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Should albums be listened to as albums
my name is joe
Posts: 4,450 Forum Member
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yes says me:p
one of the (many) things that bugs me about the modern listener - that's you:D is this cherry picking thing they do, sending songs up the singles chart from brand new albums.
The first problem with this is the instant judgement factor.... a good song reveals itself slowly as we all should know.
The second problem is an album should be listened to as an album, that's why the songs are sequenced as they are, so you get a rise and fall and an overall experience.
Some of what i consider classic albums have a scope and variety about them that would be lost if i cherry picked the songs i liked best, in fact i can think of one or two albums that have no more than a couple of songs on i would listen to in isolation, but work brilliantly as an album.
imo to cherry pick songs from albums is like selecting only your favourite scenes from a film to watch over and over...they won't make any sense without the other scenes.
It's a nonsense...so stop it!:D
one of the (many) things that bugs me about the modern listener - that's you:D is this cherry picking thing they do, sending songs up the singles chart from brand new albums.
The first problem with this is the instant judgement factor.... a good song reveals itself slowly as we all should know.
The second problem is an album should be listened to as an album, that's why the songs are sequenced as they are, so you get a rise and fall and an overall experience.
Some of what i consider classic albums have a scope and variety about them that would be lost if i cherry picked the songs i liked best, in fact i can think of one or two albums that have no more than a couple of songs on i would listen to in isolation, but work brilliantly as an album.
imo to cherry pick songs from albums is like selecting only your favourite scenes from a film to watch over and over...they won't make any sense without the other scenes.
It's a nonsense...so stop it!:D
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who's leading who though?
are those responsible for those albums responding to listeners habits or visa versa?
all albums have a skip track it's true. But i would even go as far as say there's a benefit to struggling through the skip track, if only for the release afterwards:) Though there are exceptions i'll give you that.
The length of albums were originally dictated to by technology not by aesthetics. It's with the concept or thematic album which was popularised by The Beatles and many artists after them that this newer idea emerged.
Still it is amazing how persistent the idea of the 10-12 song albums of 3/4 minutes songs has been.
I've albums going back decades where I've only listened to some of the tracks once and rarely a whole side in one go.
I'd have thought that in the vast majority of cases, it's the strength of the singles that drive album sales, not the other way around, because once you've bought the album, you're un-likely to buy individual tracks from it again.
That's not true at all.
Another one is we've all become so impatient in our listening habits due to the fact that we can get to a 'favourite' track so easily. Then programme the CD player/whatever to skip to that track every time afterwards!
I'm encouraged about the vinyl rennaissance personally because it makes this sort of jiggery pokery very difficult. Put it on the turntable, turn the amp on, sit back and LISTEN.
When we were putting our album together we were originally going to start it with a bang and hit people between the eyes with a furious opening track, then we came up with the idea that rather than that, we'd make them listen and turn up the volume by starting the album with a track that opens acapella and gradually builds. We also came up with the idea of forming the album around the old vinyl format of having 2 sides, with a break in the middle where the listener would have had to turn the record over to play side 2
.
If people pick odd tracks from the album to listen to, you certainly wouldn't get the feeling of listening to an old vinyl album, so ours needs to be listened to in its entirety, ideally
I'm th3 same, I've only got complete albums on my MP3 player.
If I'm driving then I will usually have my memory stick on random because I can then listen without worrying about changing albums, etc.
At home though, because I listen to a lot of Progressive Music where the artist usually intends for an album to be listened to in its entirety, I play the whole album.
I've also got plenty of albums that contain no 'fillers'.
Albums are more often like books of short stories rather than novels. Concept Albums might be more like novels. Long tracks are hard to skip.
Artists may wish to curate their works in a certain order and that's fine but digital music services represent a disruption which favours the listener to some degree.
But when you are listening via a streaming service the listener can curate their own listening order which is quite unlike vinyl. The listening can put together playlists that actually sound better than the artists original choices.
There are some very old-fashioned listeners on here. I read so many posts on here asking people to be less conservative in their listening, i.e. they should go and listen to music outside the charts etc. Well some listeners should stop harking back to older listening patterns and embrace the possibilities of the new technologies.
what makes you think you know better than the artist what order of songs works? The running order of an album is almost as important as the creating of the songs themselves, certainly when you've got an album that tells a story.
It's not a case of not embracing new technology, it's a case of putting together a set of songs which, when presented in order take the listener on a journey, if you choose to listen to a whole album on shuffle or just pick certain songs, you can't follow that journey. Fair enough you might create your own journey but it won't be the right one for that particular set of songs.
That's why I only own one "best of" album, to me, they don't create that journey
Back in those vinyl days, after I got an 'LP' I'd play it through 2 or 3 times to really decide what I liked and what I didn't...and then record the good tracks onto compilation cassette tapes.
Most albums I like have a feel to them that is enhanced by listening to them as a whole.
They often take you on a journey, that gets lost if you don't listen to them in order.
Really who's to say what is the right journey? Once the music is out there then the listener is just as much a part of the process as the artist. In fact very often the meaning or value of music only comes at the end of the creative process. That's how music (just like art) gets appreciated in the first place.
Sure there are some albums that have a strong narrative but that's relatively rare.
Most albums are collections of songs. More often the songs are not written in the order they are recorded. There will often be more songs available than can be put on an album. And often it's not just the artist who chooses the order. Many will take the advice of others, producers, etc. It's an art in itself putting together a running order, an experience. What makes an artist (which might be a set of opinions anyway if it is a group) better at that than someone who's listened to lots of music? Often it is the artists own experience of listening that is informing their choices anyway.
An example. You mention having one 'best of' album I hope that Best of album is Abba Gold because that album demonstrates how a set of singles/songs can be recurated, including tracks that weren't really best of, and a listening experience recreated that actually helped re-establish ABBA as great artists in popular music.
This. The OP hasn't got a bloody clue. I bought A Night at the Opera 40 years ago and from the first listen I tended to skip ( pick up the needle and move it to the next track OP) the Roger Taylor tracks. That hasn't changed as I listen to the cd in the car or on my ipod where I've selected my favourite tracks from it. (FACEPALM........ meant for OP)
Sorry, but this "journey" stuff is total bollox as far as I'm concerned. Every album is a collection of songs to me. Nothing else. I own loads of best of collections.
Each to their own, I guess, but for me every word in every song is as important as every other word.
If lyrics are included in the sleeve notes I'll read them before I listen to the album, but as I said, lyrics are important to me
That's probably even worse , I don't get that feeling of an album anymore in digital form all my favourite albums I bought on vinyl