Point of Discussion: Album Staying Power - Music

RockyRaccoon
Is it solipsistic in here or is it just me?

Gender: Male
Age: 33
Location: Maryland

Moderator

Applerill wrote:

I don't know if I'm an unknowing hypocrite regarding this, but I really think that the "tragic catharsis" angle of music listening is overvalued in these discussions. Obviously it's the biggest reason teenagers listen to music, and a lot of college students like me have their own melodrama they connect to music with, but I don't know if all the casual "music fans" that work in offices and car dealerships treat their listening that way. (Then again, a lot of those people bought Susan Boyle and Adele albums in the late 2000s, and catharsis could have been associated there). I think often we just return to music because it's catchy and fun.

I think it's a whole myriad of reasons, sometimes it's emotional connection, sometimes it's because the album is just a blast to listen to. I feel the latter way about Trans-Siberian Orchrestra's "The Last Illusion". While it may be kind of an over-blown, over-dramatic album, I think it's just a lot of fun to listen to. I love their renditions of the different classical pieces, I don't feel a deep connection to it, it's just fun.

Applerill wrote:

That being said, maybe your definition of "return to" is much more conscious and intentional than mine initially was. If your definition of "return to" is "huddle up with headphones and cry", then of course it'll feed into those things.

I wasn't saying that so much as I think those albums give you a sense of comfort. You become closer to a person by experiencing something deeply personal with them, whether an tragic event or amazing experience, but every time you're with that person, you're not reenacting the feelings you felt during that bonding moment, you're just with them, doing whatever.

It's the same way with albums, these albums you've bonded with aren't something you just put on and huddle up and cry in a fetal position with, they're comfortable, they feel like home, like that feeling you get when you lay in your own bed at home after a long day at work, it just fits you somehow, inexplicably.
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AAL2014

I think strong melodies, in part, give albums staying power. Something that gets into your head a little bit but in a good way. Same goes for lyrics. It's funny you bring up Blood on the Tracks already because that's a special album for me, and it's very lyrically driven. As a musician and listener, I'm always perplexed by how lyrics can be thrown on top of a great musical passage so perfectly. Dancing with the Moonlit Knight by Genesis gets me every time.
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Satie

I very, very rarely return to albums out of nostalgia. If something sticks with me over a long period of time, I usually take mental note of its staying power, but I don't think I've ever had an album-length experience that just conjures specific memories of a specific time in my life. Maybe I'm being a humbug on this part of this discussion, but I really don't make that kind of connection to music. I don't think it's wrong if other people do it, but to me it seems sort of confusing to just make music into whatever my life is. I'd much rather escape into music than stretch it out to fit the circumstances of my life. I did this a little bit during high school, aiming at "break up albums" when I broke up with people or focusing my listening on "fun" music during summers out with friends, and it just was very unnatural and silly to me. Now, I can't even recall what any of these supposed connections I was forming were, save the very obvious Blood on the Tracks connection to my first break up, but that was more of a feeling of emptiness that this album wasn't doing for me what it was supposed to do - help me wallow in and address the pain. It's too big a digression for this thread, but maybe this is why my way of consuming pop music is so much different than most people on the forums - I see the guy in High Fidelity as sort of a deluded asshole, not a brother in arms in the fight to fill our lives with meaning by condensing it into playlists and mixtapes.

What I find much more gratifying about music and what I find lends albums staying power is much more in the complexity of composition that mecca was mentioning as one part of his post. Anything that is very unique structurally or especially with regards to timbre is likely to have me come back to it again and again. Anything that's maybe a "dive too far" into a particular new musical direction I want to explore that intimidates me on first listen but later gets a reassessment after consuming more music in that world and understanding it better will also probably get some inflation in my mind. I also tend to pore over music that gives me a very particular feeling or creates a unique atmosphere. Most recently, I've been re-visiting a lot of lowercase music and spending more time getting the odds and ends of the Wandelweiser catalog, and I've been coming back to this stuff for years now. I like for there to still be mystery, and I like to occasionally be denied full understanding or appreciation of something. This is also why I think I have such a hard time swallowing "experimental" pop music - a lot of the gist is that you're supposed to be impressed by the experimentation, it seems. I like it more when an album is sort of opaque and difficult and makes me work for my love of it. Laying it all out there like they do on experimental rock records seems more like exhibitionism than a genuine invitation to be confounded, startled, surprised, amused, etc. and to hit play again to dig deeper.

