I've been on a journey the past few months to listen to every single album I own (a little more than 800 or so) and if you can find that discipline I do recommend trying to listen to music in albums again. Even if it's just when it first comes out, listen to the whole album once and then just listen to the individual songs you liked. I've found so many songs that I wouldn't have liked otherwise but they either A) grew on me (similar to what you talked about) or B) I liked them within the context of the album.