Not an attempt to knock Laura Nyro here, but suddenly the other day when I put on a CD of her biggest hits, I realized I didn't much care for her anymore. Her delivery of each song was too big and too similar. It did make me sad but maybe either me or styles have changed. Perhaps I have grown used to female singers with a more delicate delivery.
Who have you changed your mind about over the years? Singer, writer, actor, director?
Or am I the only fickle one?
35 comments:
I'd say Norah Jones. I loved her first record, liked her second, and have been indifferent since then.
Patti - Hmmm... interesting question! I used to adore Tracy Chapman and I still say she's quite talented. Really. But I don't dive into her work the way I used to do. Hard to say why...
Jones' first CD was written by her then bf and band member. She needs to get him back.
I feel the same way about TC. Maybe she lost her song writer too.
Sometimes the music style changes and the singer doesn't. Which I think might be the case with Nyro.
I used to like De Niro, Pacino, Nicholson. Is it just they grew too old to play gangster types?
I agree on all of these--I feel the same. Maybe it's harder when you're better-known to keep that authenticity.
The actors you mention just never grew in their skill. It's as if they're pastiches of their old selves now...
Woody Allen, obviously, though I did like MIDNIGHT IN PARIS. But how much of his personal life has gone into that distaste I can't honestly say.
Nicholson I find just embarrassing to watch these days, at least most of the time, and De Niro needs to work less. He's become the American Michael Caine - he never turns anything down.
In music I'd draw the distinction between people I just don't listen to the way I used to (Bonnie Raitt) without necessarily turning against them and those I can no longer listen to because I think their voice is shot (Stephen Stills) and it is painful to hear.
Then there are short-lived infatuations that you grow out of quickly - Miami Vice, Glee.
Jeff M.
Dustin Hoffman. He's okay and sometimes really good but when I was a teenager I thought he was les boluque du chien.
Now, apart from the odd thing, he's just okay, or a bit annoying. That said, I thought he was great in that horse racing series that was cancelled. I think TV is bigger than films now and maybe most actors are better served there.
DH was great in that. He really created a new character and it's a darn shame. I generally like Hoffman but he makes some bad movie choices.
Woody should make less movies although I guess at his age, he feels he can't stop now. But fifteen years ago he should have.
I guess when you have such a fuss made over you as Pacino, De Niro and Nicholson did as young men, you don't study the craft enough. And the money is too good to turn down. Female actors just stop getting parts before this happens.
This one is easy. Obama.
He failed us all terribly.
JTG in Detroit
I would completely dispute that. Any scholar studying the presidency would rank his achievements as impressive considering the Congress and Court he has had to work with. And the economy he inherited. And the wars he inherited but got out us out of....and on and on.
But this is not a political blog so let's leave it alone.
Judy Collins. Just don't care for her later stuff.
CSI Miami. Horatio Caine was never ar tough as the character thought. As the show progressed he became more and more of an avenging angel, the type that should have been thrown in jail. The amorality of this supposedly moral hero disgusts me. On the bright side there's no fat women in Miami and the producers never saw a cleavage they didn't like.
Kitty reminded how much she dislikes the music now piped into many stores and restaurants. Just terrible. Do the store owners/managers know how many people they are driving out of the store? One store I walked out of was playing something with a guy shouting over and over, "Gonna {blip] your smelly {blip}," without the blipping. Ptah! I'm an old fogey; Kitty is neither old or a fogey, but she does have a sense of aesthetics.
Piped in music ruined Madeleine Peyroux for me. It was everywhere about five years ago.
David Caruso is so full of himself it practically spoils his shoes.
Rod Stewart. He's been phoning it in for a while now.
I have never found a character so pivoting that I was willing to read about them very long. Although the exception might be if the character changes over time in interesting ways. Or if the protagonist takes a backseat to other characters in each book.
Springsteen. There were some good times before B.I.U.S.A., but after that...well...I guess all the good plane crashes were taken (I jest, I jest...) but seriously--c'mon. He should just go play golf or something at this point. It's friggin' embarrassing.
Wow. I've never been much for shallow, flashy stuff unless it was charged with genuine wit, so I'm often saved from this kind of growing disappointment. Such things that were always a bit dull but of passing interest to 8yo me, such as LAND OF THE LOST and LOST IN SPACE, are pretty intolerable now, except perhaps in very small doses.
Woody Allen's narcissism and misogyny was pretty obvious to me by about the time HANNAH AND HER SISTERS popped up, so while I can appreciate WHAT'S UP, TIGER LILY? almost as much as I did in 1976, that component of his personality is pretty damned obvious in the work. And, as noted, has been for quite some time.
And, aside from not actually ending sustained large-scale US military engagement in Afghanistan thus far, Obama had hewn pretty close to his presidential-primaries agenda. He was never a leftist, and wishing on the part of his more self-deluded supporters won't ever make him so. (As close to an endorsement of his admin as you'll ever get from me...)
