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Traditional album making a lost art in todays music industry?
With the advent of technology and social media where music is downloaded now and you don’t have to purchase the whole album, is traditional album making becoming a lost art? With traditional albums you get a thematic coherence across the whole album, and it is more than just a collection of individual songs.  Brian Wilson in a recent tweet said about Beatles “Rubber Soul”, it’s like every song on that album comes from the same place, referring to that thematic coherence which is so evident in all the great albums of the past including MLT When We’re Together and Orange albums. In recent interviews, Sheryl Crow said she is not going to make any more new albums after her last one in 2019. She said people just cherry pick songs and rarely buy the whole album, so all the artistic work that goes into creating an album is lost to the current generation of young music buyers. Many artists today tend to just put out a collection of songs, but not a full album anymore which is a shame I think.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xsr78uXuHGc
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25 Replies
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6mw9xC8qZdw
In the first short interview, Sheryl Crow explains why she is giving up on creating entire albums. But in the second one, while the radio show host seems to think giving artists more freedom by not forcing them to do an entire album and putting out onesies and twosies are OK, but Sheryl counters that argument and gives advice to artists not to abandon making albums, because for her it was those tracks that did not necessarily become singles/hits that were the most rewarding and her favorite songs.
What do others here think?
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Jung, it sounds like, for better or for worse, we’re essentially going back to the pre-Beatles era when record labels made most of their profits off of singles, and most albums were just “greatest hits” compilations created to squeeze a little more money out of the same songs.
Like Sheryl Crow, I find that many if not most of my favorite songs off of albums are not the ones that were released as singles and got a lot of air play. I think singles are designed to have an instant appeal, but you don’t get much more out of them after the first listening. Meanwhile, album tracks tend not to make as strong of a first impression, but over time their little nuances grow on you until you realize you’ve got something really unique and special on your hands.
I myself don’t create playlists; I just listen to an album straight through, because I assume the songs are arranged in a certain sequence for a reason, and I’m constantly trying to discover the reason. And some songs that at first I found inferior or forgettable have ended up becoming endearing favorites.
I guess it’s sort of a moot point for me, because I don’t listen to any contemporary music other than MLT, and of course they’re not under any pressure to abandon the album format. But it would certainly be a great loss for music in general if most songs were written just for a quick harvest, without regard to planting seeds that may sprout later.
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Totally agree David, nicely articulated. It is the nuances that grow on you over time. With Orange and When We’re Together, even though now I’ve been listening to them for some time now, I get something new and refreshing out of them with every listen, which draws me back to put them on again and again, just like I do with Rubber Soul and Sargent Pepper.I really like what Sheryl Crow said in that 2nd video interview where she highlights the artistic side of music making and how albums are so important for that, and at the end when she talks about music labels, how going independent really gave her the freedom to be able to create music “..like kids in a kitchen mixing up a crazy cake..”
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I believe in the whole creative process of doing an entire album from the thought process of formulating song lyrics, sounds as in instrumentation, music structure itself in terms of notes, rhythm, melody, etc. I’m old school… It’s far more appreciative to have musicians go through the entire recording, all to create an album which was cultivated from the roots and seeds from within the musician. To juthat justst do songs for sake of quick bucks, focusing on how fast to put something out there, use enhancements all around to make that perfect sound, vocal, kinda like the Coles Notes in Music Making… Why go through whole process when you can cheat by taking shortcuts, easy way about things…. That to me, defeats the music making experience of its entirety, even if there’s bound to be flaws, etc. Music landscape in today’s time is like watching Robots being programmed by their controllers, have no creative freedom really, have to look/act certain way, if not somewhat decent in natural ability, or not really at all, no problem, just fake your talent by help of computers and such to create perfect sound/vocal….
Most music genres are sort of going down this route of doing things… Even criss-cross ing genres to create hybrid genres…. Until MLT came along, Music had it’s true heyday pre-2000….
For me, this is my reflection on this topic ?
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I miss the good old days when you got about 2 albums a year from most groups and we couldn’t wait to go down to the local record store and wait for them to open to get the latest records! CDs changed things completely when people started copying them. That was the start of bands getting mad at bootlegging music. Today groups hesitate releasing anything because they’re just not selling like the good old days. I miss the album artwork as well as the music. I still like buying albums and CDs. So much has changed since the 60’s/70’s. And not all for the good IMHO.
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Good points Jacki, Tomas. I echo your sentiments. I remember buying records in the 70s and 80s, and CDs in the 90s, and always enjoyed going to those big record stores to look, touch, and listen to all those records. In the 90s there use to be these big mega record stores like Virgin and HMV in my city, where they had listening stations, and you could go listen to an album before buying it. You could spend all evening in one of those places as they had records, DVDs, software, books and magazines, as well as a Starbucks right in store. There was a little subculture happening. Then suddenly not too long ago they all disappeared because music could be downloaded from the comfort of your computer.
