I grew up with albums. So, for me, there is always at least this nostalgic sense in music albums. It’s a package after all. It has a cover, with a picture where you can see what the artist wanted to tell you visually. Sometimes it is presented with lyrics, artist’s signture and maybe some foreword into the album.
I’m going to be honest with you, a few years ago, when the idea of singles replacing albums came around, I almost puked. I mean, what the hell? Why? But I’m going to be even more honest with you now. Like everyone can change their opinion, I think I have changed mine since then to at least a great extent.
Well, back in the day (and still for a lot of artists even today), the way that music industry functioned was that a music corporation sponsored an artist to make an album. Then they ordered the artist to release one or a few of the songs off of that new album prior to its release. Those songs were called “singles”. For instance, the last recorded album by the legendary British band The Beatles “Let It Be” was released on the 8th of May, 1970, while the first single off the album “Get Back” was released on the 11th of April, 1969, the second single “Let It Be” on the 6th of March, 1970, and the last single “The Long and Winding Road” / For You Blue" on the 11th of May, 1970.
But a few years ago, after invention of new sub-genres within the Electronic music and the emergence of new Pop culture, a lot of discussions were raised as to if it is even worth for an artist to work for a long time on a full-length album, for fans to wait such long times, and for publishing companies to spend so much money on albums. The consensus was that artists would rather release their best songs periodically throughout a given year called as “singles” regardless of the fact whether these songs would later on be published in an album or not. And with this premise, now fans didn’t have to wait much longer and music companies didn’t have to invesnt as so much as before.
For instane, when was the last time Rihanna released a full-length album? Almost five years ago! But since then she has released six singles and collaborated with other artists on four more songs (so together ten songs). Interesting, right? But I have to say that, this new way of music industry’s thinking also has a huge commercialized motive and sentiment behind it.
But I guess as I was younger, I practiced more patience perhaps. Because I remember I would put on an album and carefully listen to all of the songs over and over again. Even the fillers, which are the songs that have subpar quality (subjectively speaking of course) compared to other songs of that album.
These days, I feel like, I skip all those “boring” filler songs and go right through my favorite songs if I happen to listen to an album. And I have even observed that I make playlists all the time by pulling my favorite songs together, as a lazy tactic to not even have to skip the boring filler songs anymore.
Honestly, for me, these days the idea of singles songs rather than albums released by artists makes more sense, if that will make the artists do their best to come up with their greatest work rather than an album that has a few good songs and so many not-so-good songs. I have even observed that I have become a huge fan of “the best compilation” of artists, for instance Spotify has many such playlists, where in a matter of a few seconds you can view “all the best songs” of an artist pulled together, instead of going through many albums and trying to find the gems yourself.
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