Now With Lexicography!

Josh writes:

With so many words in the English language, and new ones popping up all the time, it's surprising that there's still not nearly enough. Still missing are many of those words that sum up complex and obscure concepts -- the sort of thing the Germans do a good line in with the likes of schadenfreude and treppenwitz (or the French l'esprit de l'escalier -- more lyrical, if less succinct), where all we have is "that feeling when someone, like, says something to you and you come up with a cool reply, only by the time you think of it, the moment's passed -- y'know?"

So here's a project for you, find a word that sums up:

The experience of buying an album by someone you like and not liking it at as much as their earlier stuff, but then going back and listening to the older stuff and realizing that the things you don't like about the new stuff are true of the old stuff as well, and you just never noticed before.

For example, listening to the Counting Crows' Recovering the Satellites and thinking "damn, these guys have got all whiny", but then listening to August and Everything After and realising that, no, they were always that whiny; you were just 17 at the time so it sounded normal.

Or listening to Lisa Loeb's recent stuff and thinking "Jesus Christ, this sounds like the contents of a 16-year-old girl's diary" and then going back to Tails and realising that it's all like that. Yes, even "Stay", darling of Generation X though it was.

Or, worst of all, being disturbed by how sombre Frenté's Shape was in comparison to Marvin the Album, but then going back and realising that, "Accidentally Kelly Street" aside, that one wasn't all that chirpy either, thus suffering the metal stresses of reconciling depressing Frenté with a world in which black remains black and up is still not down.


Suggestions for such a word to brainstab@gmail.com; comments on my musical tastes can be directed to fuckyou@no,seriously,fuckyou.com