Having grown up late 90s into the 2000s I went from buying cds to lime wire to spotify.
In the last 6 months I have found such a greater appreciation for just putting on a whole album and listening to it front to back.
I feel there is a huge loss when going from one artist to another to another all random.
Today I am listening to Refused, The Shape Of Punk To Come
Yeah, I never really got it when people started listening to things on shuffle. I like albums. I recently got rid of Spotify and going back to just having albums and VLC on my phone is so nice.
Mixtapes predate cds by a bit there, kid.
They do not, however, predate albums. CDs were not the inception of the album.
Nah, most songs suck. I’ll listen to the one or two good ones.
depends, some artists just have a few good songs and a lot of filler. In my experience, the further away from mainstream pop you go the higher the likelihood to encounter great albums with no filler.
Sounds like you’re just making your own albums
I largely agree with you here. I recently left Spotify and have been growing my locally hosted music library and instead of building my own playlists I’ve just been tuning into whole albums. I’ve found that most albums (not all, some albums seem to just be thrown together) have a flow to them and are just much more enjoyable when listened together.
This depends. A lot of albums aren’t coherent “pieces of art”, and the track listing is ordered and selected by execs other than the artist, so it’s kind of meaningless. “Greatest hits” albums are also not relevant.
But yeah, this is a big reason why I went back to vinyl and cassette - I select something, put it on, and listen to it straight through without skipping, because that would require me to get up off my chair and walk across the room. Life hack amiright.
I get that, but also movies are a single piece of art, and sometimes I just want to jump to the machete battle scene in The Raid. I still love the whole thing, but sometimes I only got like 5 minutes until my lunch break is over.
I used to have a friend who would ALWAYS play between 30 minutes and 1 hour of the start of Ace Ventura 2, then stop it and play it again from the beginning. Fucking infuriating
Listening to album is a way to listen to a full story. While I listen to some Bollywood movie album, it feels like watching the movie again and going through that story
Any movie album you would recommend?
‘Gangs of Wasseypur’ and the sequel both have banging songs. Idk if the full soundtracks are available anywhere, though.
Of western films, try ‘Fear And Loathing In Las Vegas’, ‘O Brother, Where Art Thou?’, Nino Rota’s soundtrack for ‘Amarcord’, Kenji Kawai’s ‘Ghost In The Shell’, and David Lynch’s films: ‘Twin Peaks’, ‘Lost Highway’, ‘Blue Velvet’. Joe Hisaishi made great music for both Takeshi Kitano and Ghibli. Philip Glass’ ‘Koyaanisqatsi’ is famously the only sound in the film; and his ‘Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters’ is also very cool. ‘Chinatown’ is pretty much a definitive album of dark jazz. John Lurie made music for ‘Down By Law’ in which he also acted.
Eh, dont agree. Yeah, I think listening to a whole album is important on occasion and can give a cool perspective. But I’ve found that the range of things I enjoy increases with shuffle. There’s so much stuff that I love… in unexpected short spurts. Im not talking hits, but just random decent stuff. I think there’s something lost when an album has to be good enough that you intentionally pull it off the shelf and listen to it for an hour. Hordes of cool things won’t meet that level.
God one of my favorite albums of all time is Those Who Tell The Truth Shall Die Those Who Tell The Truth Shall Live Forever by Explosions in the Sky.
While I enjoy shuffling my music for the chaos my library brings, the way each song blends into each other in the studio album is my absolute favorite. It really makes the experience
good albums should
there are lots of albums that aren’t good albums
that said, the albums I listen to often are absolutely front to back listening
I got a record player and have been buying vinyl recently, so listening to whole albums is pretty much default, and it’s been amazing, I agree. But that’s not a necessity with the CD changer I got to stack under it, or streaming. I do love returning to real album listening, but music is a very personal thing.
Great Refused album though.
I generally agree. However, especially nowadays (and back in the early 60s before Pet Sounds and Rubber Soul), not all albums are written to be listened to as a whole. We’ve gone back to (many, not all) albums just being a collection of singles.
For better or worse (worse imo).
You have to seek out albums these days, you can find some good ones still from skilled artists
Albums always have a better side and a worse side and one gets played more than the other. Except Dark Side and maybe Sgt. Pepper.
you could have listed every Pink Floyd and every Beatles album here as exceptions
i’m younger but i feel the same way. i almost always listen to albums exclusively, and it’s probably the only thing i don’t enjoy about being a community radio dj - they tell us not to even play more than a single song by the same artist in an hour.
on the one hand, people put likely hundreds of hours total into a single album, and the album as a whole is the only way to truly appreciate the entire piece of art. on the other hand, it is a small issue to feel better than other people with, lmao. & i would argue the majority of albums have at least a few songs that aren’t as good.
oh and as long as we’re here, since you’re already using lemmy, you might be open to spotify alternatives. consider qobuz, they pay artists significantly more.
The only albums I listen to entirely from start to finish, are those where all the songs actually connect to each other. Most albums are not like that.
There are tons of concept albums where the songs do not directly connect to each other that still deserve to be listened to as a cohesive unit.
For every concept album there are a hundred collections of songs.
