The Album is Dead. Long Live the Album

The album is dead.

I agree with many observers who say that the future of a collection of songs packaged up as a single commercial product pressed onto plastic or even encoded into mp3s with the expectations of significant sales is a thing of the past.

I’m not celebrating.  I like albums.  I like the way certain songs that will never be hits fit in and make the whole mood work.  I even like concept albums.

There were certain albums (or tapes or CDs) that I used to basically just play until I came to the end of the side, flip it over, play side 2 and just flip it back over to side 1 again and again.  I could recite the Pretenders first album by heart to you when I was in high school and I knew just about every crazy little noise and insane verbal snippet on the Beastie Boys’ “Paul’s Boutique.”

Well, boo hoo.  I liked albums and now there’s no way to make money on them so they’re disappearing.

But if you’re going to ask why concert goers would like to go see an album performed by their favorite artists live, you should at least allow for the possibility that there’s a reason.  Here’s what I said a few weeks ago on the topic:

“…here’s why I think [performing an album at a concert] is so great.  It brings a coherence and a total experience to a musical performance.

And while the album as a unified musical artisitic expression is dying, the importance of story line in a live performance is not.

In fact, isn’t it just possible that musical careers could be built on bucking the trend and developing music with a through-line, intended to be listened to and then eventually performed all in one go?

I think it could.  It would be a powerful differentiator in the marketplace if someone could do it in a way that really jazzed a group of fans.

So obviously, the oldies are going to juice this particular lemon as much as they can because people already know and love certain albums.  It’s kinda easy money for them at a time when concert sales are less than stellar.

But beyond that, creating an album with a “story” (literal or not so literal) is a great way to be special and to encourage people to listen to more of your music.  It also makes for a good reason to go see a show live.”

In contrast, Chris Richards of the Washington Post thinks this is all a bad thing, and that essentially, if you want to hear the whole album, why not just stay at home?

The crux of his argument seems to lie in the idea that the best thing about concerts is that we don’t know the order in which songs will be played, and I know what he means.  It’s that pleasant surprise when the band strikes up a song you know, like taking the wrapping off a present.

And I’m in total agreement that some of this is a fairly noxious combination of boomer nostalgia and a money grab.

But to counter Chris’s argument, let me ask this: must everything in our lives be on Shuffle?  Isn’t it possible that if a musician thinks the songs go together stylistically or in theme, and the fans agree, that the performance of an album on stage might be a pretty great experience?

Should orchestras  start performing movements of symphonies and “surprising” the audience with what’s coming next?

How about just a night of more or less randomly chosen Shakespeare’s Greatest Hits Soliloquies?  Imagine the thrill when Hamlet launches into “To be or Not to Be…” just as you thought the show was starting to sag.

And just because the album is being performed in order, there’s nothing saying it must be performed exactly like the original.   In fact, something new and powerful in the midst of the familiar is usually a winning combination.

Richards also seems confused as to whether people want this or really hate it.  He says of this trend that “touring artists have resorted to bringing the people what they want. Exactly what they want.”

Wow, that’s diabolical!  Bringing the paying fans exactly what they want?  Karl Rove must be involved somehow.

But just a few sentences later, Richards claims “this trend [is] exhausted.”  Is it?  I thought you just said more and more acts were doing it and it’s what people wanted to see.

Perhaps Richards meant to say, “I don’t like this trend, and one day, surely, it will end.”

But why quibble?  This virus is out there and will run its course, and both good and bad musicians will play their whole albums on stage.  Some will do it well and others will walk through their old material like a funeral procession.

If there are clever musicians out there, however, who understand that differentiation is what careers are built on, they will use this trend to long-term, permanent advantage.  The days of making millions on selling recorded music may be (well, are) over, but a time in which people want to see a long-form musical performance may be upon us.

Maybe instead of performing albums live, perhaps there are long-form collections of music (don’t call them albums) that only get performed live.

Now there’s a concept the right kind of musician with the right kind of following could build a career on.