I may have gone a bit outside the boundaries of the topic there a couple times, but I hope that works as a good starter to what my views are. Really like the discussion so far.

meccalecca
Voice of Reason

Gender: Male
Location: The Land of Enchantment

Satie wrote:

I very, very rarely return to albums out of nostalgia. If something sticks with me over a long period of time, I usually take mental note of its staying power, but I don't think I've ever had an album-length experience that just conjures specific memories of a specific time in my life. Maybe I'm being a humbug on this part of this discussion, but I really don't make that kind of connection to music. I don't think it's wrong if other people do it, but to me it seems sort of confusing to just make music into whatever my life is. I'd much rather escape into music than stretch it out to fit the circumstances of my life.

This is interesting. And I think this is why it's so important for people to be reminded that we all consume music differently, and for different reasons. I also want to emphasize that I don't tend to make a conscious effort to connect music to moments in my life. It happens more fluidly and subconsciously for me usually. But there's also just those super early memories I have of putting Beatles records on my parents' turntable. But most of the music that I love is connected to nothing because most of my listening tends to happen without the influence of any outside experiential factors. But what can happen is that I grow so in love with a record, that it becomes a piece of my life at a particular time in which events occur. As much as the events influence the feelings about the music, I find that music often times has an even bigger impact as to how I experience events in my life. But that may be a different discussion.

Satie wrote:

What I find much more gratifying about music and what I find lends albums staying power is much more in the complexity of composition that mecca was mentioning as one part of his post. Anything that is very unique structurally or especially with regards to timbre is likely to have me come back to it again and again. Anything that's maybe a "dive too far" into a particular new musical direction I want to explore that intimidates me on first listen but later gets a reassessment after consuming more music in that world and understanding it better will also probably get some inflation in my mind.

Absolutely agree with this. Complexity usually requires a much greater amount of time to absorb. The more intricacies there are, the more to focus on within individual listens. I think this is why we'll find ourselves focus on a violin during one listen, percussion the next, a bass the next, and etc. If there's enough going one with each instrument, we have a tendency to break things into pieces in order to better explore them.
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Decurso

Gender: Male
Age: 51
Location: Sao Paulo, SP Brazil

I can't say I've ever had the experience of really liking an album at first and then thinking less of it it later. All the albums that I thought were awesome 20-25 years ago I still think highly of.

BUT...I've had the opposite experience a lot. Albums that dd not make a particularly strong impression at first becoming elevated in my eyes through repeated listens over many years.

I really have no thoughts on what gives an album staying power in someone's life, but I suspect it's different for everyone. However, I do think staying power is one of the most important factors in evaluating an album. With a few exceptions, an album has to have been part of my life for a long time before I consider it a favourite.
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meccalecca
Voice of Reason

Gender: Male
Location: The Land of Enchantment

Decurso wrote:

I can't say I've ever had the experience of really liking an album at first and then thinking less of it it later. All the albums that I thought were awesome 20-25 years ago I still think highly of.

I wish I could say the same. There's quite a few things that I loved in my teens that I can no longer connect to, and I credit this a lot to change in personality. At the time, I was going through a lot of shit that fed me with angst (what teenager doesn't deal with this?), and so I was listening to a lot of punk and more heavy, aggressive music. But as someone who's naturally very mellow, I found it harder and harder over time to re-connect with it.

So, maybe part of what gives an album staying power in our lives is its ability to connect with the most prevalent long term traits of your personality.
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benpaco
Who's gonna watch you die?

Age: 27
Location: California

Applerill wrote:

JJ Abrams's Star Trek: Into Darkness have people leaving the theater thinking it's a perfect movie

Maybe it's my family being composed of Trekkies but I didn't get the sense that anybody had this reaction.

That aside, though, the argument of catchy and fun vs. nostalgic/gets you through hard times becomes a really, really weird one for me, personally. My current number one album ever is "Rubber Soul". Now that's an easy one to look at as one of the most fun albums I've heard to date. But it was also one of the only albums I heard as a child, so at one point is it me romanticizing that easier place in life? And at the same time, revisiting this album once I'd gotten into darker music helped to get me out of a funk, to remind me that there was more than a numbness in my life. So is there a reason I can point to as to why I enjoy it?

