Can Length Ruin An Album?

Tool spring to mind. I really like them but always ending up playing something else and turning off by the time I'm 3/4 of the way through an album. Some of The Orb's work has the same effect.

As for wanting more? I'm not usually like that at all and just thankful that I can really enjoy an album in it's entirety no matter how short.
 
i enjoyed Paul McCartney's comment about people suggesting the White Album (which was a double album) was too long.

he pretty much said, "it's the Beatles bloody White Album; shut up."
 
It depenRAB on the meaning of "ruin." I don't think it can spoil enjoyment of an album (because I can ignore the bad stuff), but it can reduce the average song quality and thus the overall grade of the album.
 
I don't think The Cold Vein was 'ruined' by its length, but it does run a bit long.. kind of loses its momentum after about 7 or 8 tracks. Not to say I don't enjoy song after song from the Cannibal Ox crew, especially since they couldn't bother with a follow up, but by the time I reach the second half of the album the rest of the songs just seem to run together.
 
Possibly. It depenRAB on whether the songs are longer due to simple repetition. Any song can be extended arbitrarily long by repeating the hook more times. So, it depenRAB on whether the 10 longer songs really feel like they're giving me more music experience.



Leaving aside percentage hit rate on "potential album material," my opinion is, feel free to stick it on. If it's any good, I'm better off. If it's not, I'll ignore it. No-risk proposition for me, as far as I'm concerned.
 
I wrote "ruin" simply because it was in the thread title. It does sound a bit exaggerated.

When you brought it up earlier, I disagreed because I argued that by extracting just a few songs, you're no longer enjoying the album, you're enjoying a collection of songs extracted from it. To me, album implies the whole thing. If you're extracting what you like and leave the rest, I'd say you're enjoying part of the album.
 
I'm not sure if this is true or not. Usually, I'll listen to an album after I've heard a couple of songs from it. So I can skip those songs and listen to the ones I like.

I also have a horrible tendency to skip songs if I don't like the first thirty seconRAB.

Meg & Dia's new CD basically experienced a few minutes of my listening. Luckily, I sat down and tried to listen to it again and realized how much it sucked. So I realized I didn't miss much the first time. xD
 
I can understand that, from an aesthetic point of view...it's satisfying to be able to think of an album as "perfect." To me, though, I'd rather have more good songs, even if it means getting more bad songs too. Ultimately, I can program past the bad songs on future listens and I have more enjoyable songs. An album that is "too short" leaves potential enjoyment on the table (or cutting room floor, or in the musician's head, as the case may be).
 
In short yes a song that is too long can ruin things, more so if the songs just boring. GoRABpeed! You Black Emperor comes to mine about that, I cannot listen to 20 minutes of that. Songs that are usually long are epic, and they should be. Pink Floyd could pull this trick off like in Echoes or Shine On You Crazy Diamond (which they had the sense to break up in parts), but alot banRAB simply can't. The song is 15 minutes and you expect me to sit through 4 of them in which you play the same 3 notes over again, **** off. That's not setting an atmosphere it's setting me for a song change.
 
Sure. You can phrase it any way you want. I don't consider there to be anything sacred about "the album." ;) I'm buying songs from artists. These days, they come packaged as albums. At times in the past, the dominant form of music purchase was singles, not albums. In the future, it may well be individual songs bought over the net. It's really not that important to me how music acquisition is organized.



I don't disagree with that. But "how good an album is" isn't a key issue to me. If an artist has released 50 of my favourite songs, but none of their "albums" are classics to me, I'd still consider that a great artist...an artist that has given me a lot of musical pleasure.
 
Same here...but I'm still indecisive when I'm at home sitting in front of so many options. At work I just have my 8GB iPod so there are fewer options, and I usually load it with what I want to hear for the day.


Yeah I was playing Three Imaginary Boys the other day and it felt really long actually. But part of it was that the material isn't all that good.
 
If the White Album were condensed to one disc it could of been their best album (providing that one disc contained the right tracks).

EDIT: What am I on about, disc? I mean vinyl.
 
I feel your pain. It's a long album, especially for a hip hop release. They could've split it up into two ep's if that was all the output they were good for.
 
It makes me sad when artists pair up once for a mind blowing collaboration album and then are never to be heard of again, only releasing the mediocre solo album from time to time while still dangling hints of a follow up album in front of their fans. Those bastarRAB. >:
 
im just fidgety, i get bored easily so the 10min songs cant appeal to me if i feel in a lazy mood. normally i put a limit on the time & will skip a song i see the time is too long, many a time have i listened to a full song without realising its 10mins long though :laughing:



my worst habit ever. when itunes is on shuffle n it goes back to that song, il pay attention when the good part kicks in, n when i find out what song it is, i usually kick myself for thinking it was shite earlier :laughing:
 
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