Do Albums Matter Anymore?

[Patrick Garcia 312]

I will always appreciate good and cohesive albuns, but I wouldn't mind if standalone singles became more important than them. What I really care is the quality of the music. If I like it, I couldn't care less if it is part of an album or just a single.

People use to say that music were better in the past decades. Maybe that's because artists would focus more in standalone singles and in making them meaningful, with great lyrics and songwriting, rather than just compilate a bunch of potencial singles and see which one sticks to the general public.

Idk... I'm here for the music in the first place.

I do believe that singles can be a powerful form of art specially if it comes together with a great video. You can work on a song and design it to be catchy (clever type of catchy not basic-catchy) with a great video and message and make it last a whole season. I mean, that's exactly what more compromised artists do today, but I think that if singles stopped being considerated for albuns sales, maybe artist would have to work harder on albuns so people actually start listening to them as a whole package. Artists who already do such thing are doing it for pure passion cause they don't actually need to, if a single becomes extremely successful the whole album will "sell" too.

[Patrick Garcia 312]

On 12/11/2019 at 7:48 PM, GreekGod said:

Artists in my country (Azerbaijan) have been doing “no album” thing for the last 15-20 years and it seems to work since industry is digital and nobody buys albums since decades. I feel like it works well with popularity but it feels like fast food.. you consume music with no binding content and it is very momentary.

It feels that way because the majority of artists who do that are the ones that don't have full control of their art. So it really is like fast food, cause the label wants money in the first place. But imagine if stabilised artists such as Lady Gaga/Taylor Swift/Adele started to release standalone singles with the quality of Shallow, ARUTW, RITD, BS, etc... It won't feel like fast food if the songs are good. A single song can have more cultural impact than a whole album. Madonna's Vogue is a good example. I truly don't understand why some of you are obsessed with a "theme". I'm obsessed with great songwriting, that's all.

[2School4Cool 5,964]

Honestly I would be so sad if we moved to an era of only singles. Stand-alone singles can be great (like The Cure for example, it was such a fun surprise), but it’s so much more exciting knowing a new single is from an upcoming album. I love sitting and listening to an album as a whole, and there’s nothing more exciting than hearing a new body of work that your favorite artist created, and hearing its flow, progression, the whole story in its entirety. 

[GreekGod 1,085]

6 hours ago, Michael Lucas said:

It feels that way because the majority of artists who do that are the ones that don't have full control of their art. So it really is like fast food, cause the label wants money in the first place. But imagine if stabilised artists such as Lady Gaga/Taylor Swift/Adele started to release standalone singles with the quality of Shallow, ARUTW, RITD, BS, etc... It won't feel like fast food if the songs are good. A single song can have more cultural impact than a whole album. Madonna's Vogue is a good example. I truly don't understand why some of you are obsessed with a "theme". I'm obsessed with great songwriting, that's all.

Good song is a good song of course. A standalone single can be more meaningful than a whole album, agree. But I personally enjoy the concept of seeing an artist go through a phase and offer something new  as a whole, rather than today this song, tomorrow irrelevantly another song. Think of it like, I wanna explore asian cuisine. I don’t just wanna eat sushi today and stop, tomorrow eat italian food. I wanna experience more of the concept, to fully immerse myself. Same with albums..