February 2, 2006
Bemoaning the end of "best of" recordings.
Should we care if iTunes is killing the marking for "best of" music collections? People used to buy these things out of a desire to get to one or two really big songs, but now they can download just the thing they want. So, you can get "Bohemian Rhapsody" without loading up on Queen tracks. But when did "best of" collections become respectable? I remember when it was considered embarrassing to purchase your music in that form. If you haven't been following an artist, you were supposed to pick an album. You were supposed to try to figure out which is the best one, and start there, with a set of tracks in the form the artist wanted. Who cares if "best of" marketing dies?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Posts
40 comments:
Ann,
A few things were considered to be worse than a "Best Of" collection (which was relegated to neophytes and philistines, of course...aren't they embarrassed to admit they didn't have all of Carly Simon's albums already??). The K-Tel or Ronco collection was always more lowbrow, and the greatest hits collection performed by someone other than the original artist was the lowest of the low.
I still remember being burned in 7th grade, having picked up a Seals and Crofts Greatest Hits collection, only to discover it was performed by some anonymous house band. Aaaarghhh!
jult52:
The problem is that new innovations like singles downloading and the iTunes "shuffle" are even worse.
Why?
How many artists, either back in the day or currently, actually picked album tracks with a theme in mind? I think that format went out with the 8-track
Most CD's, especially the bloated ones coming out now, seem to be one or two decently written and produced tracks fluffed out with mediocre (at best) songs to fill the rest of storage.
Itunes is probably not only going to kill 'Best of' albums but albums period. Why buy the fluff to get the one or two tracks you really want to hear?
jult52: I was partially buying your 1st paragraph, but your 2nd is completely wrong.
1. Downloading singles is just like buying 45s. I like buying the full album/CD, but let's admit that many artists only have 1 or 2 good songs and the rest of the 40 minutes (now often 70) was just filler.
2. Listening to music on shuffle is like listening to the radio, but better. Most likely any one person's mp3 player has a greater variety of music than the average radio station.
Do you also rail against the mix tape/CD? I bought a 5-disc CD player 20 years ago to listen to my music randomly.
Here is one theory why picking individual songs is hurting the entire music business.
In the old days when you bought CDs, the CDs would have 3 good songs and 6 bad ones. The bad songs would make you tire of the CD, and you would buy another CD.
But today, people have only the songs they love on their IPod and they don't get sick of them. Net result, people buy fewer songs and much fewer albums.
Ann: You were riffing about singles during the '60s, say, vs. concept albums starting in '70s in a podcast earlier in January, yes? (I recall doing a lot of nodding during it.)
This post makes me think of that.
WHAT?! In the old days when you bought CDs
Buying CDs is now the old days? Damn. The old days is when we stole music by holding the reel-to-reel tape recorder up to the AM radio.
If the market for "Greatest Hits" dries up, I wonder if this will also change recording contracts.
An artist who wanted to get quickly out of a 3-album deal could throw together a few variations on "Greatest Hits." Didn't this happen with Sammy Hagar when he joined Van Halen?
You know, musicians can riff on all they want about they're presenting their "artistic visions."
The fact is, most of the people, most of the time, buy songs, not artistic visions, when it comes to the various genres of pop/rock etc. music.
That was true even when people were forced to put up with the artistic vision in order to get the songs they liked.
That coffee has been around to smell so long, it's burnt.
Musical "artistes" need to get over it, and themselves.
Bill: LOL about holding the tape recorder to the radio! Been there, done that.
And another thing - the "album" is relatively new, singles have existed longer. Go back to the turn of the century and you'd buy a piano roll of a single song, or the sheet music. When 78s became available, it was usually no more than 2 songs.
So none of this BS about how listening to the entire CD is the only way to respect the artist's integrity. The "concept album" is what killed music in the 70s, buncha drugged out wankers.
Pogo said...
... and the greatest hits collection performed by someone other than the original artist was the lowest of the low.
Pogo: Clearly you haven't heard Wing cover Elvis. The lowest becomes highest. Sort of.
RIA, thanks for the 10:13 comment. Now I don't have to write it!
I have been openly mocked for my large number of Greatest Hits. According to InCDius, I have 35 CDs entitled "Greatest..." from Aerosmith to ZZ Top. They are great values, and are nearly the only way to get more than 2 listenable tracks on a CD.
As for their twin, the genre compilation, where else are you supposed to get one hit wonders like Golden Earing or Timbuk 3?
I come at this from a bit of a different perspective.
I purchase a lot of classical music, which conforms nicely to the CD form (there's an urban legend the CD was made to be 78 minutes so that it could hold a recording of Beethoven's 9th, but that's probably just an urban legend and no more). To me, a symphony or an opera must be presented in complete form, not just snippets or individual movements. The entire texture of the piece is lost if you just focus on what is more famous. I don't know how much all this applies to the music of the modern generation, because, after all, there is a world of difference between orchestral music and the fluff of my and my parent's generation.
