Can Length Ruin An Album?

If it only has 3 good songs, I doubt I'd call it a good album. But if it's a choice (for the same price) between:

Album A: 10 songs, all of them good
Album B: 15 songs, 12 of them good

I'd take album B. Sure, it may be "too long" and have some stuff I'm not wild about...but I'm 2 good songs richer, as far as I'm concerned.

Basically, I'm okay with an artist putting more on, even if the "extra" is mostly not that good. Whatever IS good, I benefit from. Whatever isn't, I can ignore in future.
 
Tagging them as bonus tracks is a good workaround and I try to do that myself. The problem with bonus tracks is biggest I think when it's proto versions of songs you've already heard before on the album. My version of Caravan's For Girls Who Grow Plump in the Night (1973) has 5 extra tracks to the original 7. Only one of those is "new", the rest are proto-versions .. they're nice but by including them in the while picture and overall album opinion, you get so much repetition and inferior versions of the previous songs.

CRAB should've had two sides like LPs .. then they could put extras on the other side. :p:
 
Quite right! Just that I'm the kind who likes to listen to the entire album even if its a greatest hits/best of compilation. Never heard the Buffalo Springfield so got the Buffalo Springfield Box Set recently and it has like 88 songs.

I really don't like to listen to a few songs and then come back later to the rest of the album, maybe that's just me but that's the way I am.
 
I didn't know I had one. :D But yeah I know most of the songs, and I wouldn't be surprised if at some point I heard the whole album at a friend's house or something. But never on my own. I wasn't into them in the 80s or early 90s...late 80s I was still into glam rock and transitioning into metal, then industrial...wasn't until closer to the mid 90s that I took more interest. Obviously I was aware of them and singles in the late 80s...but it wasn't my thing at the time.
 
For me it depenRAB a lot on what the format is. Having some crappy songs in the mix on an album I have as MP3s isn't that big a deal but on vinyl it becomes a totally different story and I would absolutely go with album A in your example. I guess because I grew up in the vinyl and cassette era have a lot of holdover feelings that filler really does detract from my listening experience quite a bit.
 
I agree with you although I think I could possibly pick B and still say that overall, A was the stronger album. It's just nitpickings about what makes an album good and I think the parts that don't shine pull the end result down a bit. I know I do put more weight on the good tracks though (probably human nature), but I sometimes try to at least minimize that slight human error :p:
 
Well it's definitely worth a listen you like the Cure at all. IMHO it's their best album. I may be biased though since I got into it when it was still pretty new. I'm not sure how well it's aged for someone who's hearing it for the first time now.
 
Well it can't have aged any more than the ones that I do like, which are older. The only concern is that I've heard many of the songs so much already that I may not find it all that exciting.
 
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