Perfumes have many uses; some wear them to cover bad smells; some wear them as clothes; some wear them to fit in and to smell like everyone else (think young girls and Tommy Girl or Lacoste). For me it has been important to understand that you can also use them to evoke emotions and to experience novel things - a bit like art, music or films.
Re: manure smells, animalic smells are used to make perfumes more approachble and human. Musks make us think of warm skin; components of sweaty and urine smells are used especially in masculine perfumes to make the scent more brawny. Fecal smells are also present in perfumery - jasmine is partially made of indoles that are one of the odor component of faeces (it gives jasmine sensual, indolent, voluptuos qualities). If you want pristine cleanliness, look into Estee Lauders - they are great quality and craftmanship, but many find them daunting because they are a bit inhumane. Scents that are too clean often smell of soap or fabric softener to us (this is because the cheapest ingredients are used to perfume laundry products). Most classic French perfumes have some animalic and earthy qualities (to make them more sensual).
One of the perfumes I love is Bal à Versailles by Jean Desprez. I think someone described it as a lady who has peed in her pants - the pee-like quality makes it more sexy, earthy and grounded. I also have quite a few manurey, horse-like scents that I sometimes enjoy. I don't know about you, but to me they are all about careless summer days, haymaking, and perhaps about falling leaves.
Samsara is a classic sandalwood perfume. Traditional sandalwood is almost extinct by now, and usually replaced by synthetics; many people love them because they smell deep, creamy, milky and sensual, but they can also smell sickly sweetish like newborn poo.
Serge Lutens has helped to create a lot of perfumes that go outside the normative. For me, they are short films in a bottle - very intense experiences, not all pleasant, but worth experiencing.
Today I'm wearing Amarige by Givenchy. It's one of the last big scents made in the 1980s blockbuster style. It's sinus-piercing ylang ylang and feels like a gleaming glass and steel sculpture in midday tropical sun. People got tired of that style (Giorgio, Opium, Poison) and it was replaced by fresh and watery and lightwearing unisex perfumes (think Eau d'Issey, CK One, Eau parfumee au the vert). Which were then replaced by fruity florals... Which will be replaced by a new trend (light gourmands? new big blockbuster scents?).
The popular mass-market perfume I like the least at the moment is Code pour Femme by Armani. It's the fragrant equivalent of wearing acrylic - scratchy, nasty, loud and cheap smelling with a strange, plasticky feel.