I can understand why someone would love I-tunes or other music download sites, but the single mentality has, in many ways, hurt the quality of classical music CDs produced. It's often impossible to find all 4 movements of a symphony by the same orchestra and under the same conductor. And as CDs have grown less popular, and those who do (kinda) listen to classical music merely get the "famous Mozart thing" off of I-tunes, it becomes harder to get a good new production of Mahler or some such.
The people who are complaining about "artistes" and the like remind me of people who think novels are just too long. Read USA Today and shut up.
Considering that this is a Queen fan talking, I think that a better analogy would be a few pages of haiku and the six-volume colected works of Rod McKuen.
"Read USA today and shut up."
Jult52: That may actually be one of the single funniest and misguided things anyone has said to me ever. (Not that you could be expected to know that.)
High-larious! The number of CD's in my house (thousands) is exceeded only by the number of books (more thousands).
And I'll riff on "artistes" all I want, especially the music ones: I was raised by two of them, thank you very much. And I married someone who gigs twice a week.
Steve:
I agree with you about about classical music (that's why I specified "pop/rock etc. genres" in my 10:13 post). I've never yet downloaded a piece of classical (or baroque, or renaissance or ...) music. Certain jazz genres and/or artists also fall into that category, for me.
But that doesn't mean others feel the same way. And frankly, I'm happy if people are listening to classical music, period. The problem is larger than delivery systems, sadly.
I never got the impression that Greatest Hits collections were bad or low brow - as long as it featured songs from a single band. After all, what is the best selling album of all time - Eagles Greatest Hits 71 - 75. GHC's are a great way to check out a bands best stuff. We've all been burned buying $18 CD's that had one or two good songs and the rest are unlistenable filler. But what about GHC's that contain one or two previously unreleased songs. What do you do if you already have most of the bands albums. Do you buy the GH just for the unreleased stuff? And why was it unreleased? For experience I know that bands record more song, sometimes many more, than appear on the album. Were the unreleased songs rejected because they were good but just didn't fit the style of the album, all the songs were good but there were just too many, or the song just suck? I have no answers.
PS. Bill, I still have radio taped cassettes from the 70's. I wonder if the RIAA is coming after me for that? They are lobbying to recind the laws that make that legal.
PPS. 37921; I liked Survivor with the old singer Dave Bickler. Those first few albims were good, not great, but good.
"Musical "artistes" need to get over it, and themselves."
That's a great atitude. Don't be ambitious or artistic! Get over yourself!
The iTunes music store and the "single" paradigm is practically useless to people who listen predominantly to classical/baroque music written in multiple movements (though not bad at all for early music, which is mostly song-based or for fans of Schubert's 600 (!) or so songs). There's something supremely annoying about each of the 30 "Goldberg" variations from Glenn Gould's recordings being listed as a separate song on the iTunes music store, since many of them are less than a minute long. This little intractable issue probably explains why there is so little classical/baroque music on there (that and the fact that how can Bach compete with Coldplay?).
As for greatest hits/best of albums, they give me hives when they are compilations of classical music because they are often inferior performances of overplayed music, and often presented in the same way you would sell a stool softener: Make Your Baby Smarter With Mozart! 99 Beautiful Classics to Sleep To! The Longines Symphonette performs the World's Most Cloying Overtures! Ugh. I'm an elitist. Sorry.
And I need to put in a defense of "concept" rock here. Besides Buxtehude and Purcell and pop music from the 20s and 30s (which, incidentally works great with iTunes and "best of" collections), I grew up listening to things like Jethro Tull's "Thick as a Brick" which is basically a 45 minute song, and Gentle Giant, King Crimson, The Who - all who produced albums with thematic unity. I know it's the hip thing to trash this music, and perhaps I'm just a nerd, but I'd take something ambitious over some 3 minute contemporary confection with a fade-out at the end any day.
"Yeah, after Back in the USSR and Dear prudence, that White Album is a bunch of c**p."
You're joking, right? "Happiness is a warm gun"? "Sexy Sadie"? "I'm So Tired"? "Helter Skelter"? "Cry Baby Cry"?
Jult, you're sneering about comments about listening to singles only makes since if you bitch about radio too. Else you're being a hypocrite. So, do I' have to throw out my radios to be pure like you?
To logically extend this, you must hate concerts where the artists don't play whole albums, in order. God, what tools those guys are, only playing the hits in concert And out of order at that!
And while the White Album may be worth listening to front to back, most albums aren't. Hell, most singles aren't.
