The Death of the Album

There are many reasons to fear for the future of music (or even its present state).  In large part I find the radio to blame.  The radio picks its heroes to play over and over again, unrelentingly bombarding the public with the same10 hits for 6 months straight before changing their lineup.  Dance music is the focus of the day.  Now don’t get me wrong, dance music has its place and purpose.  I like a good electronica tune as much as the next hipster.  However, when I hear anything by LMFAO outside of a club or house party, I cringe.  It’s like listening to self-improvement tapes while pulling into a McDonalds.  It’s obviously being misused.  

Now, leaving dance music to run its course, I find the more alarming trend in radio is the death of the album.  How many times have you picked up an [enter apple product name] and found a list of artists that only have one or two songs a piece?  Let me give you a for instance.  I was on a road trip with a friend who had his iPod plugged into the car.  As the sole heir to the shotgun seat I took control of the iPod.  I would scroll down till I found an artist I liked (My Morning Jacket, Death Cab for Cutie, Cake, etc.) and would find they had their one or two hits and no other songs.  This is only one example of a trend I’ve seen with most people my age.  

Now I understand not everyone is as fanatical about music as I am.  I don’t expect others to have the discography of the Beatles ready to go at a moments notice (though I highly recommend it) but what worries me is people aren’t even given the chance to hear the rest of the album.  I’m not the biggest Coldplay fan (by a long shot) and yet I heard the same 2 songs from Viva la Vida nearly everyday on one radio station or another for months on end.  Now, maybe that was a great album, maybe not.  Irrelevant.  What’s important is that I would have never heard any other song off that album if I didn’t take the initiative to go listen to the whole album.  So few people ever bother to listen to the rest of the album thereby missing out on some great music.  This is such a shame to me since we live in a day when it’s so easy to listen to a whole album before ever having to spend money on it.  We have Grooveshark, Spotify, NPR First Listen, and sometimes the artists themselves post the album to try out.  And yet, so many are content to hear what the radio spoon-feeds us, never knowing there are songs we may even like more than the single.  

When Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band was release in 1967 the Beatles didn’t send a single out before-hand.  This was a big deal at the time since the trend of the day was to have a single play on the radio to get listeners excited about the album and then they would go out and buy it.  When Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band came out  there was no single for the DJ’s to play so many of them simply played the whole album.  Awesome.  And not so surprisingly, it is now considered the greatest rock album of all time.  That doesn’t happen anymore.  Heck, most groups nowadays can do a worldwide tour on the fame of a single alone.  Big artists aren’t nearly as worried about making an album as they are about getting a single grossly over-played in order to boost their ticket sales.  I don’t blame the artists mind you, it’s just the way things are now.

My friends, what I ask is not that we boycott the radio or occupy X 96.3.  The radio will do what it has to in order to stay on the air.  I respect that.  All I ask is that when we hear an song we like, that we look up the album and try it out.  The majority of the time we won’t end up buying the album because it sucks.  Sometimes a great single is a stroke of genius from an otherwise mediocre band.  Don’t buy an album just to get the single in these cases.  That’s why we have iTunes.  I wouldn’t blame anyone for getting the singles from Fastball and not buy the whole album.  But at least listen to the album.