 "Photo:")
"The album is obsolete."
When I read this quote by Apple CEO Steve Jobs, it broke my heart. When I consider it in the context of pop music, however, it's hard to disagree.
The ever-increasing emphasis on pop success doesn't involve creating a sinuous sonic highway that navigates a landscape of emotion via appropriate melody and lyricism.
It's about hit singles and hooks. It's about skimpy clothing and pairs of glistening, thonged buttocks surrounding some bling-draped hack vomiting obscenities over a sampled Marvin Gaye riff. Or some vapid 18-year-old actress whose musical "career" relies heavily on name recognition and pitch correctors (leave your passion at the door, please). Pop music's not about music, that's for damned sure.
Jobs contributes to the obsolescence of the album through iTunes. Though I do use it as my default media player, I don't purchase music from iTunes. It isn't a grudge against technology or con-venience, and I think no less of iTunes shoppers, because in theory, it's a handy tool.
But it abridges the album experience. I need liner notes with a CD case so I may slide the notes betwixt its plastic brethren, its unique spine displayed proudly among the shiny, colorful rows.
iTunes also allows (in most cases) for the user to cull specific songs from an album, thus casting out a handful of other potential classics and eschewing - nay, dismissing the continuity of the record altogether. This isn't always bad. Everyone has the one song they want by a band they otherwise dislike. "Push" by Matchbox 20, anyone?
And then there's that dreadful shuffle button which, admittedly, I employ for sleep mixes and things. But all too often do I hear of someone throwing an album on his/her iPod and listening to it on shuffle. And never once does the person take the time to listen to the album as it was conceived, from track one to track umpteen. Believe it or not, the track list on a record is not arbitrary, folks.
I couldn't imagine reading one specifically interesting chapter in a novel, or watching five action-packed minutes of a movie. As songwriter Ryan Adams puts it, "It's like taking in a whole exhibit, not just one painting."
Albums are not obsolete. I'll say it loud and on the record. Every year a handful of soon-to-be classic albums are released, albums with a brilliance that transcends the technological obstacles of convenience that inevitably stunt many a listener's experience. Most of these listeners find their music solely on Top 40 radio stations. And that's the problem.
But there are still those of us who embrace the work of art, this great sprawling masterpiece into which the artists pour their time, money and most importantly, passion. There are those of us who, when the last guitar on the last track fades out, will still say: "Whoa."
Be the first to comment on this article!