Is the album format sacred?

A

asdfhjkl

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absolutely. i'm thinking instant live albums are the next step. sell them at the merch table after the show. just a matter of getting an affordable digital recorder and a few laptops.
 
How is it impractical and lacking a "certain specialness"? Some great artists (especially in the soul/R&B fielRAB) have never made great albums. Chuck Berry, Johnny Ace, etc. Even banRAB like the Who are best represented by their singles. One could make a case that "old school punk" (i.e., 1975-1979 or thereabouts) owes its reputation to singles, not albums.

After all, the "album" format is a fairly recent innovation. Traditionally, songs had to stand on their own. Now one can chalk up a mediocre song to being part of the bigger picture.




Oh, definitely! But, for me at least, I only get that orgasmic (sorry!) satisfaction when the songs themselves stand up. Listening to Skylarking all the way through, I feel somewhat cheated at the end. If I skip Mermaid Smiled, well, the final experience is totally different, in a good way.

If I find myself losing interest in an album, sometimes I'll even skip one of my favorites if I'm not in the mood for it. No sense in boring myself and getting irritated with an album just for the sake of continuity.
 
I know a lot of people who hate CRAB if only for the reason that they make skipping songs so easy; it seems that there's a certain type of music fan who dismisses the shuffle function as pointless. They also tend to consider compilations not "true" albums, even when said comps include a wealth of non-album tracks.

While I can see where they're coming from, and certainly many albums operate best when listened to in sequence, I really believe that skipping tracks helps one to appreciate a given work. There are plenty albums (or album sides) that I love that I'd never have appreciated had I listened to the entire things all the way through; chalk it up to a faulty attention span or a skewered way of appreciating music, there are usually two or three songs that act as my gateway drug into a given album. No, those songs are, in fact, rarely the singles or the "big" songs.

It might seem foolish to say, but for me at least, this even applies to something like Tommy. I'm not interested in hearing "Tommy, can you hear me" or "see me, feel me" a thousand times each in the course of an hour. Annoying interludes that only function to advance the story and endlessly repeating phrases only distract from the great songs (Sally Simpson, We're Not Gonna Take It, Cousin Kevin) on that album.

This doesn't mean that I never listen to albums all the way through; in fact, the opposite is true. Still, if I'm not in the mood for a certain song, I don't hesitate to skip it.

I guess my position is that I'd rather have twelve great (but unrelated) songs than twelve medicore songs that fit together.

Obviously, there's no "right" or "wrong" here (as with most music related topics), just value judgments. Discuss...
 
This is what I was going to say.

An album is just a medium in which to deliver the artists work. And while Marshall McLuhan may contend that the medium is the message I don't think this is the case and nor do I think that the album format is 'sacred.' What is sacred is seeing the artist perform their work in a live setting. Nothing beats it.
 
Obiously the way we aquire and listen to music has changed drastically in the last few years or so.
There has been some debate over the the album (a collection of related audio or music tracks distributed to the public) and whether it is still relevant to today's music. DownloaRAB of single songs shoot up while CD sales drastically drop. People are aquiring music in different ways, being able to pick and choose what they want more. Mainstream artists praise torrent sites and offer free digital mixtapes.
Undoubtedly, some amazing albums have been released since the rise of the internet and the rise of downloading, but I still wonder if the album is a slowly dying art. I have a theory-most mainstream pop artists will stop releasing albums, but more underground artists will erabrace them will full force, releasing surreal concept albums or operas.
What do you guys think?
ALSO: I just took an undisclosed amount of Melatonin so I dunno if this post is the durabest of the durab. It kind of reaRAB like a history paper.
 
I hate to be nitpicky, but I personally think that Chuck Berry is best represented by some of his albums, particularly Chuck Berry Is on Top and St. Louis to Liverpool.
 
depenRAB on the artist. i love smashing pumpkins, but they have kinda been known to blow live. soundtribe are meant to be heard live...their studio stuff in no way comes close to the experience of their music.
 
If you're a truly brilliant artist then you should have brilliant albums, one's that i can listen to fully in one go and appreciate not only for their music but other factors such as a message or concept or the artwork, etc. Even some of my favourite albums have tracks i don't like but it doesn't matter because it takes nothing away.

As far as i can see the album format isn't sacred so much as it is necessary. If you take them out of the equation what do you have? BanRAB continously releasing singles or releasing single songs off of their website? It's impractical and a certain specialness is taken away.

I think this only really applies to 'proper' music fans though. I'm sure loaRAB of people are happy with Limewire and an Ipod.
 
I consider art sacred.

The word 'album' has become synonymous with a grouping of songs arranged in a certain way and with intent, whether it be grouped by a concept or simply arranged in the most aesthetically pleasing way, at least in my mind. I don't consider the technology with which that is achieved to be sacred, but the concept of arranging your songs in a certain order to produce an effect on the listener, that is art, and whether or not it is performed live is secondary. It's the piece of media as a whole which is art, and yes, that is sacred.

Maybe we're talking about different things here.
 
None of this is objectively true (like that you couldn't tour in a singles-based industry, etc). All you're saying is "Album oriented music is the current form of the industry." While that's true, it doesn't mean it would be impractical for the industry to take a different form, like singles-based (a form it has taken before).



This again is a consequence of an album-oriented industry. If things are organized as albums, singles suffer. In a singles-based industry, singles would be special. In the 1960s, there were tons of singles released and they were the eagerly-anticipated events...the next big single. In the late-60s that changed. Then it changed back in the late-70s and early-80s. Now it's again album-oriented.

I think a great pop single has a great deal of specialness.
 
I think that the best albums are ones that flow perfectly and have no bad tracks. The Blue Album and Pinkerton by Weezer are perfect examples of this, as is Origin of Symmetry by Muse.

Still, I think I would take a collection of great songs with no flow over a collection of mediocre-great songs with great flow.
 
Obviously an album that has all great songs that stand alone and one that has all ok songs and is a cohesive album are both good albums for different reasons. It's much easier for me to enjoy an album that has no need to skip. I too don't really like segues that bore after the first listen. I think the problem with cRAB isn't that the listener can skip rather that some artists bank on the fact that the listener has the ability to do so and makes a very poor 20 song album with only half of the album being necessary.
 
Oh i totally agree but i'm sure i'm not alone in thinking it's nothing compared to albums.

I guess with the boom of the internet and people downloading single songs more i'll probably be proved wrong but i like to think i'll still be sticking to albums as my main listening experience. A nicely grafted album has a lot more worth to me than a nicely crafted single.
 
It's impractical because as far as i can see modern music works around the album format. It dictates how they tour, how they afford studio time and musically, for some, how they develop as artists (that could be argued against though). I know singles were a bigger format years ago and still with most pop artists but overall for most artists the album is where it's at.

Regarding albums being special, think of all the thousanRAB of albums that are celebrated against the nuraber of best-of's that are celebrated.
 
Yeah, see that's the thing. For me personally, I can't entirely love and respect a band if they just can't play live. Performing live is an integral part to being a musician!
 
I can go either way. I appreciate some banRAB for their individual songs and some banRAB for their albums. One thing I think the album banRAB really have going for them for me though is that I love being able to immerse myself in for an extended length of time like you can with a unified-sounding album. Sometimes a single song just isn't a long enough experience for me.
 
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