I've just completed compiling my favourite top 12 albums for each year from 1960 to the present. Listening to chart music for each year as well, I have really appreciated the depth and variety of albums which the singles charts can miss. I know it has been devalued and lost popularity, but I hope that albums continue to be made
In the 1980s we made playlists (aka mixtapes) by waiting until the song we wanted was played on the radio and hitting record on the cassette, hopefully timing it right to not include the DJ talking or too much from the previous song.
Listening to specific songs (as opposed to the entire album) got a lot easier after the invention of the CD. But you still had to buy the whole album. Sometimes that worked out and you'd find a favorite song that didn't get much airplay as a single.
Good article. I'm always amazed at the number of people here on Substack that write about the many new albums they liked in the previous month. I still don't know how they find the time to listen to a complete album enough times to truly evaluate it. I gravitate toward individual tracks and, if I like them enough, begin exploring other songs on an album. So, I'd be sad if albums became obsolete. Then again, Billboard isn't helping much by crafting a Top 200 album ranking each week that somehow thinks best of collections by the likes of Sade, Hall & Oates, and many other legacy artists are outperforming more recent releases, such as the latest from Madonna, Carly Simon, Brandon Flowers, and others. I'm curious as to your take on this. If one or two tracks represent the greatest share of an album's streaming then how do these chart positions make sense? Is it that many people are streaming the same Sade song? Fleetwood Mac's Rumours is another example. Is it Dreams? Don't Stop? The Chain? I'm planning to write an article about this so I'd love your input!
The risk diversification point is a good one mI remember Ash announcing years ago that they were moving to singles only, no more albums, and it didn't work. There's something about a run of songs that gives an artist somewhere to put the strange stuff, the "Rocky Raccoon" (Revolution 9?!) of the record, that a steady drip of singles doesn't really allow for.
Also can't help thinking about Dark Side of the Moon as a hypothetical singles campaign. Some albums are simply not songs, they're one continuous idea, and the format exists for exactly that reason as much as for any commercial logic.
I've just completed compiling my favourite top 12 albums for each year from 1960 to the present. Listening to chart music for each year as well, I have really appreciated the depth and variety of albums which the singles charts can miss. I know it has been devalued and lost popularity, but I hope that albums continue to be made
In the 1980s we made playlists (aka mixtapes) by waiting until the song we wanted was played on the radio and hitting record on the cassette, hopefully timing it right to not include the DJ talking or too much from the previous song.
Listening to specific songs (as opposed to the entire album) got a lot easier after the invention of the CD. But you still had to buy the whole album. Sometimes that worked out and you'd find a favorite song that didn't get much airplay as a single.
Good article. I'm always amazed at the number of people here on Substack that write about the many new albums they liked in the previous month. I still don't know how they find the time to listen to a complete album enough times to truly evaluate it. I gravitate toward individual tracks and, if I like them enough, begin exploring other songs on an album. So, I'd be sad if albums became obsolete. Then again, Billboard isn't helping much by crafting a Top 200 album ranking each week that somehow thinks best of collections by the likes of Sade, Hall & Oates, and many other legacy artists are outperforming more recent releases, such as the latest from Madonna, Carly Simon, Brandon Flowers, and others. I'm curious as to your take on this. If one or two tracks represent the greatest share of an album's streaming then how do these chart positions make sense? Is it that many people are streaming the same Sade song? Fleetwood Mac's Rumours is another example. Is it Dreams? Don't Stop? The Chain? I'm planning to write an article about this so I'd love your input!
The risk diversification point is a good one mI remember Ash announcing years ago that they were moving to singles only, no more albums, and it didn't work. There's something about a run of songs that gives an artist somewhere to put the strange stuff, the "Rocky Raccoon" (Revolution 9?!) of the record, that a steady drip of singles doesn't really allow for.
Also can't help thinking about Dark Side of the Moon as a hypothetical singles campaign. Some albums are simply not songs, they're one continuous idea, and the format exists for exactly that reason as much as for any commercial logic.