Short and Sweet: An Album a Day
Featuring Dolly Parton, Earl Sweatshirt, Marvin Gaye, and others
My friend Ken and I decided to listen to an album every day this year. Each week is themed. At the end of each week, we rank what we listened to. To be clear, we aren’t ranking every album that fits the theme. We are only ranking what we chose to listen to during the last seven days.
This week’s theme is “short and sweet,” meaning albums that run for 25 minutes or less. Inspired by last week’s “long closers” theme, it’s actually harder than you think to find albums below the 25-minute mark. There are lots of albums shorter than 30 minutes. There aren’t as many shorter than 25, especially when you’re looking for records with at least eight tracks.
#8 to hell with it by PinkPanthress (2021 - 10 songs, 18 min. 36 sec.)
PinkPanthress is one of those artists you know even if you don’t think you do. Many of her songs have gone viral on TikTok, like “Illegal,” whose opening lines have soundtracked nearly 12 million videos.
Sonically, “Illegal” is similar to the songs on PinkPanthress’s debut album, to hell with it. Soft, near-spoken vocals over nostalgia-soaked synths and a tornado of dance beats. That said, the two-and-a-half minute runtime of “Illegal” is longer than basically everything on to hell with it.
“I just get kind of tired of hearing the same melodies too much over and over,” PinkPanthress told NPR in 2021. “It feels awkward for me to write any more than I feel like I have to.” I actually found that attitude to be a problem on this record. The warmest moments on “Pain” and nicest melodies on “Just for Me” had no time to breathe. There’s a reason people turn to the three-minute, verse-chorus-verse-chorus-bridge-chorus song form again and again.
#7 Some Rap Songs by Earl Sweatshirt (2018 - 15 songs, 24 min. 47 sec.)
Though I enjoy Earl Sweatshirt’s laid back, woozy flows on Some Rap Songs, he felt like he was out of ideas about half way through. That’s a bad sign when your record’s runtime is just shy of 25 minutes. It’s also a bad sign on a rap record, especially one defined by lyricism, that my favorite song was the “Riot!,” the instrumental closer that’s a simple flip of Hugh Masekela’s 1968 number one hit, “Grazing in the Grass.”
#6 1000 gecs by 100 gecs (2019 - 10 songs, 23 min. 5 sec.)
100 gecs emerged in the 2010s as one of the quintessential artists in a new style: hyperpop. “Hyperpop” is the perfect name for that style. It takes every trope of 21st century (electronic) pop, ratchets it up to 11, and smashes it together with weird, digital noises. It is pop music fed back on itself ad infinitum.
With that in mind, 1000 gecs is probably unlike most things you have heard. It’s got silly songs, like “stupid horse,” that bring a reggae skank to the digital age. It’s got whiplash-inducing pieces, like “800 db cloud,” that start off with gentle melodies before devolving into heavy metal-style groans over a cacophony of distortion. The track list is also filled with strange track titles, like “xXXi_wud_nvrstøp_üXXx.”
But amid all this madness, there is genuine beauty. A song, like “ringtone,” opening with the repeated lines, “My boy’s got his own ringtone / It’s the only one I know, it’s the only one I know,” is as heartwarming as a simple love song out of Tin Pan Alley.
#5 Loose Jewels by Diarrhea Planet (2011 - 11 songs, 18 min. 45 sec.)
When I reviewed Butthole Surfers’ Independent Worm Saloon last week, I noted, “[T]here are certain [band] names that I find so off-putting that they almost prevent me from ever wanting to take a listen. The two that come to mind are Diarrhea Planet and the Butthole Surfers.” Because I said something snarky to Ken the other day, he decided to make us listen to a short and sweet record by Diarrhea Planet. The joke is on him, though. I really liked this album.
Loose Jewels is a fun, punchy punk record with more gang vocals than some groups utilize over their entire career. While those gang vocals might get tired on a 45-minute LP, the brisk 18 minutes here almost leave you asking for just one more as the record fades out.
#4 The Punch Line by Minutemen (1981 - 18 songs, 15 min. 6 sec.)
If Loose Jewels is a “punchy punk record,” then The Punch Line is the punchiest punk record. Cranking through 18 songs in 15 minutes—naturally all recorded in a single late-night session—the aptly named Minutemen waste no time on this record. What’s most astounding is that, in the words of Ken, “No song felt like it cut short.” Sometimes 52 seconds is all you need.
#3 Whack World by Tierra Whack (2018 - 15 songs, 14 min. 56 sec.)
In 2018, The New Yorker noted, Tierra Whack gave herself a challenge: “[W]rite fifteen songs, none longer than sixty seconds.” Part of this challenge was artistic. The Philadelphia singer-songwriter wanted to see what she could create on such a small canvas. But another part was technological. At the time, Instagram limited video clips to one minute. The brevity of her songs allowed Whack to debut each song in totality on the social media platform.
But this does not leave Whack World as a vestige of an earlier social media era. These minute-long creations are bold and expansive, the listener being transported to a fully formed scenes, no setup needed. “Flea Market” is sultry R&B. “Fuck Off” is country send-up months before Lil Nas X tried to do the same with the equally brief “Old Town Road.” “Silly Sam” is a waltzing ballad over simple guitar arpeggio. There’s not much more you can do in a minute.
#2 That Stubborn Kinda' Fellow by Marvin Gaye (1963 - 10 songs, 25 min. 6 sec.)
When people talk about Marvin Gaye’s greatest works, they often point to his masterful 1970s albums What’s Going On, Let’s Get It On, and Here My Dear, along with a smattering of 1960s singles, including “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough” and “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.” But I think Gaye might have been at his best when he was still firmly within the Motown machine, his voice giving Sam Cooke a run for his money on some of the most tightly written pop songs yet imagined.
Three stray observations about this record. First, “Soldier’s Plea” is a clear response to The Shirelles then recent number one hit “Soldier Boy.” This pair, along with other songs like Bobby Vinton’s “Mr. Lonely,” illustrates an under-discussed subset of pop songs about soldiers before the escalation of the Vietnam War.
Second, songwriters Norman Whitfield and Barrett Strong would reuse the titular phrase from track five on this record—“Wherever I Lay My Hat (That’s My Home)”—on their 1972 masterpiece for The Temptations, “Papa Was a Rollin' Stone.” That 7+ minutes of psychedelic soul would not have worked during this week’s theme.
Third, Ken broke his own rule with this selection. That Stubborn Kinda' Fellow is technically 6 seconds too long for this theme. Between this and the Diarrhea Planet selection, I’m still trying to forgive him.
#1 Jolene by Dolly Parton (1974 - 10 songs, 25 min. 0 sec.)
You would think after hearing “Jolene” hundreds of times that the sub-three-minute song would lose some of its gusto. But 50 years later, it remains a heart-wrenching heater, no other song capturing pleading with as much vividness.
“Jolene” is also a thematic statement about this album. From “When Someone Wants to Leave” and “Living On Memories of You” to “Lonely Comin' Down” to “I Will Always Love You,” lost love runs deep on this record. You get moments of reprieve, like the chipper “Highlight of My Life,” but this is the soundtrack of a relationship on the rocks and likely doomed. Press play at risk of heartbreak.
It’s also worth noting that Dolly Parton claims to have written “Jolene” and “I Will Always Love You” in the same afternoon. If she’s telling the truth, that is more musical accomplishment in a day than most people have in a lifetime.
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