I googled my own name recently and found this blog i posted on Myspace when Beyonce's 2nd CD was released in October 2006. It deals with the over-emphasis on the number of tracks released on CDs, and how much that hurt the music industry. For those of you who wonder if I wrote anything prior to the Sex Time And Radio book series, here's proof of my journalistic credentials well before I was a published author. This is good, so enjoy it...
A few months ago I met a friend of mine at a Borders book store. At some point during our conversation, we somehow got on the subject of rock acts from the 1980s. This led us to my favorite rock act of that decade, Van Halen, and the videos they did for the songs "Jump" and "Hot For Teacher" (a not so subliminal hint on my part since she's a teacher). The album that those songs came from, 1984, is number 20 on my TOP 150 Albums list. Since she mentioned how much she liked the songs, and Borders also sells music, I found the CD in the store so she could check it out. Her reaction: "I'm not buying this; it only has nine songs on it!" I explained to her that in the days when vinyl records were the main source of music, albums could only hold about 40 to 45 minutes of sound on them. As a result, most albums had between 6 and 10 songs on them, or sometimes less. I assured her that the CD was a classic, and was great all the way through (it sold well over 10 million copies). Although she knew at least three of the nine songs on it, and it was on sale for only $8.99, she still felt it was a rip off because of how many songs were on it. I gave up, and we switched to a different subject. On my way home from this encounter, I wondered how and when the idea of an album being good or not good based on the number of songs started.
QUANTITY VS. QUALITY
In 1989, LL Cool J followed up his classic album Bigger And Deffer with Walking With A Panther. That album had some great tracks on it like "Big Ole Butt", "Droppin' Em", and "1-900-LL Cool J", but received mixed reviews from fans and critics alike and is generally regarded as a failure. One reason it didn't do as well was the number of songs on it. Walking With A Panther was the first hip-hop album that suffered from the "more is better" mentality. It had 16 songs on the record, 18 on the cd, and 20 on the tape, an unheard of amount at that time. Had it been trimmed down to about 10 or 12 songs, it might have been received much better since most of the extra songs were crap to begin with. Later that summer, rapper Big Daddy Kane became the next victim of having a padded album. His sophomore release It's A Big Daddy Thing contained some of his best material, like "Smooth Operator", "I Get the Job Done", "Mortal Combat", "Young, Gifted, and Black", and the infamous "Pimpin' Ain't Easy" (which ended with the line "bitch betta have my money" that was sampled for the AMG classic of the same name in 1991). However, at least 6 or 7 of the 17songs on the album could've been left off, and they kept the album from being the classic that it should've been.
For the next few years, most artists and record labels seemed to be smart enough to avoid those mistakes. In the early '90s, most CDs had between 10 and 12 songs on them, with the only exceptions being sure fire rap classics like Ice Cube's first few solo efforts, N.W.A.'s Efil4zaggiN, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg's first releases, and Notorious BIG's Ready To Die among others. In 1996 though, the bar was raised even higher with the release of 2Pac's double CD classic All Eyez On Me, which contained 27 mostly quality songs. While most acts avoided the double CD trap, All Eyez On Me seemed to make a lot of artists feel the need to have more songs on their CDs. The audience expectations of the number of songs also increased. While working at various record stores in the late '90s, I saw and heard people judging the worth of a CD based solely on the number of tracks they saw on the back of the CDs. The word “tracks” is important though, because everything listed on the back of a CD isn't always a song.
TOO MANY SONGS, TOO LITTLE TIME
CDs in general (and hip-hop CDs in particular) seem to constantly be padded with intros, outros, interludes, skits, comedy bits, and other unnecessary tid-bits between the songs that often kill the flow of the music. More importantly, the CDs have been padded with weak songs. A typical cd may have 16 or 18 tracks, but how many of them are actually good? In some cases, we have actually been "treated" to bonus tracks which are often even worse than the crap we had to sit through in the main part of the CD. A note to anyone associated with the music industry: just because a CD can hold nearly 80 minutes of music doesn't mean it should actually have nearly 80 minutes of music! Technological breakthroughs like the internet and downloading have affected the sales of CDs and cut into record company profits. But there is another reason many people have decreased the amount of CDs they purchase: they are sick and tired of spending their hard earned money on whole CDs, only to find that there are only a few more good songs on them in addition to the ones they heard on the radio or saw videos for. It's not about quantity, it's about quality! Word of mouth spreads quickly, and when word gets out that so-and-so's new CD isn't worth buying, it won't sell.
