Depending on the album.

Some albums are made like that, as a cohesive work.

Others are just a bunch of songs put together by approximately release date.

This you?

Yes and no. You gotta listen to the whole thing all the way through at least once. Some albums require repeat listening. Some, you just take the good, toss the bad.

This is how I listen to music, but also this isn't a shower thought, it's just your opinion.

Depends on the album. Some albums really are like that, but others are just a compiled collection of singles.

Yes, but also no.

There was a time when albums were created by artists with the intent that they should be listened to start to finish.

But at some point albums changes to being a collection of songs trying to be “hits”

How very prog of you. 🤙

Some albums, yes. But not all.

This varies. Some albums are absolutely meant to be listened to back to back in order. Others are just a collection of songs and nothing is lost by missing them into a random playlist.

True of some albums, not all. A lot of albums just have one good song. One of the best concerts I ever went to was a playthrough of an entire album because it was its 10th anniversay and I'd listened to it so many times I knew exactly what was coming next. Best feeling

Maybe back in the day when bands would spend months and months assembling an album that had a generally cohesive style. Now it seems a lot of bands throw a bunch of stuff at the wall hoping something will stick. A good album today is the exception, not the expectation.

Not all art belongs in the Louvre.

For many, absolutely! That's how they were intended, and they deserve it.

Others, it's just ten songs randomly arranged.

Pretty good litmus test on whether they're good musicians or just corporate karaoke.

A fun counterpoint to the "albums weren't meant to be shuffled" argument is Apollo 18 by TMBG.

On the track list, "Fingertips" is track 17, followed by "Space Suit" at track 38. That's because Fingertips is actually 21 mini songs (mostly 10 seconds or less), each with their own track, that are supposed to appear randomly between full songs when you listen on shuffle.

On the other hand, modern streaming services usually just have a single track for Fingertips, so I'm now used to hearing those 21 mini songs in the original, "play it straight through" order.

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).

Today I am listening to Refused, The Shape Of Punk To Come

As are songs. I have a playlist with about 3000 songs I like in one folder, and it'll jump through genres from song to song. I like all the songs, so I don't care about mood changes.

I also find there are album songs on most albums that I like that I don't particularly enjoy or feel like filler.

Why I wrote a somewhat bad shuffle utility so sometimes it doesn't select a random song from my music library but sometimes picks the next neighboring song file for those album-specific messages from the artist.

Yeah unfortunately I disagree. There are plenty of albums where I like literally one song and don't much care for anything else on it.

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.

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.

This is part of why I prefer Bandcamp over Spotify. Throw on a whole album, give it a listen, if I come back and do that a few times it's probably worth buying. And then it's mine forever without DRM.

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.

Huge agree. There are so many albums that tell a complete story. They take you on an emotional journey. Or you're just missing banger after banger. The only time I ever listen to a random assortment of songs is if I'm listening to music on Youtube or the radio for some reason. I almost never sit down to listen to music in a random playlist when I'm going through my collection. Don't even have Spotify installed. Years of collecting music doesn't require a Spotify account.

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.

At my house I almost exclusively listen to records.

I put it on, listen to the whole thing and put the next one on.

Mixtapes predate cds by a bit there, kid.

Honestly, it's very hit or miss, and it's way more miss than hit for big artists... there are albums that are even conceptualized as a full art piece, but in reality the majority have lots of songs that are there because the record company said there had to be an x amount of songs, a new album every x amount of time, and sometimes would even force them to record covers... The Shape Of Punk To Come is among my earliest acquisitions and is a great album, but among my earliest acquisitions there's also Recipe for Hate, and that joke about buying an album because of one song (in this case, American Jesus) and the rest of the album sucking is true :P

I was thinking about this recently, because artists releasing music exclusively in digital formats they rarely release full albums nowadays, just tons of singles, and platforms like Discogs are having a hard time cataloguing new artists, but I guess not having to release x amount of songs together gave them more artistic freedom and they can focus on releasing what they really like and not just pushing records because of contractual clauses.

That being said, never let an algorithm pick music for you.

Problem is it can sometimes be too samey, so it just blends together after a while.

I think it depends on the artist and the time. Im a big jethro tull fan and they crafted their albums very specifically. You could sorta see it in particular in this period as they always ended with these short songs that were kinda a goodbye. Its kinda hard to describe but when you listen to their stuff form the 60-80 its pretty clear. What gets me is streaming. The thing with streaming is if I call up an album it will default to remastered one which pretty much adds back things from the cuttting room floor appened to the end. Which completely ruins the experience. Drives me nuts.

Album ≠ album. There are certainly ones worthy of listening to them as a whole. But there are plenty of albums that are just utter garbage too. The war on the single by record companies in the 90s produced a number of albums that were at best a couple of okay singles plus 8-10 pure fillers. Name another Chumbawamba song, you can't without googling.

In a way we are reverting back to the 1950s where the single reigned supreme and albums were an afterthought. Now the single song does better than an album again. Some musicians release every streamlined Spotify curated 2 minute song as a "single." Since most of it is done digitally only why not?

Dogma is useless.

While I agree that there definitely are albums where listening to them in their entirety enhances the experience (Metropolis 2, Octavarium), I generally prefer picking out the best songs of an album and listening to those instead.
Not all albums are made of bangers and have songs I’d never listen to a second time.

It's not all art, especially when labels and PR folks are involved. How much say in set order or even content of an album the artists get varies.

There are maybe a dozen albums I like enough to listen to from head to toe.

If a lot of cases, the band knows they only have a few really good tracks and struggle to put enough on the album for it to sell.

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.