yes says me

one of the (many) things that bugs me about the modern listener - that's you 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!

I think it depends on the album, these days some albums are made to be cherry picked, with artists making half the album good with potential singles and the other half padded with filler just to make up the numbers.

who's leading who though?

are those responsible for those albums responding to listeners habits or visa versa?

For the most point I tend to agree, although some of my favourrite albums have a skip track (sometimes that's because they have weird crap like Revolution #9, Fitter Happier, Hey Foxymophandlemama That's Me on them).

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.

I think it depends on the album. For example, Beyoncé's last album was made as a whole and was a body of work. She made videos for every single song on the album and it was mean to be viewed/listened to as a whole. It was frustrating hearing people say that there was no Halo, no Single Ladies etc and that she didn't have any big singles from the album...she wasn't actually bothered about singles...the whole point was that it was a body of work.

I never skip tracks except occasionally on compilation albums. I have one compilation (Soul Devotion) which is my go to album to listen to on my PMP when I haven't the time or inclination to play anything else but to fill in and that is on permanent full album repeat and get a track or two at each listen.

Well in a way it's a return to what albums were originally meant to be which is collections of singles. Indeed, that is why they are called albums. In their original form they bore a physical resemblance to picture and photo albums.

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.

From time immemorial, many albums have included a few good tracks and a lot of filler.

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.

Unless I'm mis-understanding you and/ or how the record industry works, it's not the record buying public that dictates which songs from an album chart - or chart highly - by 'cherry picking' them. Unless the industry's changed (it may have for all I know; I'm not a big buyer), it's the artist/ record company that decides which songs from an album to release as singles. It doesn't matter how good an album track may be, surely if it's not released or available as a stand-alone single, it can never chart?

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.

I pretty much only listen to albums. I've no artists on my iPod where I've only got an odd song.


That's not true at all.

Of course they should be imo. I guess the inexorable rise of digital music has had a few detrimental consequences, one of the main ones being it's too easy not to pay for an artists' work anymore if that's the way you are wired (I'm not).

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.

skipping a track on an album is a bit like skipping a chapter of a book. Concept albums in particular are they kind of album that you shouldn't really skip a track on but even regular albums are put together in a certain way, they son't just randomly put tracks in order, they're placed carefully so as to create light and shade. It's going to be a very poring album if every song on it was in common time and 100 BPM

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.

I treat albums like a whole product. I listen and appreciate it as a whole. I don't buy an album only to listen to the singles or just to cherry pick.

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

I guess it depends on the type(s) of music you're into. I nearly always cherry pick songs, but then I mostly listen to pop/dance/R&B/electronic music.

When I was buying a lot of music I would have loved the option to just buy the tracks I liked.

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.

I like to listen to albums as a whole mostly but I find that so many modern albums are packed to the brim with filler and have like 17 relatively unconnected tracks rather than being a coherent body of work like the albums that I love.

On the whole, I like to listen to an album as a whole album and in the order the artist intended the songs to be heard.

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