Wow, music is changing and it reflects the times as well. I've noticed it especially recently though it has been happening for a while but albums are just getting shorter and shorter. There are many reasons for this and many that have been heard before so I'm probably not exactly going to contribute any new ideas to this but here goes anyway.
The MP3 format and the fact we can now pick and choose what songs we want and then discard the rest in the metaphorical digital bin from places like iTunes and that that I guess it makes no more sense for artists to create an album with 'fillers' but for me those 'fillers' was what made the album as well and one person's idea of filler doesn't necessarily equate to another. I have many 4 and 5 star songs that a lot of people would consider to be crap tunes and rubbish but I say the same thing every single time, music is always going to be heavily subjective. I suppose people have fooled themselves into thinking you can have a 'good' and 'bad' song and there are certain qualities which make that so but for me, music is all about what is appealing to your ears. That ear worm of a pop tune that nobody you know seems to like but you yourself gets to number one on the charts yet no matter where you go or the reviews you read everyone slates it as a bad song but hang on, what defines a bad song? Surely the fact that it got to number one alone means enough people liked it to send it there? (Of course this is not counting the overexposure of certain songs or because it was featured or associated with a certain show/film/etc).
Where was I? Oh yeah album length yadda yadda...I've seen albums have just 11 songs or so and I've been sort of annoyed somewhat because while yes I understand it's quality over quantity it means I spend less time somewhat listening to it and I just love new things from artists really. The example I'm going to use here is My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy by Kanye West. I had already heard half of the album before it came out and as much as I like the album...I couldn't help feel somewhat disappointed that I had done just that and the album just didn't feel as 'new' to me when I listened to the songs in album order but I guess that's more to with me rather than the albums itself.
But there are some where I haven't heard half the album anyway and yet they have a short album length and I'm still slightly disappointed in it, why?
Because when I get bored of listening to the favourite tracks on the albums I like to give the others another chance to change my mind on them because maybe I listened to it at a bad time like I wasn't in the right mood or I was paying attention to it really but there has been many a time when a song I didn't initially like has played and it pumped me up and I paid attention and then I liked it. The best example I can think of for me in this case was Paramore's For A Pessimist, I'm Pretty Optimistic. At first listen, I gave it 2 stars on my iPod. This was probably due to the fact I had many other song to listen to at the time and I didn't really get the chance to really listen to the song but over time the song would randomly come up and I had the chance to listen to it and over time it was bumped up to 3 stars then 4 stars and finally the coveted 5 stars on my iPod.
Anyway the last thing I'm going to talk about is critics and reviews. No I'm not going to bash them as some do genuinely including myself find them helpful as sometimes they point out things you may have not have noticed before seeing how their jobs is to 'objectively' review the song or album though how it's supposed to be objective I'll never know. I could listen to songs more critically and that but I choose not to and let songs take me away on the journey that they try to take me on regardless of whether it's done 'well' or not.
To be honest I prefer the reviewers who tries to entertain you with their reviews seeing as that's what they are setting out to do like just the other day as I clicked a link leading me to Todd in the Shadows and his review of some Beyonce songs and I found it to be amusing despite my liking for songs like Single Ladies and Irreplaceable, I could help but laugh at some of his criticisms for those songs. Not just that but others as well as some of the biggest songs in the last few years have had really poor lyrics, rhymes and other such things but hey, it's a hit song and they're getting money....a lot of money from it eh.
Music will always be a funny business to me but an interesting one nonetheless
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