Variety: Albums Don't Work Anymore

S.D. wrote:

I don't agree that all albums are just a "collection of songs", some albums are much greater than the sum of their parts and work best when listened to all the way through.   

Those tend to be the best albums.

Perhaps the pop albums in this article, as collections of songs, don't work any more as a business model. Maybe it's the length, the lack of quality of songwriting or oversaturation or whatever. So, pop artists, either write better music or cull tracks more readily.

I would imagine that most here would be in favour of albums and couldn't care less about singles. I would also argue that the best albums are those where, as thejoker and S.D. have suggested, the sum of their parts is greater, either in terms of atmosphere, tone, storytelling, structure or dynamics. The sequencing of tracks is a point of difference, too, with artists being careful how the album develops across the tracks (something lost when cherry-picking singles for download). Taken out of the album context, these songs can lose some of thier impact. Within the genres that this board listens to, the sequence of songs is important, so that albums are not necessarily just collections of songs.

S.D. wrote:

Many of us here are circling right on either side of 40, what we like is tied to what we grew up with.  We bought albums, we traded them, discussed them, made compilation tapes from them, they became a part of who we are and hearing them now conjures up memories of the time we first experienced them.  So we are naturally a little horrified by seeing this trend back toward singles and away from physical media, but at the same time we just have to accept that the marketplace is really not interested in people our age.  Albums will continue to be made, physical media will still exist, it's just going to be niche going forward.  

End.

I couldn't imagine a world where Kyuss's Sky Valley isn't the most purest example of the concept of cohesive ALBUM. Singles are for pop fans. Master of Reality,Reign In Blood, Ghost Reveries,Space Ritual,Seventh Son of a Seventh Son excetra ad infinitum. The album format defines metal's greatness!