What Was Once Hated...

... has now become unhated.

You know how there are certain really really good songs that you can't listen to anymore because you've heard it half a billion times. You actively avoid listening to it, skipping it in iTunes, changing the radio station, whatever. You do all that is humanly possible to NOT hear the song, even though you know every word, every odd phrasing, every drum fill.

Let me tell you there is another side. Eventually the song will pass all the way through hatred and come out the other side into some kind of quasi-state of acceptance. Whereby you accept the song as great, that you -in fact- do NOT love OR hate the song, and that this song is a part of your essential being (and probably has been for a long period of time) and therefore inseparable from your immortal soul.

The first (and so far only song) to make this journey for me is "Piano Man" by Billy Joel.

Long Island is the only place in the universe that you would grow up under the delusion that Billy Joel is better than Bruce Springsteen. He's on all the time, on every station. Fits well on the classic rock stations, kills on AOR and its not truly Friday on the island until you hear Piano Man.

I admit that it was the first song I knew all the words to, I played it to death at some point in my life and knew that every bar I would go into there would be a pair of Billy Joel heads in the jukebox declaring that this CD jukebox had both discs of Billy Joel's Greatest Hits.

Then, some time after high school, I started to hate the song (probably because it reminded me of HS and I hated that.) It slowly and slowly became more painful to listen to the song. Even after I moved south and heard the song once a month, rather than once a day, my hatred still grew.

Last week I heard it on the radio I realized that I didn't hate it anymore. Not for the cheesy, predictable lyrics ('sharing a drink they call loneliness, but its better than drinkin alone'); the accordian, nor the la-la-la-didi-da la-la-didi-da-da-da. It had evolved past hatred into that odd acceptance.

That gave me hope. The hope that other really-great-songs-that-I-currently-despise can find their way back into my life.

So, good luck "Where The Streets Have No Name", "Moondance" and the live version of "Freebird". Maybe some day I won't hate you.