Having grown up late 90s into the 2000s I went from buying cds to lime wire to spotify.
In the last 6 months I have found such a greater appreciation for just putting on a whole album and listening to it front to back.
I feel there is a huge loss when going from one artist to another to another all random.
Today I am listening to Refused, The Shape Of Punk To Come
Yes and no. You gotta listen to the whole thing all the way through at least once. Some albums require repeat listening. Some, you just take the good, toss the bad.
If an album only has a couple of songs I enjoy, I tend not to continue following that artist.
For artists that I do enjoy, and I discovered this 40 years ago, I find the best songs on the album are generally not the ones they release as singles.
And some I don’t think are so great but after a few listening I find them great.
Yes. They sometimes need to grow on you. I found that a lot with artists like David Byrne that reinvent their sounds every album. The shift can take a little getting used to.
Sometimes it takes several listens for me to appreciate a track; sometimes those tracks become my favourites from the album.
Yep. Nothing felt worse than spending 20€ in a CD and realizing that, apart from the hit single, the rest of it was pretty bad.
There were some where the hit single on the album wasn’t even good, 'cause the version you liked turned out to be the radio edit!
Depending on the album.
Some albums are made like that, as a cohesive work.
Others are just a bunch of songs put together by approximately release date.
I’d say most albums are a collection of the songs the band picked out to make it and then arranged in a way that fit the medium back in the day and feels like it makes sense.
OP and others here in the comments are reading way too much into that they have become accustomed to how one song follows another. It’s not like most bands play concerts in the album order either.
Personally I liked making mix tapes for myself from vinyl to listen to individual songs in new orders and I really liked when CDs were introduced and you could play shuffle and bring attention to every song as it was a little surprise every time.
That said, I’m glad you’ve found attentive listening to music, OP. Keep listening to full albums if this helps you do it.
Most, yes. Then you get to producers like Alan Parsons (Abbey Road, Dark Side of the Moon, all of his own stuff…) He’s rare in the industry, but many have followed his style of album arrangement since then.
Absolutely this.
Now, when I was in High School, I realized that I had owned “The Wall” for 3 months and still never had 90 minutes of consecutive available listening time to listen to it all the way through… parent enforced bedtime was a big part of that, but still… life can be too hectic sometimes.
This you?
Absolutely, another brick in the wall is awesome to listen too as an album.
I’m annoyed by the remaster i bought on cd that cut the songs in the wrong spot so it would go quiet for for a second af the wrong moment of the song
Agree, The Wall should be listened to from start to end in one sitting in your life at least a few times.
The 1990 Berlin Concert video is also worth a watch…
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Is there a PF song where that’s not a pretty big exaggeration? I feel it’s actually 1-2 minutes tops in at least most songs
The composition “Shine on you crazy diamond” from the Album “Wish you where here” is what this meme is referring to and has no lyrics for 8min 40sec.
Edit: changed song to composition as it’s 23+ min long
I performed that song in my youth. I’d play the keyboard solo during the intro and then rush to the microphone while holding the final note on the keyboard when the song is about to enter.
Good point. I love that (I’m going to call it a) song
Echoes and Shine on you Crazy Diamond come to mind.
Two of their best songs too, imo
Iirc, Meddle is a bit like this too.
For many, absolutely! That’s how they were intended, and they deserve it.
Others, it’s just ten songs randomly arranged.
Pretty good litmus test on whether they’re good musicians or just corporate karaoke.
Pretty good litmus test on whether they’re good musicians or just corporate karaoke.
Is a book of short stories or poems not art, just because it is not a monolithic novel.
An Album with 10 independent songs can still be a fully artistic package. Maybe each song is ment to be experience on it’s own. Maybe the art form is to deliver a succinct and complete piece in 3-5 minutes?
Agreed. There’s so much pointless elitism and snobbishness in this thread; very disappointing from so-called music fans.
Disappointing, but not surprising.
If someone took a photograph of the Mona Lisa, do they deserve all the accolades of Da Vinci?
Of course not. Feel free to say thank you for showing this to me, but that’s about all the credit they deserve.
Sorry if you’re a member of Maroon 5, or some other band that purchases random songs and performs them as your own, but to me, that’s the same as taking photos of OTHER people’s paintings and putting them in a coffee table book.
