The Death of the Album

First of all, this post is inspired by conversations with my buddies John and Mark. And second of all, be warned: cranky old man rantings are about to ensue...

One of the things that really bothers me about music these days -- or, I should say, the perception of music -- is the shift in focus from album to song. Using online download services, you can now pick and choose individual songs from an album you want to buy (yes, buy). So suddenly you are listening to music out of context, a mish mash of songs with no regard for how they were put together. An album is much more than a random collection of songs, it's a story in it's own right. There's often an ebb and flow, a timing to an album, that gets lost when you just pick and choose a few songs off of it.

Look at it this way: pick your favorite book. Find the most exciting chapter in it. Pull that chapter out. Throw the rest of the book away. Now look what you have -- it doesn't make a lot of sense, does it?

Think of the Rolling Stones' Sticky Fingers. One of my favorite songs on there is Sister Morphine. Great song; a harrowing, heartbreaking song. But it's made all the better because of the way it leads into Dead Flowers, which itself leads into the wistful, beautiful Moonlight Mile to finish off the album. Each song is great, but they belong together, in that order, at the end of the album.


Or what about Led Zeppelin? Led Zeppelin I is a completely different style of music from what is put forth in Physical Graffiti. You can't blindly mash songs from those two albums together -- I Can't Quit You Baby and Kashmir are both great songs, but they don't belong together at all. The difference between 1969 and 1975 is only six years, but in the progression of that band, it's a chasm.

That's why "Best of" albums are so soul-less. Yes, I own a bunch of them, but they are usually a pale shadow of the artist's true scope. And if they aren't, well, that's a bad sign, if you ask me....

Also, by not having the album, you lose the ability to have a band "grow on you". Take the White Stripes. My friend Sherry recommended them to me at first, and I remember upon hearing a track thinking that Jack White had a very whiney voice (never mind the fact that I listen to tons of Beastie Boys...). And so I didn't follow up. But then I got Elephant because I liked the song Seven Nation Army, and as I started listening to the rest of the album, I realized how much other amazing stuff they had done. The Hardest Button to Button? Girl, You Have No Faith In Medicine? I would have never known these songs if I hadn't listened to the whole album.


Growing up, two of the biggest album releases I can remember were Zeppelin's Physical Graffiti and Pink Floyd's The Wall. I can't imagine either of those albums as simply a collection of songs. Now obviously The Wall wasn't -- it was a story told through an album, much like Tommy or Quadrophenia. But people were wild about the albums, not just the songs. The design of an album itself is artistic, above and beyond the artistry that goes into the individual songs. Am I crazy here? How can you pick, say, three songs off of The Wall and toss the rest of the album away?

Having said all that, I do listen to my music on random play much of the time at work (and if you follow my last.fm log here on the blog, or on my last.fm profile, you'll know this). But what often happens is when a song comes on that particularly resonates with me, I'll toggle over and listen to the whole album. And then you have context, texture, transition, a whole suite of music which just gets lost when you randomly listen to a set of tracks cobbled together with disregard for their history and connection.

I worry now that the album is a dying concept -- that music is now perceived more and more as isolated tracks, disjointed and disconnected from one another. Just a pile of 98 cent tracks downloaded onto an iPod and then swapped like a cheap pack of smokes. And that makes me sad.

OK, so tell me people: is my focus on "the album" simply me being an old fuddy-duddy, or am I right? I'm particularly interested in what the younger generation has to say -- the one growing up on iTunes, mp3s, and, ahem, bittorrent (I won't tell...)