perfidy

In response to my comments of yesterday about how David Bowie kind of sucks, NDR writes:

"I cannot argue with the fact that most Bowie albums were filler. However, Rock was still producing LPs that were not completely distinct from 45s. Certainly the days had passed when bands created throw-aways, but singles still represented a strong market, and bands could still records two albums in one year (how many ABBA albums were there?). Only a few bands created complete albums that ignore singles, but their production was more limited.

To counter my point I would note that at the same time Bowie produced Low and Heroes, two great albums, and the disappointing Lodger, Costello produced My aim is true, This year's model, and Armed forces."

That's true enough. Despite the also overrated Sgt. Pepper's, it's true that rock as a whole had not come around to the idea of album as complete piece by the time Bowie became famous. There are some outstanding earlier examples-- I'm thinking of Marvin Gaye's and Stevie Wonder's early-70's work, and also the work of high-profile auteurs like Neil Young and the Beach Boys-- but for the most part NDR is correct. Bowie is definitely a singles artist with higher aspirations, as was Elvis Presley. "Release three singles and slap them on an album with some hastily chosen covers and random filler" was the rule. Hell, despite pretensions to the contrary, the single has ALWAYS been king for most artists, even if that's not been recognized.

It's interesting, too, that the era of the album as art form is currently waning. It will never die -- musical forms never die*. But downloading and the structure of the current radio and retail market tends to promote the single over the album, and albums are trending back toward the three-single-plus-filler or singles compilation format.

The album as we know it was made possible by LP technology and the limitations of that format. People over a certain age grew up with two-sided releases totaling no more than about 45 minutes to an hour at most. The aforementioned auteurs became adept at using the two-side, time-limited format to their advantage, setting up albums as two mini-dramas complete with tension and release cycles. Since the CD is the absolute now, this classic album format is no longer relevant. CDs have no sides, reducing the emphasis on programming order, and the 80-minute playing time has expanded the amount of music you can cram onto one release. This is a bad thing, as a rule. The major exception to this rule is the lavish re-issue such as Rykodisc pioneered in the early 90's. In that case, the classic album remains intact but is supplemented with extras that exist conceptually separate from the album as a whole.

But those days are over now. The single is back on top, thanks to downloading, tight budgets at the labels, and the grinding wheel of commercial radio. Ironically, the major labels stopped producing commercial singles in 1999, citing an unfavorable cost-benefit ratio, just before downloading re-aligned music listening young people to seek out singles. More ironically, had the majors not eliminated the single they may have been able to move more readily to a pay-for-download format for those marquee songs since the infrastructure and mindset for such a thing would already have been in place. It's amazing how hard it is to change the minds of music executives, especially when it's a good idea.

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* This is true. That stupid "two-step garage" fad that swept England and the hip clubs of the USA three years ago was nothing more than classical dance rhythms of the eighteenth century warmed over for a new era. Disco mined cha-cha-cha, salsa, samba, and mambo rhythms for most of its big hits (listen to the cymbals and percussion on the upbeats!!). For all that rock and roll and modern hip hop try to destroy classical harmonic rules, the hookiest songs still play by those very rules. Modal composition, which is almost the standard in today's R&B and hip hop, dates back to the golden age of liturgical chant. Old music never dies, it just changes its name.