I thought I knew myself and my place in the world. Part of that was knowing for sure that the song All Star by Smash Mouth is terrible and I hate it. I could have been happy never hearing it again!
But then I did Module 8 lesson 2 and it was super fun to play. I have it stuck in my head and I’m not mad about it. I think I’m going to go learn the whole song. I don’t even know myself any more!
Are there other songs or bands you thought you didn’t like but playing bass changed that? Of all the things I thought about learning bass, I did not predict that I would end up liking All Star by Smash Mouth but here we are!
I’ve never been a big Motown fan. I’ve never hated it or anything but its never really scratched my itch before. I love playing Motown and R&B though. I don’t very often, but I do really enjoy it. If you know my music tastes, that goes against my entire world view.
Learning to play bass opened my eyes to a huge amount of music I had written off. Even if I wouldn’t seek out some music for listening pleasure, I have a much greater appreciation for what goes into it.
For instance, James Jamerson… damn. He’s amazing and I never knew till I did B2B and started hanging out on BassBuzz.
In my band someone suggested “Stacy’s Mom” by Fountains of Wayne. We all laughed at it as a joke… until it became one of everyone’s favorite songs to play.
Oh man.
EVERY song I have to learn I usually end up grudgingly liking it.
The bass (synth) line in Britney Spears’ Toxic is really good. It’s very cool.
I had to learn that recently and I don’t love the song or the artist, but I definitely have an appreciation for how well that song is put together and how cool that synth line is.
There are too many examples to list, so I’ll stop with this most recent happening.
i mean everybody on earth learned that dua lipa bass (synth) line, and the miley cyrus one too. and they both turned out to be bangers, as the kids say.
But more on topic - what I love so much about learning basslines is that I’ll decide to start learning a song that maybe I think is just OK.
But in really listening to the bassline, I totally fall in love with it.
This happens with tunes I already liked too, but for example Stevie Nicks - Rooms on Fire. I think I randomly heard it and thought the bassline sounded easy to learn, so I decided to cover it. But when I isolated the bassline, I heard all the nuances and it became something else entirely
I go to a Rock Project jam every week here in the UK. It follows a school term as they have junior sessions. Everyone picks 2 songs at the start of term and the organisers pick a different song each week so have played so many songs and genres I’d never thought about before and you do start to appreciate them so much more.
Mine was “Run To You” by Bryan Adams. It isn’t that I hated the sing, but I expected to learn some bubble gum rock song. It ended up being a lot of fun!
