According to the March 26, 2007, business section of the New York Times, the record album is dead. Downloadable single tracks are the wave of the future. Why should anybody spend money on an entire album, especially when only one track, the hit that’s blared out of every car radio and every shopping mall PA system, is worth listening to?
Me, I was born in the vinyl era. I still think of an album as an LP, or long-playing record, a term coined to distinguish them from singles. Before the mid-1960s, singles were the standard purchase. You only bought an album if you were a devoted fan. (At age 10 I bought Herman’s Hermits’ albums, but not the Zombies’ – go figure.) Only after the Beatles defied that trend by charting massive LP sales did every band have to come up with masterpiece LPs – the old formula of lead-off-hit-plus-filler would no longer suffice. The concept album followed in due course, and an entire generation (mine) grew up on album-oriented rock.
I’ve been brooding over the death of the record album for several reasons. One is that I’m awaiting album releases this summer by two of my all-time favorite artists, Nick Lowe and Paul McCartney. The McCartney deal is newsworthy because he jumped ship from Capitol after 40 years to be the first artist on Starbucks new label. Bring on the anti-Macca protests; I’m still convinced he’s at the top of his game, and if Capitol couldn’t coax better sales out of Chaos and Creation in the Backyard, they deserve to lose him. I don’t even drink coffee, but Starbucks does provide useful public bathrooms and computer hookups, and they peddle quite decent music by the cash register. If Starbucks will market your music better, go for it, Sir Paul. I’ll be the first in line.
The Lowe album (titled At My Age, due out June 26th) is even more thrilling to me. It’s been six years since Nick released an album - 2001’s The Convincer, the third of a trilogy (with The Impossible Bird, 1994, and Dig My Mood, 1998, each one deeper, richer, and more musically satisfying than the last). Who would’ve thought the former pub-rocker, house producer for Stiff Records, and frontman for Rockpile would have ripened into such a soulful, mellow craftsman? His label, YepRoc, handles several quirky veteran rockers — Paul Weller, Robyn Hitchcock, Dave Alvin, Billy Bragg, Ian Hunter, Bob Mould — and I pray they’ll get Nick Lowe the audience he deserves.
Article comments
1 - Mark Saleski
very nice holly.
the album will never be dead in my mind.
2 - Douglas Mays
Holly, the album must live on. Especially in this day and age. The Bush era.
The problem is (in my mind) that artists aren't really saying anything nowadays. Does the music art world have Stockholm Syndrome, afraid to testify against the oppression of government and corporation? This has been going on for years and there seems to be no revolution in music, the most readily available art form to the public.
Hooray for Starbucks!!! A new indy label with a major on it. SubPop has a new spin off label. The indy rules! Let majors license them so perhaps sales will gain some numbers again. There is a wealth of great music saying something out there.
There is no substitute for owning an album (vinyl rules!). Holding it, reading all the trivia in the package. Finding that one song that normally doesn't get played on the radio that is the message an individual listener might need to hear. I wish there was a way to get posters in a CD, like when Dark Side of the Moon came out.
It might help if an artist can actually write an album's worth of quality music....
don't get me wrong. Today I really like the White Stripes, Raconteurs, the Shins, and others. There are alot of musicians that create under the principal of talent + feelings = communication. Sure, there are too many that only envision 'being a rock star'. Try moving the public with musical/social statement. That is where the big money comes in...
best,
Douglas
3 - Holly Hughes
Ah, yes, the album as a physical object -- I didn't even begin to talk about that. All that fantastic cover art created for vinyl LPs (not to mention posters and gatefold covers' inside spreads) doesn't even begin to work on a tiny CD case, but at least you have some art to look at. And lyrics -- I love an artist who cares enough about lyrics to print out the words so you can follow them, treasure them, pore over them. Even if we download entire albums rather than single tracks, we lose the tactile and visual sensations of having that package.
It'll take a revolution in the music business before artists who actually say something are equated with substantial sales. All we can do is buy the stuff that moves us and hope others do the same.
4 - Ron Chalice
Good go Holly!
I wonder how many people would buy just one chapter of the Da Vinci Code... I can think of at least a dozen albums that could easily fall in with the allegory... "Dark Side of the Moon", "Sergeant Pepper" and "John Wesley Harding" immediately top the list. I think the part that I miss most, however, is the packaging. I go back to February 9, 1964 as well. Waited on the sidewalk in front of the music store on the 10th. Spent my life savings on a Harmony guitar and Silvertone amp, then had my first paying gig ($5) on Friday February 14, playing 6 Beatles songs.
My most vivid memories in the years since are a)carefully steaming the 'nice' cover pasted over the original for "Yesterday and Today", b) poring through the lyrics and collateral material in "Sgt. Pepper", c) unfolding the huge poster inside the White Album in the middle of the 'Paul is Dead' stuff, and d) listening to "Dark Side of the Moon" through headphones from a McIntosh power amp.
Yeah, I've got an MP3 player, I download singles and all that. But I love whoever invented the wall frame for LP's... they line the walls of my home and studio.
PS... I'm the guy who writes that 'goofball little Boomersaurus blog'... ;-)
seeya,
5 - Connie Phillips
Congrat! A link to this article now appears on our Myspace profile page.
6 - Holly Hughes
Hey, Ron, good to hear from you! I steamed the cover off my "Yesterday...and Today" album too. Unfortunately, it was a later pressing that had nothing underneath but gray cardboard. Bummer.
You know another good recent "theme" album? The Crane Wife, by the Decemberists. That one just cries out to be listened to in one go.
7 - Ron Chalice
I lucked out. Found treasure underneath, unfortunately about a year later, my stereo and a mess of albums were stolen from our band house in Boulder while we were playing a little dive called Galena Street East in Aspen. Somebody somewhere has a butcher cover with the word DUCK in blue magic marker...
Who knows maybe someday it'll show up.
I will have to take a listen to the Crane Wife... didja ever get into Harry Chapin? Has to be one of the all time greats at telling stories with harmony ;-)
8 - Mat Brewster
It's only critics with a deadline saying that the album is dead. Of course there will always be pop singers who only have one or two decent songs on an album. But there are loads of solid albums out there, The Crane Wife is an excellent example.
9 - giddygabby
Just last weekend I was explaining to podder, who wanted to share her tunes with me, the artistry of the album and how a collection of onesies just doesn't suit. I prefer to hear the entire album sitting down, where I can zone in on the nuances and riffs, though I'm just as likely to crank it up on a Saturday and bang through the housework.
We listened to Big Brother and the Holding Company's Cheap Thrills together (yes I'm that old), and somewhere along the line (I had my eyes closed at the time) she got it.