Album Length

I watched an interview of Wilco's frontman Jeff Tweedy not too long ago, and he made an interesting point about album length: "The length of a record... somehow is pleasing," he says, referring to your average time of, say, 45 minutes to an hour on an album. The statement was meant as a possible counter argument to the idea that society is moving towards only buying singles, and not full albums. The length of a release is dictated by the medium, sure, and now that we have the internet, musicians don't have to conform releases to the length that can fit on a record (something, I might add, that was fairly antiquated before the internet); but, Tweedy claims, even before the record, that specific length can be found in classical works. It's a 'magical' length and he is hopeful that it will continue into the age of the internet.

Is his statement about classical music true, though? Admittedly, I don't know much about classical music, but with a brief look at the length of Beethoven's symphonies you can see that they average at around 40 minutes in length; which is exactly what you'd be looking for if you were trying to prove Tweedy's point. Obviously, as a late Baroque composer, Beethoven is only evidence that there might have been a trend towards that length in that brief moment of time in which he existed, which is only a small fraction of the several centuries of classical music. But, it's still proof that this length has some appeal aside from the desire to fit a body of work onto a record.

What I find interesting, though, is that Beethoven didn't only write symphonies: he wrote Sonatas and Concertos (which is all I can think of, but I'm sure there's many other types) all of varying lengths and intensities. He wrote 9 symphonies, which is as many albums as most prolific bands will release, but also many smaller stand alone works. The symphonies (it seems to me) were each intended to be a sort of magnum opus, the most intense and broad in scope, while his other works served as a more free form of musical exploration. These alternate outlets of music would be less stressful to produce, and less emblematic of Beethoven's musicianship. A kind of sandbox where each piece could be released without the fear of judgement of overall musical integrity. At the same time, it could provide a sort of critical forum where musicians and critics could assess one another, help each other grow, etc.

This kind of release would be a pretty foreign concept in the modern world of music. To my knowledge, there's basically three types of releases: the single, the EP and the LP. Only music critics and hard-core fans listen to EPs, which are usually unpolished and contain only the single and two other tracks that will appear in the album anyways. Which means that, if you don't listen to singles (which I'll get to in a moment), you only listen to the albums. Consequently a band is judged entirely by its main output, it's relative to the symphony, the album.

I'm sympathetic to the kind of pressure this puts on the artists, especially established ones; every output will be scrutinized and picked apart by critics, and will essentially redefine the band in the eyes of the audience. Where judgements like 'I liked there first album better' are common, what is basically meant is I liked this band's old music better, and I don't believe they are capable of making music like it anymore.

Singles are no better for two reasons: (1) they're on the album anyways, so they really only supply less criteria for the band to be judged and (2) a lot of the time the single is definitely not the best song on the album. It's a fairly obvious idea that the song that is picked because it is most accessible, i.e. it will appeal to the most people, is probably not the most interesting and musically good song on the album (though I don't know exactly what that means).

And so I'm against only listening to singles, but I don't like the idea of artists being judged solely on their albums either. This is were Radiohead's newest album King of Limbs, which dropped suddenly two Sundays ago, comes in. It seems to me that this album is something like what I'm talking about; it was obviously not intended to be any kind of magnum opus, clocking in at 37 minutes, if I remember. It's pretty short for an album, but it's much more polished than an EP. A brief, well developed theme runs through and it works well as a cohesive whole. This kind of mediator between EP and LP is something I'd like to see more of in bands. Something that doesn't come with the hype of a full album, but is more interesting than a single.

I think Tweedy was right when he said there was something inherently pleasing in the length of an album. As long as a bands are willing to fill that length with provocative content that works as a whole (no filler), then it certainly can be magical. But, the medium of records was also a trapping for a lot of artists. Sometimes even the best musicians don't have anything to contribute past the 30 minute mark, or less. Which is why, now that everything's electronic, the artists are free to release exactly the product they want. Which is, in my opinion, a boon to modern music.

*edit* A funny coincidence I recently discovered (I don't remember where) is that the first CD's were arbitrarily designed to have a length of 72 minutes so that they could contain the longest recording of Beethoven's 9th symphony. I guess I must have been on to something with that whole Beethoven thing...