Changing Times

I promise this blog will not only be about music.

In the past few years I've tended to notice that people generally say they "like a band" when they only know the one or two singles they have on the radio. Coupled with a recent article interviewing Brand New frontman Jesse Lacey it sparked me to think about the fact that people don't really seem to like listening through entire cds as much as I do (I know some of you who actually do luckily).

I undertand sometimes there is some bands that release a cd that only contains a couple good songs. But there is far to many bands I see only reach success off of one song when their whole record is amazing (and some bands that have one good song but the rest of the album is terrible). There is no doubt people remember Augustana for "Boston" and "Sweet and Low", but what most people don't know is that they have released two unbelievable albums ("All The Stars and Boulevards" and "Can't Love, Can't Hurt"). There is more to this band than a catchy hook and pianos spralled out on the beach.

It kind of baffles me sometimes as to why people these days are not listening to whole cds and are rather opting to purchase a couple songs off of iTunes. There is something about starting an album and listening through the entire thing.

I sometimes think people not listening all the way through albums is a microcism of our entire society today. We live in such a fast paced world that people only get snippets of things anymore and not the whole thing, music included. People generally are not sitting still long enough to take in a album, listening to it a couple times to get the feel of it. A cd to me is like a book, you sometimes have to just concentrate on it and nothing else to take it all in and truly understand it. Maybe that's me, and if it is that's fine.

No doubt the whole digital revolution has affected people's listening habits. iPods have given people the opportunity to switch to thousands of different songs with a scroll and a click of the thumb. Having the ability to hook them into your car has given people the ability to no longer delve into albums on long car rides, but listen to a few songs and move on.

I might be the only person in the world who thinks about this. But I wouldn't be suprised in the future (and maybe even the near future), that full length cds become fewer and far between. I can easily see EP's and scattered songs becoming more and more common. What's the point for musicians anyways? Most bands don't make money off of albums, so why should they have to put in the time and effort to release 10-12 songs as once when they can just make them at their leisure and post them when done with.

I hope full lengths never go away though, I truly do. It would be like people having only chapters of a book to read instead of the whole thing. It would take a lot of the art and story telling away from the musicians.

Thanks for listening to my babble.