And Glenn Howes: Golden Earring was a two hit wonder!
jult52 says: Yeah, after Back in the USSR and Dear prudence, that White Album is a bunch of c**p. Funny you should mention this. I've always thought of the White Album as a perfect example of unedited bloat, so I made myself an iTunes playlist that answers the question how it works as a single album: much better! (The Clash's Sandinista benefits even more from such ruthless pruning.)
I think morningview has it right: that GH albums boost regular album sales rather than undermine them.
Concept albums still appear to be popular (for better & worse), and services like iTunes do not appear to have hurt artists like Sufjan Stevens.
Palladian, I think it's the mp3 file structure that doesn't play well with classical music, not specifically iTunes. Though here's a call for Apple to at least fix the problem in iTunes.
I've heard (couldn't confirm with a quick search) that the Opera CD market is just about dead and most Operas are now released on DVD. For whatever that is worth.
And, he added somewhat flippantly, if you want to blame someone for popularizing the greatest hits of classical music, you can probably start with Warner Brothers and Bugs Bunny. kill the wabbit
Bill, that's true, the MP3 file (and other more modern formats like AAC) have a great fault in that they can't accomodate blending between tracks. Again, this isn't so much of a problem for discreet songs, but everything from Beethoven's 5th symphony to The Who's "Quadrophenia" that has a fluid transition from one movement or song to the next suffers from a short, abrupt gap when playing through.
Apple has done a little bit to expand iTunes support for more ID4 tags (I remember the days before iTunes allowed the "composer" tag- you ended up with absurdities like having JS Bach as the "artist") but there is still a lot to be done, as explained in the blog you linked.
The opera CD market is alive and well as far as I know, though I'm really only a fan of baroque opera (and a bit of Wagner). I just bought a new release of an opera by Lully and it was on CD, and there still seem to be a lot of CDs in the opera section of the Lincoln Center Tower Records.
To add a little more dimension to the album vs song debate, I think one reason I am attracted to the concept of albums stems again from classical music, where there is a thematic and musical relationship between sections of a work. I look for that in the little bit of rock/pop that I listen to; I don't really like a zillion 3 minute shifts in tone. I guess it's a short vs long attention span thing, or perhaps a desire for order. I would certainly agree that most pop albums do not have this, and many who try to have it fail. But it is important to a lot of music, what Frank Zappa refered to as "conceptual continuity" (The crux of the biscuit is the apostrophe!)
Concerning Classical music, iTunes added another layer of metadata to represent large works, one that can oblige customers to buy several component "songs" at once. It's hard to find actual examples, but here's one:
A set of Bruckner symphonies. (How he managed to have a symphony #0 is a different metadata problem...)
Jult2: You're reading in the contempt for pop music. Trust me on this one. I know what I own and what I listen to.
I also think it's fine for people to see their albums as artistic visions. But it think it's ridiculous to expect consumers to have to receive or treat the work that way. Or to get all high-falutin' about it when they don't. If artists feel strongly about this issue, they should do as Aerosmith does (a quite respectable stance). Otherwise, they should stop putting down the philistine peasants who are generating the royalties that they are willingly accepting. (And, referring to what Icepick said, they should also refuse to permit any singles to be given airplay, etc.)
And just because I think a lot of pop music albums can be "cut up" and consumed just fine, it doesn't mean that there aren't many, many that--in my opinion as to how I would listen to them--are best as a unified whole.
I think it was Palladian who mentioned King Crimson, an excellent example of this (btw, if we don't have damn near everything ever put out by King Crimson AND Adrian Belew, I'll be shocked. And we listen, too--by the whole albumful, no "skippies").
Another individual example that comes to mind is Roger Waters "Amused to Death."
Palladian:
Regarding ""Music artistes need to get over it, and themselves," I wasn't referring to their ambition, or artistic growth, or their lack of either. I was referring to their taking it all personally just because people can, and will, consume exactly as they please, which may or may not involve buying into an individual artist's, well, artistic vision, in general or with regard to a particular album project. And I used the word "artiste" deliberately, but I guess too obscurely, to not refer to ALL artists, but those who have delusions of grandeur, take themselves too seriously, and express contempt for the audience they supposedly crave.
You can control what art you put out there, but you don't get to control how it's consumed, received or interpreted. That's just a reality.
I honestly don't get the Bach can't compete with Coldplay thing. They're not the same audiences. For fans of one (not ALWAYS, must MOSTLY), if the other disappeared it wouldn't matter a whit. And Bach himself doesn't care (lighten up, folks)! Are you referring in terms of the specific delivery system only, because of the 99-cents-per-track thing? Maybe this doesn't bother me because I don't buy my classical music via download. And it's never upset me that classical CD's--good ones, anyway--have always been more expensive than their pop counterparts.