Sorry if you’re a member of Maroon 5, or some other band that purchases random songs and performs them as your own
A non-sequitur reply that says a completely different thing than what was discussed in the thread.
I thought it made sense in context, but maybe not since so many people seem to not understand what I’m trying to say.
Plenty of very talented people write individual songs instead of conceptual albums, and songs on a record often sound cohesively only because they were written in approximately the same period. I don’t know where you got the notion that it’s either whole albums or songs written by others, nothing in between.
For example, Velvet Underground operated pretty much in pop industry’s recording mode despite their experimental approach to the sound and themes. ‘The Velvet Underground & Nico’ straight up opens with one of the poppiest songs they have, and the tracks aren’t thematically linked aside from being generally about people at The Factory. Songs about drugs and BDSM are interspersed with heartfelt songs about Edie Sedgwick, Warhol, and a poor girl who wants to party. They also recorded a bunch of great songs that went unreleased for fifteen years, until the compilation ‘VU’.
I don’t know where you got the notion that it’s either whole albums or songs written by others, nothing in between.
I don’t know where anyone got that notion, because that’s definitely not what I was trying to say.
I mean, that’s how your comments read.
Others, it’s just ten songs randomly arranged. Pretty good litmus test on whether they’re good musicians or just corporate karaoke.
I’m not saying that the musicians in corporate karaoke bands aren’t talented, but I’ll give more credit to a composer than a talented cover band any day.
Sorry if you’re a member of Maroon 5, or some other band that purchases random songs and performs them as your own
Did you not know that record labels buy pre-written songs for bands to play as their own?
Nobody here brought up cover songs though…?
Did you not know that record labels buy pre-written songs for bands to play as their own?
WHOAAAAA NO WAY
corporate karaoke
Hahaha, I’ll be stealing that!
Yeah that’s what I think too, an album if approached as a whole piece of art is great compared to random singles
Pretty good litmus test on whether they’re good musicians or just corporate karaoke.
9 times out of 10, I prefer full cohesive albums.
That said, this is an absurd statement. Musical talent has nothing to do with it.
I’m not saying that the musicians in corporate karaoke bands aren’t talented, but I’ll give more credit to a composer than a talented cover band any day.
You’re free to feel differently.
Who is talking about cover bands???
I could probably name dozens of amazing albums that are not “cohesive,” that contain no cover songs.
You honestly seem confused.
You didn’t understand my point, and I’m over it, so let’s just move on.
I understood it just fine… It just wasn’t really related to what we were talking about.
Nobody was talking about covers or “corporate karaoke bands,” but you.
Listen to a (nearly always incohesive) Ween album, and dare to call them that. No cover songs either.
Not my favorite band by any means, just the first that came to mind when thinking of bands who usually opt out of making their albums sound cohesive.
Guided by Voices is another that just came to mind.
You’ll just have to trust me when I say you’re arguing against a point I never made. I don’t disagree with anything you’re saying. I don’t know who you are arguing with.
This is how I listen to music, but also this isn’t a shower thought, it’s just your opinion.
The name of the community is just a suggestion in most of the communities here.
Is that a shower thought?!
Even “suggestion” is putting it strongly!
I had it in the shower listening to an album.
It would make an awesome !unpopularopinion@lemmy.world though.
I don’t think it’s unpopular, I’m also not saying they should be exclusively listened to in album form just that a lot of music i listen to is enhanced by doing the album
The whole album? Was it a double?
Maybe back in the day when bands would spend months and months assembling an album that had a generally cohesive style. Now it seems a lot of bands throw a bunch of stuff at the wall hoping something will stick. A good album today is the exception, not the expectation.
Not all art belongs in the Louvre.
That happened back in the day too. Low effort releases are nothing new, we just ignore/forget all the bad stuff and end up with rose-tinted glasses.
Yeah, prior to Pet Sounds and Rubber Soul, it’s basically what every album was.
Speaking of low effort releases, a lot of “Deluxe Editions” have come out lately which have “rare recordings” of the same tracks at different live performances. As “unlistenable” goes, hearing Saturday Night’s Alright for Fighting for the third time in 20 minutes gets to be challenging.
