THE ALBUM EPIDEMIC
BY IJR
Listen man, I try my hardest every day to keep an open mind when it comes to the state of the music scene, both underground, and mainstream. These days though, I’ve found myself listening to less and less albums, and it’s kind of been bothering me, because I genuinely love the whole “album experience”. Recently while chatting with some mutuals, they revealed to me that they’ve been experiencing the same album fatigue that I have, and I thought that that was really interesting. Fast forward to about two weeks ago, I’m listening to the new Yeat album for a review on my YouTube channel, and I suddenly realized the grand issue for this decline. Not to throw Yeat under the bus of course, but it was almost like his most recent album was kind of like all the most annoying album tropes bubbling to the surface to form this album. I had to stop midway through the album, take a break, and think about what the problem was, so here’s a quick list of the things I learned from this listen:
Most new albums are BLOATED
This factor has certainly been my least favorite trope when it comes to modern albums, I mean again going back to the Yeat album, twenty-two three to four minute long tracks are an absolute chore, and for casual fans, often an absolute bore. That’s not to say that it’s bad music, but you can’t blame new fans for getting turned off from your new album, if you’re practically force feeding them track after track after track in one sitting. It feels like a lot of new albums work like playlists, and while some artists can get away with that, most times it comes off as a little shallow. Drake’s been doing this for years now, and while it doesn’t destroy his legacy, I just don’t typically check out drake’s albums in full anymore.
2. Unnecessarily long tracks
I already somewhat brought this up in the last one, but this one was kind of an annoying one while I was streaming the new Yeat, because this hurt the tracks more than helped. There’s nothing wrong with long tracks. I’ll easily sit and listen to a seven minute progressive house track and feel satisfied, but that’s only if it keeps me engaged for that span of time. You see, even the best songs on an album can easily turn into an absolute drag by making themselves too repetitive, familiar, or cheap, and the point where it begins hurting itself is when it ruins an otherwise charming moment and turns it into a slog.
3. Releasing unfinished music
Now Kanye has been doing this for years now, and sometimes it works, but other times it just feels plain lazy. Take for example trippie redd’s latest album, which debuted with unfinished mixes, and a whole other plethora of issues, but due to unforeseen circumstances, released in an unfinished state. Now while you could say that it is understandable in that case, artists need to remember that we shouldn’t reward blatant laziness (not specifically referring to trippie btw). Artists shouldn’t take that as a go ahead to put in less effort and expect a reward in exchange. If you haven’t fulfilled your vision yet, don’t show it to the world yet, put in the time and execute your version of your vision.
