I Had a Change of Heart with Feist’s ‘The Reminder,’ Just as Starbucks Had One, Too

Feist’s The Reminder holds a special distinction of being the first, and only, album that I abhorred before I adored.

And I’m not talking a passing dislike of it, either — I hated it. When it was released in the spring of 2007, I had just started working as a barista at Starbucks, and the store played it on constant rotation like a DJ might spin Frampton Comes Alive in the summer of 1976.

Every barista I worked with knew I hated this album because any time we weren’t busy with customers and the store CD would smugly launch into a full block of Feist’s music, like it was a fresh brew of something we’d never heard before, I would go to the back of the store and skip each and every song until the disc played something else, anything else, that was different.

Albums are meant to be fully consumed, to sit down and enjoy them over even, yes, coffee. But because I was making lattes, spilling frappuccinos down the back of my leg, and trying to juggle a million tasks (as any barista will tell you), I did not have the luxury to actually enjoy The Reminder. I would only get snippets of it, and from what I heard, it was annoying.

For example, “I Feel It All,” the second track off the album, was one that was played incessantly, and at the…