Yeah all the music from my youth is good now days is bad (because I don’t remember the bad)
The only albums I listen to entirely from start to finish, are those where all the songs actually connect to each other. Most albums are not like that.
There are tons of concept albums where the songs do not directly connect to each other that still deserve to be listened to as a cohesive unit.
For every concept album there are a hundred collections of songs.
you like Coletta at all?
This varies. Some albums are absolutely meant to be listened to back to back in order. Others are just a collection of songs and nothing is lost by missing them into a random playlist.
Yes, but also no.
There was a time when albums were created by artists with the intent that they should be listened to start to finish.
But at some point albums changes to being a collection of songs trying to be “hits”
Albums as monolithic artistic creations definitely peaked in the 70s-80s, but albums as a simple collection of songs have existed for almost as long as recorded music. Until the late-1960s it was the norm; we’re just experiencing a return to that being the dominant format.
Depends who you are listening to i think. Plenty of artists still writing albums instead of songs.
Yeah that’s what so fresh was for
Depends on the album. Some albums really are like that, but others are just a compiled collection of singles.
Yup. I have very diverse taste un music and I found that some albums are merely a collection of songs written around the same time. While other albums have a set of tracks that share some motifs, and placing them in the right order is important.
And then there are more extreme examples where one song is supposed to lead into the next one with no hard border between the two
True of some albums, not all. A lot of albums just have one good song. One of the best concerts I ever went to was a playthrough of an entire album because it was its 10th anniversay and I’d listened to it so many times I knew exactly what was coming next. Best feeling
Yeah, it really depends on the album and the way the artist has put it together. Any sort of “mix” album if matters very little the order you play it in, or which songs. Something Iike a concert recording, an (e.g. Pink Floyd) album where one song transitions to another, or a Rock Opera that tells a story across songs, the specific songs played and order can matter a lot!
I’ve got my own music collection on a self-hosted server which I can stream to my devices, and would love to have some sort of “not a singular/standalone” flag for songs which really don’t fit or sound good outside of the larger album when I’m playing random/mix mode.
I went to a 10th anniversary playthrough. Regrettably, my tracklist sequence was alphabetical from a flash drive in the car :( still, very enjoyable to hear just a single slice of time rather than a spotty “greatest hits” collection that don’t align with my opinion. 12/12 would do again
Mine was a band called Why? and the album was Alopecia, what was yours?
Album ≠ album. There are certainly ones worthy of listening to them as a whole. But there are plenty of albums that are just utter garbage too. The war on the single by record companies in the 90s produced a number of albums that were at best a couple of okay singles plus 8-10 pure fillers. Name another Chumbawamba song, you can’t without googling.
In a way we are reverting back to the 1950s where the single reigned supreme and albums were an afterthought. Now the single song does better than an album again. Some musicians release every streamlined Spotify curated 2 minute song as a “single.” Since most of it is done digitally only why not?
Dogma is useless.
lol, I can [name Chumbawamba songs], but only their 80s stuff when they were an anarchopunk band - quite a shock when, years later, I discovered they were the ones singing that radio song. I knew them like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kWLHpuLrpyk
Bella Ciao by Chumbawumba is the definitive version as far as I am concerned. Likewise The Day The Nazi Died is pretty good too.
Name another Chumbawamba song, you can’t without googling.
Amnesia.
But point taken.
I can’t remember?
An album built to be an album is best listened to as an album in my opinion rather then on random etc
The Digger’s Song (granted, they didn’t write it)
I don’t particularly like singles. If an album is full of filler, ok, I’ll just dislike it and move on.
I don’t think op is arguing that just because albums are better than single songs when they’re good, that all albums are good.
Yeah I’m not saying all albums are great, just that I find the music I listen to is often better as an album then a single intermixed with other songs.
I definitely agree with you
Today I am listening to Refused, The Shape Of Punk To Come
How very prog of you. 🤙
Some albums, yes. But not all.
Eh, dont agree. Yeah, I think listening to a whole album is important on occasion and can give a cool perspective. But I’ve found that the range of things I enjoy increases with shuffle. There’s so much stuff that I love… in unexpected short spurts. Im not talking hits, but just random decent stuff. I think there’s something lost when an album has to be good enough that you intentionally pull it off the shelf and listen to it for an hour. Hordes of cool things won’t meet that level.
