tin roof! ... rusted

 

For most of my life, I've despised the song 'Love Shack.'

The B52's don't fit well with any music genre. It's not grunge. It's not R&B. For sure not metal. It was like if a pop song took a trip to the future, then came back and ended up on sale in some ironically boojee glam thrift clothing store in an abandoned mall.

'Love Shack' is catchy. It's ridiculous. kitschy, and altogether weird. 

And I could not stand it.

For years, I'd switch the radio station when I'd hear that snare drum start on the track. I'd leave the dance floor when it cued up at parties and weddings.

This must be said: in the great annals of time, this hardly counts as a problem. It's a blog post about a song. But you're still reading. And you have to admit, there are songs that you just can't stand listening to, simply because you just can't stand listening to them. So you know what I'm saying. You're catching this vibe.

(It's not just songs. We start out disliking something for reasons that, at first, make some sense to us. Eventually, our dislike calcifies into a settled disposition, long after we forgot why we ever felt that way in the first place.)

A little while back, I was out with friends at a birthday party. Additionally, my friends Ronna and Jim, who I hadn't seen in years, were also at this gathering (friends I sang in choir with long time ago), so I felt joyful. They volun-told me that the group was picking a song to sing together on the karaoke setup there, and I'd be joining them. No big deal, I thought.

But of all the songs, they pick...'Love Shack.' 

Of course they would pick this song. They didn't know I didn't like the song. It wasn't my birthday party, so out of respect, I kept my feelings to myself.

I feebly protested as that kitschy snare opened up the tune, but I had no time to complain; what was supposed to be MY PART of the singing was starting. So I begrudgingly sang along, alongside dear old friends, at this birthday party.

And somewhere in the 4:16 it took for that song to play that night, my disposition for this song turned from disdain to affection.

Perhaps ... it was the realization that I was slaying it on vocals ... (not afraid to say that I was). But seriously, the actual reason my heart changed was seeing my friend Ronna unreservedly pour her awesome voice through that song. Witnessing her sing like that helped change my mind. She was loving it; seeing how she loved it helped me figure out how I could love it too.

Has this ever happened to you? Surely it has. We learn to love most of what we love because we see it loved from someone else's perspective. In fact, that's probably how we learn to love anything we love -- someone showed us how.

Don't get me wrong ... I still think the song is catchy. It's ridiculous, kitschy, and altogether weird. 

And I love it.

"Sometimes you have to watch somebody love something before you can love it yourself. It is as if they are showing you the way." -Donald Miller, Blue Like Jazz