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The perfect length...
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thesweetcheat
thesweetcheat
6218 posts

Re: The perfect length...
Oct 31, 2009, 01:39
Dog 3000 wrote:
I wonder if it's anything deep-seated in the brain, or just decades of familiarity, but 15-20 minute bites of rock/pop seem about right. One side of an LP or cassette (and if you crave another bite, flip it over for the other side.)

Sometimes CD albums that are 40-50 minutes can even seem too long! Unlike previous formats, they're designed to be listened to continuously rather than in 50% chunks.

I've noticed the trend with your more underground stuff recently seems to be 35 minute albums or even less -- real short (like the newest Blues Control for instance.)

Though on the other hand, with CD's you can program the tracks you like and skip the rest, which was not so easy to do with older formats.


Some very good points here. One thing I notice these days is that a lot of songs are often quite long (up to 5 minutes) for no benefit. Don't get me wrong, some of my favourite songs (Crispy Ambulance's "The Presence"; "O Superman", etc) are very long. But, for example, listening to the last two New Order albums, the songs are often 5 minutes long, but don't really need to be (they don't unfold or add extra layers over a long running time like "The Perfect Kiss" did), they just seem to have forgotten how to stop/edit. As a result, you get a 50 minute album where a 40 minute one would be better.

Two anecdotes:

Wire sacked their original guitarist, because he broke his arm and in his absence they realised they didn't need widdly guitar solos. Hence the short to-the-point songs on Pink Flag. Verse-chorus-stop. This excellent attitude leads to short albums (or lots of songs!).

Morrissey's Kill Uncle album (admittedly not his best) being criticised in a music paper for only being 33 minutes long, which seems a pretty dumb thing to criticise. Many of The Smiths singles were around the 2 minute mark and their supposed "masterpiece" The Queen is Dead is only just 37 minutes!

It's also a commonly expressed opinion amongst music fans that most double albums would "make a good single LP", so even in the vinyl days artists struggled to fill more than two standard sides of vinyl satisfactorily.

Artists were also expected to produce an album every year (look at the Beatles output and work-rate) rather than pissing about in the studio for three years with pro-tools, so there was less scope for self-indulgence and excessive length.

My five favourite albums:

Unknown Pleasures (40 mins)
Technique (40 mins)
Closer (44 mins)
The Smiths (43 mins - original timing excluding "This Charming Man")
LC (42 mins)
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Re: The perfect length... (Dog 3000)
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