Do you remember the first time that you loved a song in spite of it? I'm not talking about those songs that you didn't like at first and then grew to love. I'm talking about songs that you didn't like at first because of a strange voice or weird production or off-key singing, and even when you grew to love it, you still hated that strange voice or weird production or off-key singing?

The Magnetic Fields, "Strange Powers" (1994)

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When I reached 1995, in my early 20's and just out of school, I was long past the point where I could listen to stuff that challenged me. But in the late 80's and early 90's, most of the stuff we were listening to was pretty accessible. Sure, I'd had to warm to Morrissey's voice, the abrasiveness of the Pixies and the drone of Stereolab, but once I did, I loved it wholly.

I was playing guitar in a band in North Carolina that took lots of inspiration from the British music around then like Blur and James. Our new bassist was a guy named Linc who had a much more abrasive style of playing and was into the Chapel Hill stuff around at the time: Superchunk and Archers of Loaf. We kept trying to sound more like Pulp and he wanted us to sound more like Polvo. To appease him, we let him pick a song for us to cover, and privately we hoped that once we'd done that song, he would quit hounding us to sound more like Trans Am.

Linc came in with a copy of Holiday by The Magnetic Fields, and put on "Strange Powers". I felt kind of nauseous the first time I heard it. It was so self-consciously blippy, overly simple, and the low-fi synths combined with the morose vocals made a song that I wanted off my speakers. But we'd agreed to do the song, so I quickly learned the chords (not hard: F, C, G) and we started practicing.

Not long after we started doing our own version--much more forceful, with me playing Stax-style chord hits, our drummer doing an insanely hard Motown-style beat and our singer belting it out--that I started to realize that this wasn't just a good song; it was a brilliant song. Before long, it became a favorite of our set, and not long after that, I almost hated playing our own songs after it. I loved our stuff, but everything sounded weak in comparison.

The production on Holiday is something that I love, but only because it's paired with brilliant lyrics and melodies. The things that irked me on first listen still grate a little at first, but there's so much to love about the songs that it's easy to ignore the flaws.

Magnetic Fields are still a great musical love of mine, but Stephin Merrit has softened the edges and improved his singing, so Holiday is still a little more prickly than the subsequent records. But it was a real moment for me: the moment when I realized that music didn't have to be exactly what I wanted it to be for me to love it; that it didn't have to be perfect to be perfect.