Of course, categorizing people is always absurd, limited, and sometimes genocidal. Also, I suspect this little categorization will remain solvent until – at best – the end of this paragraph. BUT! It seems that there are song people, and there are album people. See? Even writing it, I feel like, “Yeah! Damn strai… well, kind of. I mean… Hm.” There’s lots of cross-over, and inter-breeding, but in a lot of ways I mean this on a very literal level. There are the people who dig songs, and and then the people who want the whole album.
Skipping right to the (clearly) reasons for bringing it up: me. I’m an album person. Always have been and, dadgummit, always will be – no matter how much iTunes tries to make me otherwise.
I love me a good song, but usually times the song has been the gateway drug to albums. As a youngster, it was “She Blinded Me With Science” that first grabbed me, no doubt from Rick Dees Weekly Top Forty or the music video, but for some reason it didn’t occur to me to only listen to the single. I’m not being facetious there. It seems like everyone else got the memo to only listen to the hit, but it just didn’t occur to me. There were just so many interesting songs, I didn’t know which one’s I was supposed to like. With Golden Age of Wireless, soon I knew the whole album by heart, and I still maintain that on an album of really interesting, diverse pop music, “Flying North” from that album is one of the great overlooked pop songs of all time. If that were something to fight for, I’d sign up.
A song can take you back to a moment, or an evening, but, man, albums take you to whole periods of your life. That horrible period of initial adolescence? Golden Age of Wireless, Rio, Speaking in Tongues, Listen (yes, A Flock of Seagulls – the sophomore album is actually pretty good, so stuff it), to name a few.
One of the albums I just rediscovered was Superunknown, Soundgarden’s big one. Such a staple of that early 20’s, out-on-my-own time. No one song necessarily, but the album, in toto, puts me there like a vivid dream, or the way a smell, or familiar sight can trigger that emotional memory. Which, of course, got me thinking and reminiscing. The albums that were the staples/soundtrack/anima of my early-mid 20’s –
- Soundgarden, Superunknown (yes, Badmotorfinger would be a more cool guy alternative choice, but that’s for a different period)
- Beastie Boys, Ill Communication
- Soul Coughing, Ruby Vroom
- Beck, Mellow Gold
- Frank Black, Teenager of the Year
- The Breeders, Last Splash
- Faith No More, Angel Dust (Possibly the greatest album of the 90’s; possibly one of the most interesting ever)
That’s all that comes to mind at the moment. I’ll add as they spring back to me. Songs can have that impact, but for a moment, or a feeling. Albums, though…
Possibly the best example of the difference between the two? I’ve always enjoyed the Rolling Stone on the level that anyone who likes rock & roll at all would, but never gone out of my way for them. So, when people would say that Exile on Main Street was there best album, I remember looking at the track list and thinking, “but none of their many, many classic songs are on here. Not one.” Then, some years later, listened to the album. Then listened to it again. Repeat for about three months. My God, what an album. Yes, some individual songs that are particularly jaw-dropping (“Tumbling Dice,” “Torn and Frayed,” for example), but it’s the album, the development and beauty of it…
And that, I suppose, is starting to get in to the whole issue of the songs you miss out on by only listening to the singles – familiar ground to tromp for the music snob, and always worth reiterating, but probably a good place to stop for now.
Joel Clements 