packbat | Album Composition

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Album Composition

It seems to me a pattern: albums begin well, and end weakly. The first track on the Beatles' Abbey Road is "Come Together", a big winner - the last tracks are "The End" and "Her Majesty", two unknowns. The Indigo Girls' eponymous album begins with "Closer to Fine" and ends with "History of Us". Phil Collins' Face Value starts with "In the Air Tonight", ends with "Tomorrow Never Knows". Tracy Chapman starts with "Talkin' Bout a Revolution", ends with "For You".

Joni Mitchell's "Clouds" is a notable exception - the big winner, "Both Sides Now", is the final track - but still. Is it that people buy based on the first N tracks? Do they?

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I find that, radio-friendly or not, things start to pick up again at about track seven.

Not only was the big radio track from Counting Crows' Hard Candy ("Big Yellow Taxi") found at the end of the album, it wasn't even on the track list; it was one of them hidden bonus track dealies. This was presumably updated for later releases.

Track seven? Well, sometimes, I guess - on Abbey Road it's "Here Comes the Sun", first track on the second side. I'd have to look it over more carefully.

(Y'know, I just couldn't get into Counting Crows' "Big Yellow Taxi". I like a lot of their stuff, but I loved Joni Mitchell's version of her song so much that the cover seemed clumsy in comparison.)

It's unquestionably one of the weaker tracks on the album, IMO. Presumably, this is why it was initially relegated to "bonus track" status. Consumer popularity is a strange and complex force, though.

I can think of two good reasons for albums to start with their strongest tracks:

1) If someone listens to an album to see if they like it, they're likely to start at the beginning. You want to make a good impression fast.

2) If someone reads the track listing on the back of an album to see if they recognize/like anything on there, again, they start at the top. Attention spans are short. Why risk hiding your big hit in Track 8? (Of course, some albums get around this by slapping an annoying 'Contains Hit Song Whatever!' sticker on the front.)

I have a friend who approaches album composition like an art, both in considering published albums and in making mix compilations. There has to be a certain flow to the tempo of the songs, the style, the topics, to keep things from jarring or from getting too dull. But I don't know how many albums are actually composed that way in the music industry, and how many are put together through arcane marketing directives.

Whatever the reason, it's usually not a bad idea to start off a project with something attention-grabbing.

(Now, ending an album with forgettable songs is another matter entirely...)

They're good points - (2) hadn't occurred to me, but it's very true. (And the stickers are irritating - especially when I've never heard of the track they pick.)

I have a friend who approaches album composition like an art, both in considering published albums and in making mix compilations.

Well they should! There's a very real difference between a good album and the more obvious sort of "Greatest Hits" disc.

But yes, starting with something attention-grabbing is good. But ending on the right note is good, too! It's a shame.

On the ending being weak... I haven't given it as much thought, but I suspect the problem is related to the way a lot of CDs these days (and a few tapes, as I recall) end in a 'bonus track', whether it's an extra song or a remixed one or some little snippet of goofing around. It's the sort of thing that gets put on there because the band wants it, and not necessarily because anyone else thinks it's good.

So you have a song the musician loves, wants to keep, isn't so great. They only do so many songs; it's a rough fight to keep it off entirely. Or maybe you need it to pad out the length anyway, even if you're not so enamored of it. Where's the best place to put it, from a marketing standpoint? In the place least listened to: the very end of the album. A lot of people listen to albums straight through, in order, even in this day and age. It stands to reason they'll start from the beginning a lot more often than they'll listen all the way to the end.

Which makes for a weak overall feeling if you want a nice cohesive album, but...most people aren't doing The Wall, they're doing three great songs, four good songs, and two or three more they came up with and tossed on there to make it look like a full album. Coherence and overall composition get sacrificed for "We need more than seven songs or people won't buy this."

That's definitely a coherent story - that's definitely where the "bonus" live tracks always end up. And if the album is an album-level composition, you have to start at the start and keep going. Ah, well.

The loss of the fine art of album composition is one of the great casualties of our modern, MP3-laden track-driven world, IMO.

The incentive to make that kind of album is certainly weaker, now, but I'm not that sure it was common before.

I'll only post the exceptions, because it does seem to be the rule:

The Cat Empire's self-titled album starts strong and ends strong, but I'll freely admit that I don't think that there's a weak song on there. It's probably my favourite album of all time.
- Cake's Fashion Nugget falls into the same category.
- The Cat Empire's third CD, Cities, only has two really good songs in my opinion. They're at positions 2 and 9, and there are 13 total tracks. Having said that, the first song, "Cities", is the only one that charted, but it was also the only one released as a single.
- The White Stripe's album Elephant starts with some of my least favourite songs - "Seven Nation Army", "Black Math" and "There's No Home For You Here" start the CD off.
- The Else by They Might Be Giants is probably their most forgettable CD yet. The only songs that I really like are the last two - The Mesopotamians and Feign Amnesia. (and the fifth-last, "Bird of the Bee of the Mouth".
- My favourite songs from Harry and the Potters and the Power of Love are the second last one, "Dumbledore", the fifth, "Felix Felicis", and the eighth, "This Book is so Awesome". The rest I'm not that fussed on.
- Pressure Chief, by Cake, only really gets good around song 6. The first 5 seem like they're trying slightly too hard, so maybe they thought those would be the hits.
- Weird Al's CDs seem to start strong and finish strong, but lag in the middle.
- A Rush of Blood to the Head by Coldplay definitely defies this rule, with "Clocks" and "The Scientist" at numbers 4 and 5. I don't think anyone's ever heard of any of the other songs on this album.
- Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Heart Club Band has the hits sprinkled throughout, with no particular pattern.
- Since I Left You, by the Avalanches, has their biggest hit as the first song (and also the name of the album), but the song that they're best known for at number 13 of 18.
- Teaser and the Firecat by Cat Stevens ends with "Moonshadow" and "Peace Train". It's arguably brilliant the whole way through, but those are possibly his two biggest hits.
- The Cat Empire's Two Shoes is great in the middle, with a weak start and finish.
- The two best songs from The Warning by Hot Chip are at number 3 and 4.
- Wednesday Morning, 3AM by Simon and Garfunkel highlights "The Sound of Silence"...at number 6. Of 12.
So there's a brief look at my album collection. I'd say that's roughly 1/2-1/3 of the stuff that I own that isn't either "Best of" albums or movie soundtracks. I have a lot of "Best of" albums.

EDIT: Just tried to make it a bit more readable.

Hmm - it may be a weaker rule than I supposed, then, if approaching half the albums are exceptions. Thanks for the data!

Livejournal won't let me post my 9,300 word response, so I've made a post over at my place (http://90percenttrue.com/2008/05/the-rule/).

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Album Composition

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And now, Peter goes through his albums:

Re: And now, Peter goes through his albums:

Cody doesn't take too kindly to character limits