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
I think it depends on the artist and the time. Im a big jethro tull fan and they crafted their albums very specifically. You could sorta see it in particular in this period as they always ended with these short songs that were kinda a goodbye. Its kinda hard to describe but when you listen to their stuff form the 60-80 its pretty clear. What gets me is streaming. The thing with streaming is if I call up an album it will default to remastered one which pretty much adds back things from the cuttting room floor appened to the end. Which completely ruins the experience. Drives me nuts.
unless its pop
What about Michael Jackson, Thriller Album?
Yeah i don’t know any pop albums made as a single piece of art
While I agree that there definitely are albums where listening to them in their entirety enhances the experience (Metropolis 2, Octavarium), I generally prefer picking out the best songs of an album and listening to those instead.
Not all albums are made of bangers and have songs I’d never listen to a second time.Oh, hey, I just had this thought while listening to Rammstein yesterday
Ah nice, what album
I believe that this was the reason Tool took so long to go on streaming platforms.
I generally agree. However, especially nowadays (and back in the early 60s before Pet Sounds and Rubber Soul), not all albums are written to be listened to as a whole. We’ve gone back to (many, not all) albums just being a collection of singles.
For better or worse (worse imo).
You have to seek out albums these days, you can find some good ones still from skilled artists
Absolutely not, most albums have a bunch of skippable junk between the interesting stuff, and exist best as a few tracks on a mixtape. There are a small number of albums that are best experienced as a single piece - e.g Pink Flag, In The Court Of The Crimson King, Woof. - but they’re exceptions rather than the norm.
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.
Listening to album is a way to listen to a full story. While I listen to some Bollywood movie album, it feels like watching the movie again and going through that story
Any movie album you would recommend?
‘Gangs of Wasseypur’ and the sequel both have banging songs. Idk if the full soundtracks are available anywhere, though.
Of western films, try ‘Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas’, ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’, Nino Rota’s soundtrack for ‘Amarcord’, Kenji Kawai’s ‘Ghost In The Shell’, and David Lynch’s films: ‘Twin Peaks’, ‘Lost Highway’, ‘Blue Velvet’. Joe Hisaishi made great music for both Takeshi Kitano and Ghibli. Philip Glass’ ‘Koyaanisqatsi’ is famously the only sound in the film; and his ‘Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters’ is also very cool. ‘Chinatown’ is pretty much a definitive album of dark jazz. John Lurie made music for ‘Down By Law’ in which he also acted.
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.
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’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.
Mixtapes predate cds by a bit there, kid.
They do not, however, predate albums. CDs were not the inception of the album.
I think both types of listening have their place. Especially when listening to music from the era when music was made with the intention of it being heard as an album in its entirety. Like literal albums is a method of playback where you are typically listening to at least a whole side of the album, you wouldnt be skipping around. CD players even you were likely to listen to more than one song of the album, just because it would require changing the CD vs letting it play.
Most music made after the proliferation of MP3s isnt really made in that same vein. Usually at most you get the “concept album” or something where an artist delves into a particular type of music. Those are still cohesive albums, but it’s also very different from something that is literally more or less one piece of music a la Dark Side of the Moon or something like that.
Most modern albums are more of a collection of songs at best, and they may not have much similarity or relevance to each other. Take the Black Keys for instance. They mostly do albums by genre that they want to try making. So the songs have a related sound, but listening to them is more like picking out whatever you like and would want to hear again. I wouldnt listen to the album straight through other than the first time I hear it. They songs aren’t connected in an important way other than being the same genre
you didn’t change cds. it had many tracks. you just skip to the one you want. 8 track worked that way to but it never took off.
Yes. What I was trying to say is that MP3 players were the first media player that you could have a ton of different artists music on. Yeah there were mix tapes and mix cds but it wasnt as easy as mp3s made it to have so much music in one player. Having to physically change a cd, or an actual album, made it more likely for people to listen to larger sections of entire albums before changing artists.
Once people could have the diversity of the radio (or a giant mix tape) but with the press of a button we ended up kind of killing off the point of making a cohesive album. All attention is focused on individual tracks now more than ever. It was a slow death though that incrementally progressed alongside technology
oh duh. yeah it would only be songs from that artist and album. I get it now.
Albums for entire listening (at least for the first time). Playlists for shuffling non stop.
This is how I listen to music, but also this isn’t a shower thought, it’s just your opinion.
The name of the community is just a suggestion in most of the communities here.
Is that a shower thought?!
Even “suggestion” is putting it strongly!
I had it in the shower listening to an album.
It would make an awesome !unpopularopinion@lemmy.world though.
I don’t think it’s unpopular, I’m also not saying they should be exclusively listened to in album form just that a lot of music i listen to is enhanced by doing the album
Maybe back in the day when bands would spend months and months assembling an album that had a generally cohesive style. Now it seems a lot of bands throw a bunch of stuff at the wall hoping something will stick. A good album today is the exception, not the expectation.
Not all art belongs in the Louvre.
That happened back in the day too. Low effort releases are nothing new, we just ignore/forget all the bad stuff and end up with rose-tinted glasses.
Yeah, prior to Pet Sounds and Rubber Soul, it’s basically what every album was.
Yeah all the music from my youth is good now days is bad (because I don’t remember the bad)
