[ SECRET POST #3828 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3828 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 31 secrets from Secret Submission Post #548.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

07. http://i.imgur.com/7GnnijP.png

[(Anonymous)]

Eh. There's definitely some albums that are just a collection of songs, but there's definitely some that feel like they're part of a whole even without concept albums. Like, with a lot of them, you get the feeling that there's a unity of approach - like all the songs are talking about similar things but maybe from different albums. The fact that they were all made at the same time, as part of the same creative endeavor, gives them a unity.

The other time it makes sense to me to talk about it is when you have a band that moves through a lot of different styles, so different albums get associated with different eras in the band's history. So like with Weezer, you could easily talk about Pinkerton as an album in part because the songs on the album are very different in style from the blue or green albums.

[(Anonymous)]

A good album should sound cohesive and not like a collection of random songs.

Maybe you don't get it because you've only heard good albums. When you've heard an album that sounds like 10 singles from 10 different albums, then you can tell the difference.

[(Anonymous)]

This is true, but there isn't anything wrong with albums that are just collections of songs

They're just not good as albums

[(Anonymous)]

Most albums don't feel like they have a solid theme to me, either. The exceptions are concept albums, like David Bowie's Diamond Dogs or Green Day's American Idiot. But it kind of depends on the artist and whether or an album has an overall stylistic theme, if you know what I mean? Bowie is a good example of that. Young Americans sounds very different from 1. Outside.

[(Anonymous)]

Some artist create tightly themed albums. Some don't. The ones that don't still had to expend creative energy writing or interpreting the songs other people wrote for them.

You are over thinking the album concept.

[(Anonymous)]

Some albums ARE crafted using rules of musical composition. Not all albums, sure, but if you're talking about something like Abbey Road, there was a clear, conscious effort to repeat, contrast, emphasize, balance, unify, from the first note to the last.

[(Anonymous)]

radio anon flies in for another explanation...

concept albums in the 70s laid the groundwork for marketability of more than one song at a time. Radio still played singles, naturally, but putting all those singles together into one package that people can buy so they could get all the singles at once was such a good idea that it, in turn, inspired artists to just make the album all at once and then let radio pick the singles. Or, well, the labels to pick the singles they felt were most marketable. For the most part through the 80s and 90s, albums stood as packages of singles, but at the same time a snapshot of what the artist was writing and performing within a relatively brief time period. Genres were starting to fragment, as well, so an artist could experiment with new styles and still get their failed experiments purchased as part of a greater album that did real well with two or three more radio-friendly singles.

It intrigues me, though, that in the shift to downloading mp3s, the buying public basically did a 180 and went back to the 1950s models of songs being sold as singles so they could only buy their favorites/the ones they heard on the radio. And thus, albums fell somewhat out of favor.

But really, OP, set aside concepts of artistry for a moment and consider money and marketability, and also consider the 1970s-2000s as an era when technology (both its advances and limitations) and the dominance of radio and MTV for promotion (back when MTV still played music videos) meant that the package of 10-14 songs was a much better monetary investment for record labels than singles.

[(Anonymous)]

This is entirely true, especially as we were trained into buying albums, and there would often be 3-4 good songs on the album and the rest would be filler! It's definitely turned around now, and I don't think that's a bad thing: people who have an album's worth of songs put out an album, people who have a few catchy singles put out a few catchy singles.

[(Anonymous)]

Exactly right, anon. And more power to all of 'em however they manage to get their music heard and purchased.

Maybe you just need to think about it from another perspective

[(Anonymous)]

A lot of musicians only go in to record an album once they have a lot of songs written (by them or others). They may have something like twenty to thirty songs. During the process of recording, songs may be changed or rearranged. They probably won't record all of the songs and all of the songs recorded won't necessarily make it on to the album. Some songs they record will have several different versions. Depending on the musicians, a lot of different people may have a say in what goes on the album (the musicians, the producers, people from the label, etc.). In the end, the album produced may have a theme or it may just be a set of the songs that were best liked or judged most marketable. But make no mistake, there were a lot of decisions that went into the making of that album (and probably some arguments and maybe some agonizing).

[(Anonymous)]

Because an album is the convergence of a group of people at a certain phase in their life, and that of course shapes and colors the types of songs that will be included in an album.

You might think of it like a scrapbook of one's life. You were doing certain things, looked a certain way, believed certain things, and that will affect the colors you choose, the layout, the photos included, etc. A few years later, with the next release, that scrapbook can look very different.

Basically, an artist or a band isn't a stagnant thing that never changes, and their works change with them.

[initiala]

slightly OT, but "Here Are Some Songs" would actually be a great album name.

(if it exists, please link)