Do you subscribe to the "grower" school of thought?
 

I don't mean are you into gardening! A lot of people, particularly here, seem to be happy to listen to an album multiple times before they decide if they like it. Such an album is referred here to as a "grower", presumably because it eventually grows on you. But I've more music backed up on my computer than I could ever realistically listen to in a lifetime (which doesn't stop me downloading more nearly every day!) and don't have time to let albums grow on me. Personally, if I don't hear at least some promise in an album first time out I'll usually drop it. Whether or not my opinion would change after several spins is not something I have the time or patience for: albums have one chance to impress me and that's it.

So how do you feel? If you're a believer in the grower theory, how long does it take or how many spins before an album is or isn't pronounced worthy by you? And is this a constant thing, spinning back to back or every day say, or do you put it away, come back to it, put it away, come back to it and so on?

Just interested. How do yaz all feel about this?

I don't have any hard and fast rules. Sometimes I listen to an album, don't like it and never end up listening to it again, sometimes I give it additional chances and never enjoy it, and sometimes after additional listens I end up loving it. It just depends. There are also some artists who I know tend to make albums that take me more than one listen to get into (i.e. Tom Waits) so I always give them multiple listens before passing judgement.

I do believe in it because its happened to me. Having said that, something tends to get me to give a bad album more spins than "hope" alone.

What happens most often is that I'll like a few songs and grow into the album, rather than me liking nothing and grow into it completely. The Return on Investment with a lot of albums isn't statistically in my favor. So its rare that I go from complete hate to full passion.

I grew on Meat is Murder. It is now my favourite Smiths album. I tend to give albums new chances if I think I might grow on them, but if I think they're absolutely terrible, I'll just drop it.

I usually don't return to an album after disliking it on my first try. However, I won't delete it from my iTunes library because one day when I'm listening to it on shuffle, a track from the album will come up and I'll like it because I'm coming at it from a new perspective more or less. That's how I grew to love Trout Mask Replica. Sometimes hype will push me to revisit an album though.

Some of my all-time favourite albums have been "growers", so yes, I´m a believer, but rather like TH, with the quantity of music that´s available now, I´m not quite so patient about letting new albums grow on me.

I guess I have a kind of checklist in my head the first time I hear an album: How noisy is it? How interesting are the lyrics? Is there some instrumental excitement there? That´s why I might replay some jazz album, for instance, to give it a chance to sink in. Would I give a Justin Bieber album a second chance? Probably not.

Mentioning a pop star makes me think of the converse of TH´s question: do you distrust an album if you instantly like it ? That´s happened to me a few times; an album seems great first off but about three plays later it sounds like a shallow piece of garbage!

I don't think this is a situation where you can subscribe to a belief. I think it is a fact that some music will grow on you the more you listen to it.

If I found that album growing on me, I´d probably listen to these guys for a while...

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Yeah, but was it magic? ;)

I know what you're saying and that is a fact: usually if you're exposed to music for long enough you'll end up liking it, or, more likely, just getting used to it. It's what has us humming the most godawful pop tunes despite our better judgement if we've heard them enough ("Baby I'm toxic!"....) but the point is do you put yourself deliberately in a situation where, having listened to an album and not liked it or been blown away by it, you think I'll give that a few more goes, or do you say no, didn't like it, on to the next one, and never go back to it? That's a conscious decision I feel we all either make or don't make.