Similar themes sort of pop up in the rest of my top 10. Deja first clicked with me because of the calm of "Tautou" being on my sleep music playlist when I was struggling with insomnia more. Then "Boy Who Blocked His Own Shot" as more of a sad thing, and "Sic Transit" for what are seriously specific, personal reasons I don't wanna go into. Unknown Pleasures is an exceedingly dark album that made me feel less alone in down moments, but one of my fondest memories with my best friend will always be the first time I played her Joy Division, throwing on "Disorder" and having her completely drop what she was doing and dance. It's Joy Division. That was something still so shocking and different to me that it sticks with me, and that brings a lot more value to the album as a whole. Skylarking reminds me of my dad and the influence he's had on me, but "Dying"'s lyrics are the first thing I think of with that album. Foiled and TATE are both all over the place emotionally, dancing between dancable pop rock and "I'm going to kill myself for you, mom". Even Keep You is largely on here not just for the music but for the happiness I got from that feeling of community screaming "SEVEN THIRTY ONE SEVEN SIX" with a crowd of strangers.

It might just be me, but this all has me thinking that it takes multiple elements of an album for me to really adore it. And if you crawl down on my chart, sure, One Step Beyond ... is pretty one note fun and A Boy Named Goo is nearly all nostalgia, but I think that's what really sets albums apart for me is when they can be so multifaceted that they're worth visiting equally in the best of moments and the worst of moments.

Oh also

RockyRaccoon wrote:

Honestly, I'd love to kind of re-start the "BEAs Albums to Hear Before You Die" project from a couple years ago, because it tried to explore albums from BEA members that they have a deep, personal connection to. It's fascinating to me to hear why different people have such deeply personal connections to different albums.

100% forgot this was a thing and so much yes
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meccalecca
Voice of Reason

Gender: Male
Location: The Land of Enchantment

Satie wrote:

I also tend to pore over music that gives me a very particular feeling or creates a unique atmosphere.

This is another thing I wanted to respond to, because I think it's such a strong point. There are albums that create strong a specific individual mood that they often become the go-to choice whenever we want to be taken to that place. The vividness of its sound, it's emotion lures us back time and time again. And because it's so unique and specific in its vision, it's unlikely to be replaced by something similar.

Some albums are, for lack of a better term, interchangeable. There will always be another that'll come along and give you pretty much the same exact impression.
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RockyRaccoon
Is it solipsistic in here or is it just me?

Gender: Male
Age: 33
Location: Maryland

Moderator

meccalecca wrote:

I also want to emphasize that I don't tend to make a conscious effort to connect music to moments in my life. It happens more fluidly and subconsciously for me usually.

Agreed, it just kind of happens. For example, my affinity towards Chicago is because they're my mom's favorite band and I used to listen to them all the time growing up. Like, by age 12 I could name most of the members of the band, she had most of the albums on vinyl, had some of them on CD, I just have a lot of very fond memories listening to the band. Same thing with bluegrass, it's my dad's favorite genre and I have a lot of great memories listening to it. Now that doesn't mean I automatically like it, I know plenty of people who hate music they heard growing up. A friend of mine's dad listened to nothing but country music growing up and he HATES country now because of it. Nothing to do with his dad or whatever, he just got sick of it.

Satie wrote:

What I find much more gratifying about music and what I find lends albums staying power is much more in the complexity of composition that mecca was mentioning as one part of his post. Anything that is very unique structurally or especially with regards to timbre is likely to have me come back to it again and again. Anything that's maybe a "dive too far" into a particular new musical direction I want to explore that intimidates me on first listen but later gets a reassessment after consuming more music in that world and understanding it better will also probably get some inflation in my mind.

Completely agree, I'm the same exact way. Albums that are very intricate are incredibly fascinating to me and I find more and more the more I listen. Coming from a musician background, I'm fascinated by complex composition, chord structures, technical proficiency, and when it all comes together really well, that's definitely an album I'll listen to over and over again, because I get something new out of it every time.

benpaco wrote:

100% forgot this was a thing and so much yes

You and me both man, I've thought about it a few times. Maybe if there's interest it can make its way back sometime later, since we seem to be in a retro-BEA phase.
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RockyRaccoon
Is it solipsistic in here or is it just me?

Gender: Male
Age: 33
Location: Maryland

Moderator

meccalecca wrote:

This is another thing I wanted to respond to, because I think it's such a strong point. There are albums that create strong a specific individual mood that they often become the go-to choice whenever we want to be taken to that place. The vividness of its sound, it's emotion lures us back time and time again. And because it's so unique and specific in its vision, it's unlikely to be replaced by something similar.

I'm totally with you on this one, there are and will always be albums that, no matter what, evoke a certain feeling or create a certain unique atmosphere that I can't get anywhere else, and that's why I keep coming back to them. Nux Vomica's self-titled is like that for me, it just conjures this image of desolation, of a battlefield after a slaughter, as you survey the damage and take in the devastation. Something about that album just affects me like that, and that's why I love it.
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