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
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
This depends. A lot of albums aren’t coherent “pieces of art”, and the track listing is ordered and selected by execs other than the artist, so it’s kind of meaningless. “Greatest hits” albums are also not relevant.
But yeah, this is a big reason why I went back to vinyl and cassette - I select something, put it on, and listen to it straight through without skipping, because that would require me to get up off my chair and walk across the room. Life hack amiright.
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.
Does anybody still subscribe to HBO? Back in the 1980s we had HBO and I had an afternoon-evening shift at a store nearby. HBO would start a movie in the early afternoon, I’d get to watch half of it before I had to leave for my shift. Luckily, they’d also usually show the exact same movie later that night - timed such that when I got home from work I could sit down and see the end of it starting from about 5 minutes before I had to leave.
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
With a small child this is how I experienced Demon Hunters. Completely didnt realise there was a 2nd half for about 4 months.
Nah, most songs suck. I’ll listen to the one or two good ones.
depends, some artists just have a few good songs and a lot of filler. In my experience, the further away from mainstream pop you go the higher the likelihood to encounter great albums with no filler.
Sounds like you’re just making your own albums
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?
Like most things out there, you are absolutely right, but you are also wrong. Art is a subjective experience which may, or may not, find collective commonalities. Also, not all albums are “art”. Some “new releases” are just thrown into the music infrastructure gears, with the hopes that some dollar bills will be squeezed out of the machine.
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.
I really don’t care personally. Add I get older I just let it play through because I’m lazy, and I have like 40k in records now so choosing songs isn’t really a thing.
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.
I have grown up to become that person that gets tilted by shuffle buttons (real)
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.
Not every album is conceived like that. A lot of them were produced just to sell a single. I mostly listen to complete albums too, but I make sure they are quality or no-filler albums.
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
Put on an Album is the only way I listen to music. As you said, it’s often intended as one coherent art piece. Nothing wrong with listening to a single song. Still, it doesn’t feel right to me to have a compilation of random songs.
I really enjoyed this album that includes a mini audio story, very immersive: The Loop by Volkor X
