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Infinity183
Gender: Female
- #31
- Posted: 01/18/2015 09:46
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I'll do all the albums in my top 10:
1. Songs in the Key of Life - Really a tie with the first half. Although the second side has "Joy Inside My Tears" (the album's only track, out of 17, that I don't consider a perfect masterpiece), it also contains a lot of the album's greatest numbers ("Isn't She Lovely?," "If It's Magic," "As").
2. Aja - First half is better. Black Cow and the title are pretty much my two favorite Steely Dan songs ever, although "Home at Last" and "Josie" are both great, too.
3. Born to Run - Pretty much a tie, though with slightly more weight to the second side. The first half has the absolutely epic "Thunder Road" and personal favorites of mine "10th Avenue Freeze-Out" and "Backstreets," but the latter half has both "Born to Run" (my favorite song of all time) and "Jungeland."
4. Purple Rain - This is a flawless album from start to finish. Every single track gets a 10/10, so neither side has any obvious advantage over the other.
5. Innervisions - This album is also pretty much perfect all the way through, though I'm inclined to give the top honor to side one because of "Living for the City."
6. Blonde on Blonde - The second part certainly has its moments ("Most Likely You'll Go Your Way," "Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands"), but it's the first section that contains "Rainy Day Women #12 & 35," "Visions of Johanna," "I Want You," and the rest of the album's best tracks.
7. Kind of Blue - Another album that's too consistent for either side to stand out obviously over the other, but the beginning contains "So What."
8. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band - Part 2 has "A Day in the Life" and "When I'm Sixty-Four," but the rest of the album's most exciting numbers come off of part 1.
9. The Stranger - This is a hard one. Although I like the last two tracks more than most, it's on the first side that you have the title track, "Just the Way You Are," and of course "Scenes from an Italian Restaurant." Still, "Vienna" and "She's Always a Woman" are both wonderful, too.
10. Paranoid - Side 1, definitely. "War Pigs," "Paranoid," and "Iron Man" are all concentrated towards the beginning, even though side 2 is still great.
In retrospect, while most of my choices remain consistently strong throughout their entire course, none of them actually significantly improve as they near their end. It's not often that an album saves all of its best material for the end, and my own analysis does nothing to refute that.
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SquishypuffDave
Gender: Male
Age: 33
- #32
- Posted: 01/18/2015 09:50
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Honestly I think each of my top 10 are pretty much consistent overall. Although I do lean towards disc one of Aphex Twin's SAWII.
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CA Dreamin
Gender: Male
Location: LA 
- #33
- Posted: 01/18/2015 17:41
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| JasonZaia wrote: | | I find this depends on the length of the album. It may not be the quality of music that dies down, just your interest in the music over an extended period of time. In my experience with music, the average length of an album is around 40 minutes. Many albums these days however, tend to go over this standard, sometimes reaching as long as 50 to 55 minutes. This of course doesn't include double, or even triple albums - those require a whole other level of attention. But getting back to my point. Albums that are around the 30 - 35 minute range, I tend to play more-so on repeat (that is, if they're good, of course). However, there are the occasional albums above the 40 minute standard that I keep on repeat, some even above 50. So really, all in all, it does mainly depend on the quality of each track, but the length of the album CAN be a huge deal breaker with some. |
This thread looked familiar, and I saw I wrote something on it last summer. I said albums get weaker towards the end from a combination of artists intentionally front-loading and listener fatigue. But you're totally right that listener fatigue goes hand-in-hand with length. Sometimes if I'm in the mood to listen to something new, but I see the album is 65 minutes, I might say to myself 'some other day,' and then look for a shorter album. Or I might listen to only half of it, the other half later. So, length isn't a deal-breaker for me, but it does make me hesitant/procrastinate. And it is def a deal-breaker for others.
But I disagree that it depends on the quality of each track. Some late-album tracks are incredible, but there's a good chance they're slower songs. And slower songs fatigue many listeners. Thus, a listener may not realize a late-album gem at first.
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