Anyway, I hope this made things a LITTLE clearer. It's not that I hate musicians--absolutely and quite the contrary. However, I have a little too much up-close-and-personal experience to treat them as somehow sacred and holy, or to resist greeting some of the occasional pretentiousness with virtual eye-rolling.
Which is what I was doing today.
Also, the complaints about the imminent death of the music biz have been around for decades and decades and decades. Ain't happened yet. (And some genres--Jazz, for example--pronounced dead within my adulthood have surprised everyone within that same time period.)
Townley: the equation of Queen and Rod McKuen sounds off. I can't say exactly because I've never read any McKuen but I have to wonder whether you know much about Queen.
I heard WAAAY too much Queen back in highschool, along with other prog-oriented classic rock stuff. It's all kind of a blur of 64th notes and awkward classical references to me to be honest, although Freddy Mercury's creepy-uncle histrionics have a certain campy charm that puts them ahead of the pack. I'm still not sure what kind of context could make say "Bohemian Rhapsody" not silly, though.
As for the topic at hand, I've never been a fan of best-of records. I'm fortunate to have access to tons of good used record places, and even albums with one-hit-wonders on them can have forgotten gems. Somebody mentioned a perfect example above-- there are a couple of Timbuk 3 album tracks ("Sample the Dog", "Hairstyles and Attitudes") that are just great-- clever, catchy slices of bemused social commentary-- but are nowhere to be found on their best-of record.
Verification Word: Ihekqxjo-- Their debut is another forgotten classic, one of the best things to come out of the Albanian synth/postpunk scene of the '80s.
Ever listen to "old standards" that don't contain the original bridge?
Also, "artiste" wasn't MEANT to be flattering. That's what I just explained, for cryin' out loud, as distinct from artist, or at least a subset thereof.
Oh, never mind. Sorry I annoyed you to begin with.
I meant whatever you say I meant. Feel better???
We'll just leave it at that.
how about removing a verse from a song where the chorus is better and just listening to the chorus over and over again? Why waste time on an inferior verse? Cut away the fat!!! What do you think of that approach?
While I agree with you that best-of albums basically suck, there's a big difference here-- pop songs are organic wholes in a way that an album isn't. Take the White Album as an example-- even if you agree that there's not a bad song on it, and even if you agree that the individual songs on it add up to much more than the sum of their parts (I'd probably think that 'Good Night' was a treacly trifle if it weren't so refreshing after 10 minutes of 'Revolution Number 9'), it still is fundamentally just a collection of smaller works-- more like a collection of poetry than a novel.
Of course, even cutting up an individual song and putting the bits in a new context (a la the Grey Album) can work, but that's a whole different issue....
Verification Word: Thnksiufs-- Obscure Fu-Schnickens side project-- worth picking up if you're a fan.
Ice said:
And while the White Album may be worth listening to front to back, most albums aren't.
Actualy, the White Album is meant to be listened to from back to front for the evil satanic messages backtracking reveals.
Sippican:
Re: "Desmond Dekker ... ": That sounds very similar to what I do when I mix 'n match. In fact, I went back to check a couple "what I'm listening to" posts to make sure I hadn't done that sequence at some point and that you weren't (very nicely) tweaking me, since I'd remembered your commenting on at least one of them
As for your list of radio samples, fun! And I'm amused that Ernie K. Doe and Roger Miller are the only two not represented in our music collection. We may be remiss with regard to the former.
I almost crapped myself when someone mentioned the Wollensak, and the mods on reel to reel, and so forth.
I held the microphone of Dad's Wollensak up to the TV and recorded The Beatles when they performed on The Ed Sullivan Show. My parents watched me like I was some type of loon. Most of what I recorded was girls screaming but to me it was pure gold.
Sessions presents Summer Love!
With Anne Murray! "You needed me..."
Neil Sedaka! "There was a time when strangers were welcome here..."
Henry Gross! "Shannon is gone I hope she's drifting out to sea..."
Hamilton, Joe Frank, & Reynolds! "Don't pull your love out on me, baby..."
1910 Fruitgum Company! "Simple Simon says, Ah, you're looking fine..."
Bobby Goldsboro! "And honey, I miss you, and I'm bein' good..."
Gilbert O'Sullivan! "Alone again, naturally..."
and many more!
Another problem with greatest hits. What do you do when they leave a good song off the package. I didn't buy Hewey Lewis GH's because a song called "Small World" isn't on it.
I also don't do iTunes or the like because of the DRM, though there are ways around it.
Dave Bickler, ex Survivor lead singer, IS the guy who sings the "Bud Lite Salutes" songs. I always though they got a guy that sounded like him, not knowing they couldn't have done any better:-)
Post a Comment