Dance music: it's all so wrong

I've recently come to the realisation of how wrong I am about everything. Literally everything. Even this paragraph. It's so wrong.

The wrongest I've ever been is about the 1989 house humpathon French Kiss by Lil Louis. I hated the track when it first came out. Why was that woman moaning all over the record? Was she hurt?

Of course, now I recognise its place in history. Dance music was exploring its sexuality alongside some innovative tempo changes. And actually, it's a cracking tune.

I also remember hating Snap's The Power on first listen. How could something so discordant get to number one? It's all wrong. I felt offended by it: triggered before 'being triggered' was even a thing.

Naturally, I fell in love with the track: a dominating dance music classic. I was simply puzzled by the clash between the robust bad-boy rap, the jingling electro beat sampled from Doug Lazy's Let It Roll, and a whole bunch of chords that came in at different angles.

I now realise that a lot of the best stuff is slightly off: clashy is good.

And now something at the other end of the tonal scale: Air's Sexy Boy. So much cheese. So much soft cheese. Why would anyone like this?!

I have since awoken to the sexy reality that Air's particular brand of spreadable sandwich filling was incredibly tasty, and I inserted, hur hur, the Moon Safari album into my CD player over and over again - until way past its use-by date.

Three different examples in the dance music world. My reaction to those tracks was so negative, viscerally so. And yet I came to love them, and each one helped define my musical world.

What are YOUR hate-then-love tracks? Tracks (or artists) which infuriated or baffled you, but then you somehow fell for their charms in a big way?







Further Fats: Chosen Words: R is for Rhythm (2010)

Further Fats: Sexy words - an infographic (2014)