Okay, so I got this one backwards. It’s supposed to be A song you used to love and now hate, and I’ve been spending the last day or two trying to think of a song I used to hate and now love. So rather than rethink this, I’m changing Day 16 to the more positive point-of-view that ends up with a song I love. I mean really, as I’ve said several times already, why would I want to post songs I hate on my blog?
Anyway, there are a few songs that ran through my mind for this one. In the end, I had to go for two songs, because one I wanted to include here because it’s from my favorite band, and the other is too cool to leave out. The first comes from Fleetwood Mac, my favorite band. Despite being my favorite band, there was a time when Lindsey Buckingham annoyed me. After the amazing feat of pop mastery that is Rumours, Tusk took everyone by surprise by it’s experimental wackiness embodied in the studio hijinks of Lindsey Buckingham. Christine McVie has always been my favorite of the three principal songwriters, and back then, I was a huge Stevie Nicks fan as well. I loved Buckingham’s work on Fleetwood Mac and Rumours, but the direction he moved in for Tusk was very hit and miss for me. It wasn’t the strangeness that bothered me; I loved Tusk, Not That Funny, Walk a Think Line… but songs like Save Me A Place, my first pick for a song I used to hate and now love, really annoyed me. Now, as I look back, I see how much of what made Fleetwood Mac great was the result of Lindsey’s talent to take the songs of the other two and turn them into masterpieces. I also have a new appreciation for some of Lindsey’s songs that I formerly detested (Oh Diane is another one) and Save Me A Place in particular I find to be just beautiful. This crappy recording of the Mac performing the song live during the Tusk tour is especially fun as it features Christine McVie on guitar!
Another song that I used to hate and now love comes from the same timeframe as Save Me A Place (which came out in 1980). I really enjoyed Sweet’s three earlier singles, Little Willy, Barroom Blitz and Fox on the Run, but in 1978 they came out with a song that I just thought was stupid. Love is Like Oxygen seemed to be a nod to the disco era, which was raging at the time, and it really turned me off. Now, of course, years later, when I rediscovered Sweet, I can’t resist the infectious goofiness of this song. They were truly an underrated band in the glam scene, and I adore all their stuff now. I was just going to go with the Mac song until I watched this video… then I couldn’t resist including Love is Like Oxygen as well.