Entertainment For Lively Minds
Optimum album length
The advent of CD led to the practice of stuffing albums full of as much content as possible, presumably just to utilise the 79 minutes available.
Sometimes I actually find it off-putting to get a new album and find it has 70-odd minutes of music on it.
So, what is the optimum length for an album? I think that The Go-Betweens had it right; 10 songs on each album, 35 - 40 mins long. Similarly The Smiths. More recently the first two Strokes albums.
I find that rap / hip-hop artists seem to be most guilty of filler, and sometimes seem incapable of releasing an album without filling every second of the CD. For example, Eminem, Outkast (the Speakerboxx//Love Below concept would have worked fantastically as a 'side' each, rather than a whole CD each) and even the brilliant Roots Manuva has been guilty of this on occasion.
I know that I have lengthy albums where I may not even know the last few tracks, it never gets that far!
The notable exception for me is that re-issues and Greatest Hits albums SHOULD be stuffed to the rafters. So although it may seem hypocritical of me to complain that Kate Bush's The Whole Story is anything but at 60 mins, I will anyway!
Your thoughts, ladies and gentlemen?
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I agree
but what about double albums??
In a strange way, I think 80 minutes of music on a single CD is unmanageable, but spread across four sides of vinyl is actually fine.
Even if a double album is fitted on to one CD (like Blonde On Blonde: I've never owned a vinyl copy) it somehow seems okay. I think if you know it has been originally sequenced to fit into four distinct parts, you approach it differently to one big blob of music that's never been split up.
But I agree with your basic rules: 35-40 minutes, except for greatest hits and compilations (and I would add live albums).
28-35 minutes
Early/Mid-60s Beatles & Stones.....approx. 32 minutes, that'll do me.
Makes the non-appearance of Mono/Stereo CD versions even more infuriating (thanks Apple/ABKCO).
Had the dubious pleasure many years ago of being lent an REM CD (I can't think why) and it was SO, SO, VERY, VERY, LONG that I only lasted the first hour (i.e. track twelve)!
Billy Fury's essential 'The Sound of Fury' said it in 24 minutes.
The greatest war film by a considerable distance is 'Paths of Glory' (isn't it?) at 86 minutes long.
Too much (time) invariably indicates too little (talent).
It depends
I think this is a case of horses for courses. If a band or artist has a very distinct and relatively unchanging style (The Ramones is probably the archetypal example of this) then after 40 minutes you probably want to hear something different. If an album includes a combination of styles, such as the new Elvis Costello album, then I'm happy for it to be a lot longer - in fact after the 60 minutes of the main album, I usually put the extra EP on.
Best back up my theory because they usually (but not always - see The Ramones!) contain a variety of styles (and producers) gathered through the years.
More than...
...40 minutes = too long. Full stop. Except for all the exceptions. Full stop.
45 mins
One side of a C90. No more, no less.
30 minutes
after the 'filler' tracks have been removed to go on one side of a C60. Or half a CD.
Anything with a sticker on extolling the virtues of the length
of the CD is to be avoided. I'm looking at you, The Red Hot Chilli Peppers.
"extolling the virtues of the length"
Fnarr Fnarr
Doesn't need a sticker
As far as I'm concerned, it only needs to say Red Hot Chili Peppers for me to avoid it.
30-35 minutes...
If you can't say what you have to say in that time, it probably isn't worth saying.
There are a few exceptions to this (Exile, Physical Graffiti).
Precision
I'm going with 38 minutes.
The new Decemberists album
is 40 minutes long and contains only ten songs and I've been listening to it more or less on a loop for the last few days. Much as I admired their previous hour long opus The Hazards Of Love there's no way I could handle it all the way through more than once every couple of days.
I'm with Paul Waring
An album HAS to fit on one side of a C90. If not, it is to be viewed with suspicion (unless it's a double, in which case it should fit on both sides of a C60).
A story goes that Noel Gallagher, when making Be Here Now, asked what the limit on a CD was. Upon being told (75-odd minutes?), he declared 'then we'll fill it!'
This is the reason why so many modern CDs are shit.
And lo
Noel filled the 75-odd minutes that were available with... 75 odd minutes!