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Why are modern albums so long


Maddergascar

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I really love my old Van Halen, Aerosmith and Maiden albums with about 8 tracks on them. You knew you could just listen to them all the way through and nothing was being compromised. Nowadays most new bands seem to release about 12 tracks at a time (which means that the album gets repetetive) yet spend twice as long recording them DLR era Van Halen released 6 albums in a row, one a year, and they were all really good.

Surely shorter albums would get better reviews, and it would leave tracks left over for b sides and rarity collections or reissues of the album. I find it hard to believe that people would buy a 12 track album over a 10 track one, when they knew that the more tracks there are, the worse they're gonna be.

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Guest Ohdistortedsmile1789

We are in the compact disc era, because CD's allow more music to be put on an album, artists are expected to fill them up. Many fans would feel short-changed if groups released 30 minute albums.

But you are right.

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It's amazing when I look at some of the albums I've bought in the last few years and cut them down to 8 or 9 songs and see how much better they look.

For example, a version of contraband that looked like this:

Sucker Train Blues

Big Machine

Illegal 1 Song

Spectacle

Fall To Pieces

Set Me Free

Slither

Dirty Little Thing

Loving The Alien

Would be a good listen all the way through. I've noticed that the throwaway songs seem to crop up about 3/5 of the way through.

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Guest Ohdistortedsmile1789
It's amazing when I look at some of the albums I've bought in the last few years and cut them down to 8 or 9 songs and see how much better they look.

For example, a version of contraband that looked like this:

Sucker Train Blues

Big Machine

Illegal 1 Song

Spectacle

Fall To Pieces

Set Me Free

Slither

Dirty Little Thing

Loving The Alien

Would be a good listen all the way through. I've noticed that the throwaway songs seem to crop up about 3/5 of the way through.

Well, if I took the time to make a 9 track Contraband it would probably look quite different. In the old days the tracks left out would have been used as B-sides. I don't see this as a huge issue, we have more music today, and the older days give us something closer to perfection.

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Guest Ohdistortedsmile1789
Sucker Train Blues

Big Machine

Illegal 1 Song

Spectacle

Fall To Pieces

Set Me Free

Slither

Dirty Little Thing

Loving The Alien

Where is Superhuman? <_<

Precisely.

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Sucker Train Blues

Big Machine

Illegal 1 Song

Spectacle

Fall To Pieces

Set Me Free

Slither

Dirty Little Thing

Loving The Alien

Where is Superhuman? <_<

Precisely.

This here could be a reason albums are longer now adays. People have a wide variety of taste in musics, and more songs gives people more choices to choose from, and probably more chances they will like the album. Like I would also want superhuman on that list, and YGNR. But obviously maddergascar didn't like those, so yeahh.. If my point makes sense?

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Guest Ohdistortedsmile1789
Sucker Train Blues

Big Machine

Illegal 1 Song

Spectacle

Fall To Pieces

Set Me Free

Slither

Dirty Little Thing

Loving The Alien

Where is Superhuman? <_<

Precisely.

This here could be a reason albums are longer now adays. People have a wide variety of taste in musics, and more songs gives people more choices to choose from, and probably more chances they will like the album. Like I would also want superhuman on that list, and YGNR. But obviously maddergascar didn't like those, so yeahh.. If my point makes sense?

Perfect sense.

But this thread does make me want to listen to my records forever...

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It depends the band also. If you have a singer, or band, for that part, that can spit lyrics and then back that shit up with actual music, you got a band.

Where as you have to work on it, it might take longer than a band with a good writing section. Also if you are a punk band, or any style, and have a chorus, one verse, one minute song- it's easier to get more tracks then a band who either makes their songs perfect, or have epics, or pretty long songs. It depends what your looking at, in my opinion.

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Well seeing as most of you lot just listen to pure rock/metal i could see how a 12 track album would get repetitive but ryan adams released 3 quality albums last year and one of them was a double and hardly a bad song on them, sure if it would have been just one double album with say the 18-20 best tracks from the 3 albums it probaly would have been hailed as a masterpiece but thats not the point and i personally preffered the ideo of the 3 albums, but then again the use your illusion sets would have hugely benefited from losing at least 10 tracks so i guess it all depends on the quality and diversity of the songs

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