The Album As A Plot Device
Bob has been yakking it up talking about the demise of the album (see here and here) and there’s some merit to this basic premise which is that people are losing interest in the 45-minute bundle of tunes that we call ‘albums’ today. His advice to artists is to abandon the premise altogether in favor of “TRACKS” (Yes, he capitalizes them and refuses to call them songs. They’re “TRACKS”. Dude is so 70s.)
I’ve written something similar that I think, in general and at a minimum, most albums are too long. I think a package of about 8-10 songs is the ideal amount of music for a statement, assuming that’s what you want to make.
Bob’s point is that you should put out a steady stream of great TRACKs and maintain people’s attention over a period of time rather than focus their attention on a singular point of time known as the album release date.
But, if you have tried getting press for your work, you’ll know that, in reality, that’s very difficult to do. That’s because the industry isn’t really geared around TRACKS, well, the industry for attention, at least. And that’s my opinion. And I could be wrong (ed. note: probably actually). But even getting press for an EP is much more difficult than an LP. And so it behooves artists (currently) to make albums not EPs because if they want to get noticed by people that create attention (writers, tastemakers, influencers) they need something of substance that can capture attention for more than just a passing moment.
I see this in all facets of life. People need their tentpoles. They need their anchors. You can iterate around your tentpole but it helps to have them there. Something to talk about. The story. The plot. Like I said, I could be wrong, but it doesn’t feel to me like single songs can do that effectively. They can’t be floating in the cosmos, unrelated to each other. There’s nothing to ground your attention. Nothing to capture your imagination.
That’s the purpose that albums serve right now. They anchor a conversation and they’re substantive enough to have little pieces of content (stories, behind the scenes videos, anecdotes about recording, songs) spill out over time, all tied back to a specific theme. They advance the plot, so to speak. And they are worthy of an in-depth engagement. It’s harder to talk about a song for an hour than it is for an album. An album is a richer store of juicy stuff.
So if we’re intent on getting rid of the album in its current state, I still think we need, as artists, to develop cohesive themes. I guess they can be episodic but I still think they need to have a coherent theme. I think starting and end points are useful. I think finite stories are helpful. So maybe instead of a record, per se, you record 10 songs (or 15 because you can’t edit yourself) and then you do a big push at the beginning where you set up the premise of the story. Then, you dribble out episodic pieces of the story over a period of time, while having given your audience the understanding that there will be an end-point. That their interest only need be engaged at a high intensity for a defined period of time.
I guess that could work. I guess what it means is that you’re telling the story of the album over a period of time, which is kind of what you do anyway (e.g. press campaigns are three months). Maybe that could work.
But still. You need to tell a story. It needs to take the listener somewhere. And it needs to be worthy of more intense focus. So albums still have their place. Or, at a minimum, a body of work, coherent, unified and thematic.
