad to start learning how to play more of their songs. (He’s also teaching me some guitar) I also found my mom’s old No Name Face CD which began my CD collection (I completed my Lifehouse albums CD collection this Christmas).
Funny story that I just remembered: last August my family was visiting Chicago and we went up to the glass floors at the top of Willis tower. When we made it back to the lobby, Falling In by Lifehouse was playing over the speakers. I found that funny because a lot of people were probably worried about falling to their deaths.

[robert]

Oh this thread is so much fun. The board is ALIVE!

Welcome @peppermint to the forum, and so lovely to hear you’ve gotten into their music so recently and so quickly! I had a similar trajectory to you in 2008; it was You and Me in June, and by end of 2009 I knew every b-side and unreleased song there was. Total obsession. The CD collection took some time though

So interesting to hear the changes y’all have felt in your favourites. My taste in their music hasn’t changed too much over the years, in that what we’re my favourites before still are, but I do find ones I ‘tolerated’ I no longer tolerate and ones I thought were weird I now love. A brief summary:
Never loved but used to tolerate, now strongly dislike:
All In
Had Enough
Falling In
Lady Day
Pins & Needles
Undone
Whatever It Takes
One for the Pain
To a lesser extent, Hurricane, Days Go By

Songs I used to find okay, now love:
Somebody Else’s Song
My Precious
How Long
Right Back Home
Rolling Off the Stone
Gotta Be Tonight has levelled up to ‘okay’ from a dislike lol

I’ve always been an Amería apologist and voiced my disdain for the cynical songwriting that permeated a major chunk of S&M, so that stuff really hasn’t changed haha. I found Had Enough and those other cowritten songs felt so insincere, like ‘products’ by committee rather than genuine expressions of emotion (like a Blind or Better Luck Next Time for instance, both of which I still love). OOTW felt like a return to form in that I felt this less for the most part, with a few holdouts like One for the Pain and Firing Squad?

I’ll say it until I die that the most ‘Lifehouse’ songs that exist are songs of hope in dark places, and I think that’s what draws a lot of us to the band and J’s songwriting. Think Simon (I have felt the same as you), Come Back Down (when you land on your feet, I’ll help you find a way to make it back to me), Signs of Life (can April hours spring signs of life in me?), Broken (in the pain I find healing), Flight (no more running), Goodbye Kanan (I don’t know where to begin, so I’ll start right at the end). Jason’s solo work follows this format too, Windows probably more than any.

I agree with @shawn on Oz albums; their first is my favourite (adore almost every track), but it took some time to warm up to the next two and FPA never did it for me. YSM is another favourite, and the Future Wars EP really hits too. Garden is getting up there for me as well; nice to see the lighter side of their writing:)