The Brick Wall

I doubt I’m the only music lover alone in experiencing a total and utter burnout over a particular musician. I’m referring specifically to the phenomenon I think of as the Brick Wall Album—a band or artist’s release that completely impedes a fan from following them any further.

I’m not talking about the artist you dislike from the get-go. I’m not talking about the artist who has a promising release or two and then peters out gradually, so that one day there’s a realization that you haven’t listened to her in, well, years, and don’t really care (hi, Sinead O’Connor!), or the artist you might have on the cusp of liking, who then releases something that you listen to with bafflement a few times before deciding she was never really your cup of tea after all. (Why yes, I’m talking about Boys for Pele. How did you know?)

No, I mean the artist whom you love unreservedly for years and years, and whom you purchase automatically on the day that he or she drops a new album. The artist you assume you’ll be listening to until the day you die. The artist who, one day without warning or betrays you by foisting upon your poor ears an album that’s such an offense and an aural assault that after one play, you’re finished with the musician. Forever. Not only do you refuse to listen to that particular album ever again, but it poisons your view of everything else from that artist that you’ve enjoyed in the past. You’re done. Out. Kaput. No more, ever again. Boom! Brick wall.

Does it sound familiar?

My example? Talking Heads. I loved the band during my college years, when they were a favorite on the student radio station. Remain in Light was one of my first-ever LP purchases, quickly followed by my purchase of their first three albums. I wore out my cassette tape of Speaking in Tongues. I saw the movie of Stop Making Sense a half-dozen times when it was released, and caught every concert of the group I could during the nineteen-eighties. I could sing Little Creatures backwards while walking a police line. I loved, loved, loved True Stories.

And then Naked came out. I gave it one spin. My reaction was, bluntly, something along the lines of, “The hell.” And then I never listened to Talking Heads again. If one of their songs came up on random play on my iTunes list, I’d rush to skip it.

For the life of me, I’m not really sure what it was about that album that so turned me off. I don’t have a particular animus against the one single I remember, “Nothing But Flowers.” Kirsty MacColl sings backup on a couple of songs, which you’d think would be a huge plus, since I was a fan of hers. (It’s not.) I’m not even sure I could give the thing another listen, considering the revulsion I have for it—that and the fact that I think it’s the only CD I’ve ever bought that I tossed in the garbage can. After one listen of Naked, though, I basically refused to tolerate the group ever again. Until a couple of weeks ago, anyway, when I imported all my old CDs into iTunes and started remembering why I enjoyed them. But it took twenty-two years!

Okay, so maybe Talking Heads wasn’t the best example, because Naked was really their last release. I’ll throw out another from someone with a longer career.

Prince. You know. The purple wonder. Mr. Doves Cry. Yeah, I loved that little midget for a very, very long time, starting with his very first release. By the time he came out with the 1999 album, I was convinced he was the musical messiah; I was basically walking around my college campus knocking on strange doors with a copy of 1999 in hand, asking people if they’d heard of how their eternal souls could be saved by the gracious good power of Minneapolis funk.

My enthusiasm peaked all during the years Prince played with the Revolution. For dances at school I would dress in tight pants, shirts with lace cravats, and sparkly homemade blindfolds with one eye cut out, so that I looked like a refugee from a Purple Rain-era video. I camped out overnight once for tickets to see Prince, the Time, and Vanity 6. I ran through two copies of Parade on my Walkman. Any spin-off act Prince produced, I bought. The Time? Owned every album. Vanity and Apollonia 6? Girrrrrl, I can still rap the entire “If A Girl Answers (Don’t Hang Up)” at the drop of a hat. (It’s a pity it’s not available for karaoke.) The Family? Still think it’s the most underrated album of the nineteen-eighties. Ditto for Jill Jones.

I was still in awe of the little devil all through Around the World in a Day and Sign o’ the Times, and even after he broke away from the Revolution and started getting a little weird. I confess that LoveSexy ticked me off a little—not because of the music, which I really liked, but because I bought the original CD that had no track markers in it, which forced me to listen to the entire CD or nothing. I didn’t really get the Batman release, for example, but I dug the “Batdance” single and was willing to groove along with the rest.

Then came the Brick Wall Album: Graffiti Bridge. I popped it into my CD player, endured it with the same expression I might have if I’d found an unexpected turd on the bottom of my shoe, and never listened to Prince again. I have almost my entire music library ripped onto my computer—1600 CDs. Batman is not one of them. So yes, I missed a ton of music from the little guy that people would swear up and down I should best believe I would l-o-v-e love, but eh. I didn’t really care. I did like the single of “Chelsea Rodgers” two years ago, and went so far as to buy it, but it didn’t make me a fan again. It wasn’t really until January, when I started spontaneously wailing “The Beautiful Ones” in the shower (“Do u want him? Or do u want me? Cause I want u!”) that I realized even after a twenty-year moratorium, Prince’s music was still firmly wedged in my psyche, no doubt taking up space that could be put to more practical use for remembering dental appointments and or to get postage stamps.

I’ve experienced the Brick Wall in literature, too, though I’m a little softer and more lenient with my favorite authors. When Anne McCaffrey resolved a late-in-life novel by having a meteorite fall from the sky and kill a villain, hooray, problem resolved, end of book!, I kind of gently struck her from my to-buy-borrow-or-library-loan list and set her aside for many years. I might consider reading through some of my old favorites of hers, though. Connie Willis’ Passage was so freaking scary and upsetting that I refused to re-read anything of hers for years after its release, but I bought and am enjoying Blackout right now. But musical artists, once they slam me into the wall, seem never to win me back.

Who else has hit a brick wall with an artist?