I'm with Deb on Norah Jones. I loved her early work. Then she changed styles to something unlistenable. I loved Jim Carrey in THE MASK and since then it's been downhill. But my best example is Jennifer Aniston. She was fine in FRIENDS and terrific in the 2002 indy movie THE GOOD GIRL. But over the last decade, it's been one bad movie after another.
Norah Jones recorded for Blue Note for a reason, with that first album, leaning as it did into jazz-pop. She's countrified considerably since.
Aniston keeps doing bad commercial work, which FRIENDS (sorry if I seem particularly prickly today) was pretty much of a piece with...but she will surprise one. She has a nice turn in the current web series BURNING LOVE (albeit it's a very brief supporting role)>
I liked Jennifer in OFFICE SPACE. Like many other actors (Bruce Willis in MOONRISE KINGDOM comes immediately to mind) she'd be better off doing smaller roles in quirky movies rather than trying to star in these awful rom-coms.
I disagree, by the way, on Dustin Hoffman. Yes he can be insufferable at times but I loved him as Paul Giamatti's father in BARNEY'S VERSION.
I almost mentioned Rod Stewart this morning.
Jeff M.
Are you talking about old stuff that has not aged well (less common to myself, I seem to have become more accepting as the years gone by) or old hotshots no longer any good? Oh, I'll have to cone back to you - it's the Spain vs. France QF at the moment.
Diana Krall.
Either or both. Go, Spain!
Thinking about the point, Anders raised, I guess what I originally was saying was the music I formally liked (Nyro) I know longer like. So I have changed and not Laura N.
"GooooooooooooooL!"
Are you down on French footballers, Patti?
Rick, I'll have to check back in with Diana Krall...but it must admit that while she has or had nice legs, her record label deciding that was how to sell her got more than a little tired.
Music - I am generally much more inclusive now than as a youth so it's rather the opposite here. I now appreciate stuff the 15-year myself would have sneered at. But it's mainly old stuff - I don't really care for new material from ald favourites.
Literature - much the same as for music. Can't think of anything I read back then that I'd reject now. Sure, I read Tolkien back when I was 14 but I also rejected it EVEN BACK THEN as nerdish wankery. At the time I was also dipping into Raymond Chandler, Ed McBain, Sjöwall & Wahlöö, Patricia Higsmith and Ross Macdonald so I was sure on the right track. But c ome to think of it, which was the last Elmore Leonard I bothered to read?
Movies - now we're getting somewhere. Marty Scorsese - when was the last time he made anything worth anything?
Oh, and France had no chance whatsoever - and it's going to be Germany vs. Spain in the final, or maybe - maybe - Italy vs. Spain.
Yes, I'll second Diana Krall, too. For me, she's one whose work has not aged well with me, while Rod Stewart is the faded hotshot.
Anders, much to my surprise I really liked HUGO.
Jeff M.
I still love the old Rod Stewart, like up until his Foot Loose and Fancy Free record or so. After that, not so much to not at all. I think at some point Rod, Michael Bolton, Sting, Elton John, and Phil Collins all morphed into a single person.
A recent revelation to me is the band RUSH. Their new record just came out, and friends of mine have raved about their "return to form." If you ask me, they're not even close, and never will be. Can still listen to the old stuff, though.
A bigger blow is Black Sabbath. Their first 4 or 5 records are classics. But the antics of Ozzy over the last few years have all but rendered them unlistenable to me.
Led Zeppelin. I'm over them. Which is probably the best answer to your question from me, Patti, since I think what you are asking is stuff one used to like but don't anymore, not just new stuff from artists previously liked. I think. Heh.
Yep, that was it. I lost sight of it myself after a while.
Cliff Richards, Tina Charles, The Carpenters, Connie Francis, Trini Lopez…enjoyed listening to them all in school and college but not so much now.
I agree with you about Laura Nyro, Patti. And, if I may digress, she's one of the reasons I think the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame is a bunch of BS. When they stoop to Laura Nyro, Buffalo Springfield, and a whole load of other one-hit wonders, you begin to realize the R&R HOF exists solely to put on the TV show once a year.
Who's next? Norman Greenbaum?
And one more thing. A few weeks ago, I thought I may have outgrown my love for THE SOPRANOS, which I had originally thought was a major milestone in TV programming. So I watched the entire series in sequence, prepared for major disappointment.
I liked it even better the second time around. The acting and especially the writing were consistently top-caliber. One of the best TV shows ever.
I hope I'll be able to say the same about BOARDWALK EMPIRE and MAD MEN in coming years.
That's something I feared too re: THE SOPRANOS. Glad to know it held up.
Linda Ronstadt. Loved her early work but not into anything she's done for the past 20 years or so. Shelly Long was great on CHEERS and hot great on anything else I saw.
Still waiting for those nuclear power plants, Mr Prez.
The late Robert B. Parker with his Spenser mysteries was the first to come to mind.
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