Standout songs on albums

Nephilim Wolf

This is probably more of a rant, but here goes. I just feel that most of todays albums are disposable and throwaway, because of the sheer lack of standout songs on them. For example I'm very very fussy about albums that I buy, and if an album has say ten songs on it, I always expect and hope that at least seven or eight of them will be amazing and not just two or three. I don'nt just mean singles, but other songs as well that were'nt singles, but are still very very strong and very memorable and sometimes unforgettable.

Usually you have to try and find some amazing underground bands, that are capable of pulling this off. Most of the mainstream rock and metal bands tend to have only a couple of real standout songs, whereas the underground bands will usually have loads of awesome songs on the one disc. Thats why I tend to really hate mainstream music in general. It also annoys me the way some people on amazon will give an album four or five stars, just because an album has two or three truly amazing songs, and the other seven or nine songs of the album are just forgettable junk and terrible fillers.

It could also be a case of the record company pushing an artist to make a couple of stunning or amazong songs, and not really putting any effort or thought in the rest of the album.

What are your opinions on this?

rgt320q

Quite true, but then again, sometimes I prefer the songs on an album to flow well together and create a good overarching atmosphere rather than have any particular tracks really stand out. Depends on the style of music, I suppose.

GhostInTheRuins

You're right of course. Chances are if I buy an album with ten songs and only three or four are good I won't listen to it more than a couple of times.

I don't buy that bit about record companies forcing bands to make one or two great songs and then loads of filler. If a band has any respect for their fans or themselves they're going to want to write good songs aren't they? If they don't/can't then they're obviously not worth listening to.

Doctor J

I think the advent of the CD has a lot ot do with it. With LP, bands tended to keep albums under or around the 40 minute mark. The limitations of the medium acted as a discreet quality control mechanism. With the great albums you'd get 40 minutes of great music. With the average to mediocre ones you could expect at least 15 to 20 minutes of quality, at least half of the album was good. Unfortunately on a CD 20 minutes of quality leaves up to 60 minutes of crap which, unfortunatley, a lot of bands insist on filling. Albums used to have maybe 6 to 10 songs, they didn't overstay their welcome, there wasn't room for a lot of the tedious filler which plagues so many new releases. As the capacity of the popular medium increased with CD, people felt the need to give "value for maney" and fill up the CD. Bands with 20 minutes of good music in them were releasing 60 minute albums, with ****ing **** remixes and crap "bonus" tracks which would have correctly been forgotten about in the old days. Bands are diluting their efforts trying to wring extra time out of limited resources, which means even the good stuff isn't as good as it could have been if they'd concentrated on it, not spreading themselves too thin.

People often value quantity over quality when it comes to putting their hand in their pocket, so all over the world bands are recording the sound of a dog trapped in a piano or the sound of forks with reverb as artistic bonus material. May death come on swift wings to them all.

Nephilim Wolf

rgt320q wrote: »

Quite true, but then again, sometimes I prefer the songs on an album to flow well together and create a good overarching atmosphere rather than have any particular tracks really stand out. Depends on the style of music, I suppose.

Thats very true, I have some fantastic albums that tend to have all the songs as standouts as well as great atmosphere.

Doctor J wrote: »

I think the advent of the CD has a lot ot do with it. With LP, bands tended to keep albums under or around the 40 minute mark. The limitations of the medium acted as a discreet quality control mechanism. With the great albums you'd get 40 minutes of great music. With the average to mediocre ones you could expect at least 15 to 20 minutes of quality, at least half of the album was good. Unfortunately on a CD 20 minutes of quality leaves up to 60 minutes of crap which, unfortunatley, a lot of bands insist on filling. Albums used to have maybe 6 to 10 songs, they didn't overstay their welcome, there wasn't room for a lot of the tedious filler which plagues so many new releases. As the capacity of the popular medium increased with CD, people felt the need to give "value for maney" and fill up the CD. Bands with 20 minutes of good music in them were releasing 60 minute albums, with ****ing **** remixes and crap "bonus" tracks which would have correctly been forgotten about in the old days. Bands are diluting their efforts trying to wring extra time out of limited resources, which means even the good stuff isn't as good as it could have been if they'd concentrated on it, not spreading themselves too thin.

People often value quantity over quality when it comes to putting their hand in their pocket, so all over the world bands are recording the sound of a dog trapped in a piano or the sound of forks with reverb as artistic bonus material. May death come on swift wings to them all.

Thats an excellent post and I could'nt agree with you more. Here are some fantastic albums, that do have loads of standout songs as well singles, in case your interested:

Thin Lizzy - Bad Reputation
Amorphis - Silent Waters
Paradise Lost - Draconian Times
Fields of The Nephilim - The Nephilim
Cradle of Filth - Dusk & Her Embrace
Tiamat - Wildhoney
Fields of The Nephilim - Elizium
Dimmu Borgir - Enthrone Darkness Triumphant
Elusive - The Great Silence
Thin Lizzy - Black Rose
The Cult - Love
Emperor - In The Nightside Eclipse
Rush - Moving Pictures & Signals

These are albums that you can listen to all the way through, and enjoy them thoroughly. If you don'nt have any of these albums, I would really recommend them.:D

S.I.R

blacdk boys on the corner - Thin Lizzy

prositiute - Guns n roses

side of a bullet - Nickelback

night train - Guns n Roses

my curse - Kill Switch Enagae

master of puppets - Metallica

cowboy song/boys are back in town - thin lizzy


Just a few that managed to stand out for me anyways

Mushy

Songs for the Deaf-QotSA

Sorry to be biased the whole time, but listened to it all the way through loads lately, it really is great.

nyarlothothep

obvious one but led zep 4. 8 brilliant songs.

Karl Hungus

Just depends on the band as far as I'm concerned, I don't really think the idea of the music company pushing bands in a certain way is true, or that the lenth of a CD has anything to do with it. Thinking about it, some of my favourite albums can generally be well over an hour, Dream Theater's Metropolis Part II: Scenes From a Memory is 77 minutes long, and it's just astonishing from start to finish. Likewise bands such as Opeth, Devin Townsend, and many other bands and artists I love, often have hugely long albums that are just quality through and through.

Then there's bands like Cynic who's albums are relatively short compared to the above, but again, absolute quality. So I don't think there's anything to do with lenth being in any way representative of quality, In Flames' best album was incidentally one of their shortest, but on the flipside, Immortal's longest albums were their best by far, the shortest being their worst. Does that mean anything? Nah, they just put out albums of varying degrees of quality at different points in their career, and the length is incidental.

I think it just boils down to this; some bands can put out albums with nothing but quality, some bands can't. Don't think there's any more rhyhme or reason to it than that.

ShawnRaven

It's horses for courses, I guess. Personally any albums i've gotten in recent months all have standout songs in my honest opinion, GNR's Chinese Democracy from the album of the same name is standout to me, War Machine from AC/DC's Black Ice is another to name two.

An album is what you make it really at the end of the day.

Nephilim Wolf

ShawnRaven wrote: »

It's horses for courses, I guess. Personally any albums i've gotten in recent months all have standout songs in my honest opinion, GNR's Chinese Democracy from the album of the same name is standout to me, War Machine from AC/DC's Black Ice is another to name two.

An album is what you make it really at the end of the day.

What I really meant was albums these days havem more fillers than standout songs, thus the bad outweighing the good, but that seems to be only mainstream albums. I personally hated Chinese Democracy & Black Ice. They were real turkeys of 2008 for me.

Jesus Juice

Biffy Clyro..Blackened Sky quality start to finish.......