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
Oh, hey, I just had this thought while listening to Rammstein yesterday
Ah nice, what album
Mutter
Huge agree. There are so many albums that tell a complete story. They take you on an emotional journey. Or you’re just missing banger after banger. The only time I ever listen to a random assortment of songs is if I’m listening to music on Youtube or the radio for some reason. I almost never sit down to listen to music in a random playlist when I’m going through my collection. Don’t even have Spotify installed. Years of collecting music doesn’t require a Spotify account.
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.
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.
corporate karaoke
Hahaha, I’ll be stealing that!
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.
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
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?
Yeah that’s what I think too, an album if approached as a whole piece of art is great compared to random singles
God one of my favorite albums of all time is Those Who Tell The Truth Shall Die Those Who Tell The Truth Shall Live Forever by Explosions in the Sky.
While I enjoy shuffling my music for the chaos my library brings, the way each song blends into each other in the studio album is my absolute favorite. It really makes the experience
good albums should
there are lots of albums that aren’t good albums
that said, the albums I listen to often are absolutely front to back listening
nothing beats having a wall shelf full of cds <3
Yeah, I never really got it when people started listening to things on shuffle. I like albums. I recently got rid of Spotify and going back to just having albums and VLC on my phone is so nice.
I get that, but also movies are a single piece of art, and sometimes I just want to jump to the machete battle scene in The Raid. I still love the whole thing, but sometimes I only got like 5 minutes until my lunch break is over.
I used to have a friend who would ALWAYS play between 30 minutes and 1 hour of the start of Ace Ventura 2, then stop it and play it again from the beginning. Fucking infuriating
Mixtapes predate cds by a bit there, kid.
They do not, however, predate albums. CDs were not the inception of the album.
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.
I got a record player and have been buying vinyl recently, so listening to whole albums is pretty much default, and it’s been amazing, I agree. But that’s not a necessity with the CD changer I got to stack under it, or streaming. I do love returning to real album listening, but music is a very personal thing.
Great Refused album though.
I largely agree with you here. I recently left Spotify and have been growing my locally hosted music library and instead of building my own playlists I’ve just been tuning into whole albums. I’ve found that most albums (not all, some albums seem to just be thrown together) have a flow to them and are just much more enjoyable when listened together.
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?
I’m a novice musician, producer, and sometimes rapper because I can’t sing for shit but I agree.
An album is like a film to me, songs are scenes and they fit because it’s a piece of a bigger story. My favorite hip hop albums are The Cool by Lupe Fiasco and APOS by Cunninlynguists (it flips to their newer two sometimes) but I love those so much because they tell stories (they’re technically concept albums) and feel great by themselves too. So on the opposite side, it’s hard to make an album that is cohesive together and amazing individually. Not all artists are that impressive.
I hate the shortening of songs and even I have fallen to it but I feel good musicians try to make good albums and not just singles. Doesn’t even have to be a concept album. I really like Kendrick’s last two albums, prior more than latter as the beef will age the latter but flow is also important.
I can talk forever on this but it may just be a sign of the times changing art for the worst.
A fun counterpoint to the “albums weren’t meant to be shuffled” argument is Apollo 18 by TMBG.
On the track list, “Fingertips” is track 17, followed by “Space Suit” at track 38. That’s because Fingertips is actually 21 mini songs (mostly 10 seconds or less), each with their own track, that are supposed to appear randomly between full songs when you listen on shuffle.
On the other hand, modern streaming services usually just have a single track for Fingertips, so I’m now used to hearing those 21 mini songs in the original, “play it straight through” order.
I mean they do play Fingertips as a single song live, because it’s hilarious and fun.