I think the new technology of downloading music and creating playlists in your phone, while convenient, has done a disservice to music and the artists who create them. I think now, a lot of good songs that don’t have the hook to make a hit, just get overlooked by most people and never get listened to. Artistic side of music suffers when this happens, and causes a lot of artists to curb their artistic potential to seek creating songs with that hook that will be popular. Imagine an album like Sargent Peppers being released today, but only 2 or 3 hits songs ever get listened to because people only download those, and the remaining tracks are completely ignored and forgotten.  So much great music getting unheard. What an unfortunate waste.
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Hi all;
I grew up in a small town in West Virginia and we had one record/music store. I remember the release date of new Beatles LPs there and the kids would line up outside of the store a couple of hours before the doors of the store would open. By the afternoon it would have been too late to buy the LP there.
Mike
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I didn’t discover the Beatles until the mid-eighties, but I had read about the lines in front of the record stores. So on the day that Paul’s “Press to Play” album came out in 1986, I was standing in front of the door of the record store an hour before it opened. An hour later, I was still the only one there.
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While on the side topic of when one discovered Beatles… For me, Thanks in part to my 2nd oldest brother and in part to his Grade 5 teacher who was big Beatles fan and in fact I vividly, recall the school having a concert night of sorts, and yes, their class put on a Beatles sing along…. Lol… I was in Grade 2, at the time, I don’t recall if my class performed in the concert or not but I do recall watching my brother’s class singing on stage in gymnasium in the upper school. (Our public elementary school that both my bros and myself went to from Kindergarten – Grade 6 had 2 separate buildings, one on a hill while other was below hill…. I think lower hill school portion was the original school and as it expanded, they built other portion at top of hill or I may have this info reversed, not sure which is correct. All I know, for me during my school years there with my 2nd oldest bro, lower Grades at the top of hill school while higher Grades were at bottom of hill school part….) Because of my 2nd oldest bro’s exposure to Beatles really through his Grade 5 teacher and maybe a couple of Mom’s 45s or an album…. I got to be exposed and enjoyed…. He and I share similar music tastes while our oldest bro enjoys mostly Country music and some Rock/Southern Rock…. ??
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I could say my Beatles discovery started around 11-13, and it was mostly when I heard something on the radio, or something my siblings were listening to, and when I looked to see what it was, it was more often than not Beatles! Other songs that really caught my attention was Beach Boys and Elton John during those younger times. It was at a grade 4 Christmas party, and the teacher put on some Beach Boys and Elton John, and wow, I thought that was so delightful. I also remember that big week long biology field trip in high school when someone brought along the Beatles Red and Blue album cassettes and a ghetto blaster, what a joyful musical week that was! I think music has a huge impact on peoples lives, whether they know it or not.
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I actually learned about the Beatles from my YOUNGER brother, who had presumably been clued in by his high school friends.
Other than a passing mention in the noun song from “Schoolhouse Rock”, the only time I remember hearing about the Beatles in my childhood was when I read somewhere that they had come along in the 1960’s and completely changed the nature of pop music. Given my very limited knowledge of music history at the time, I assumed that meant that they had transformed the doo-wop songs I loved into the disco songs I hated. So naturally my curiosity zeroed out.
In retrospect, I did hear a lot of Beatles tunes as a kid, but mostly just in instrumental form on the easy-listening radio station that my parents always had on. Oh, and there was a cringe-inducing version of “Love Me Do” on an album by the Brady Bunch kids.
The only original Beatles recording that I’m sure I encountered back in the day was from a TV commercial that was an abbreviated version of this movie promo:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VmRPh1xwab8
I still can’t hear “When I’m 64” without thinking of a floating baby.
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And this topic has indeed taken on its own life…. Lol… But interesting in that it’s neat to see how we all came to know of the Beatles exposure in our lives when it first occurred, thereabouts as far back as one can recall ?
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That video is delightful David. I think I saw that movie in the theaters when it came out, but never realized When I’m 64 was Beatles back then. The Brady Bunch doing “Love Me Do”! LOL, that would be very cringing! Was Barry Brady doing John Lennon, and Bobby Brady doing Paul? The middle Brady’s name escapes me, but I can see doing George. 🙂 LOL!
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Hey, Jung.
It was just an audio album, and I couldn’t tell who sang what, but it involved both the boys and the girls. (The middle boy was Peter, by the way.)
Why not get your affairs in order, take a few deep breaths, and give it a listen? (EVERYTHING is on YouTube now!)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=woo-C7XsQWs
This album also featured their, uh, interpretations of “Ben” by The Jackson Five and “Saturday in the Park” by Chicago.
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Lol… I’d prefer listening to The Partridge Family sing over The Bradys anytime.. Lol….
I do like TV Theme show songs from 50s-80s Era mostly… Stuff on TV after 80s…not really… Lol
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