Part of the problem with today's music industry is the lack of development of new artists. Pick any legendary act from the 1960s, '70s, or '80s, and there's a good chance they were not successful right away. In those years it often took artists a few albums to hit their stride commercially. One reason they had the opportunities to grow was the expectations of the releases themselves. If an act released an album that didn't do well, they could come back with a new album 8 months to a year later and try again with new material. If the album sold well, they would come back with more new material the next year and try to build on the momentum they established with the previous release. In each case, the new albums would contain the best 6 to 10 songs the act cut in the studio during those album sessions, with the remaining songs being left unreleased or "in the can". While every album might not have been good all the way through, it's a lot easier to deal with 3 or 4 bad songs than it is to deal with 9 or 10 of them. In the current music climate, an artist may not get a chance to release new music for another 2 years or more after a new release. That's not necessarily a bad thing, if the CD did well. If it didn't, the inability to come right back again with something new to erase the public's memories of a bad release can be serious damage to a career. When a new act doesn't sell by the second album (or the first in some cases), they're usually dropped from the label. Once that happens, the chances of the act getting another deal aren't very good. Although talent, management, and other issues contribute to an artist's survival, I believe that having less songs on a CD can help raise the quality to some degree. It can also decrease the amount of unsatisfied buyers; if the expectations of how many songs should be in a CD are lowered.
WILL B DAY START A NEW DAY?
In 2004, the final Destiny's Child CD Destiny Fulfilled contained 11 songs. Beyonce's new CD B Day has 10 songs on it. Considering the attitude of most music buyers toward the number of tracks, I was very surprised to see that. I was also sure there was something extra on it and I was right. Not only is there an extra song at the end, there's also a spoken intro from Ms. Knowles herself preceding a second extra song. This brings the total amount of songs on the CD to a reasonable 12. Hopefully Beyonce has started a new trend of having fewer songs on a CD. In my opinion, 10 new songs (with or without 2 bonus tracks) is a much more achievable goal for artists to make a quality CD than 16, 18, 20 or whatever else. After all, if many artists and producers in the creative heyday of the 1970s had a hard time coming up with 8 or 9 quality songs for an album, how can we expect those on today's music scene to give us so many. I say cut the number of songs (and the prices), and come back sooner with more new songs for us to groove to. Maybe then the industry can get better, and more acts can have a chance to improve. In the meantime, I'll play my Van Halen 1984 CD with only 34 minutes of music and 9 songs on it. Then again, there are only 8 songs on it because the title track is just a one minute instrumental intro. As with much of the music in my collection, including the #1 album on my list, 8 is enough.
Marcus Chapman
QUANTITY VS. QUALITY
In 1989, LL Cool J followed up his classic album Bigger And Deffer with Walking With A Panther. That album had some great tracks on it like "Big Ole Butt", "Droppin' Em", and "1-900-LL Cool J", but received mixed reviews from fans and critics alike and is generally regarded as a failure. One reason it didn't do as well was the number of songs on it. Walking With A Panther was the first hip-hop album that suffered from the "more is better" mentality. It had 16 songs on the record, 18 on the cd, and 20 on the tape, an unheard of amount at that time. Had it been trimmed down to about 10 or 12 songs, it might have been received much better since most of the extra songs were crap to begin with. Later that summer, rapper Big Daddy Kane became the next victim of having a padded album. His sophomore release It's A Big Daddy Thing contained some of his best material, like "Smooth Operator", "I Get the Job Done", "Mortal Combat", "Young, Gifted, and Black", and the infamous "Pimpin' Ain't Easy" (which ended with the line "bitch betta have my money" that was sampled for the AMG classic of the same name in 1991). However, at least 6 or 7 of the 17songs on the album could've been left off, and they kept the album from being the classic that it should've been.
For the next few years, most artists and record labels seemed to be smart enough to avoid those mistakes. In the early '90s, most CDs had between 10 and 12 songs on them, with the only exceptions being sure fire rap classics like Ice Cube's first few solo efforts, N.W.A.'s Efil4zaggiN, Dr. Dre and Snoop Dogg's first releases, and Notorious BIG's Ready To Die among others. In 1996 though, the bar was raised even higher with the release of 2Pac's double CD classic All Eyez On Me, which contained 27 mostly quality songs. While most acts avoided the double CD trap, All Eyez On Me seemed to make a lot of artists feel the need to have more songs on their CDs. The audience expectations of the number of songs also increased. While working at various record stores in the late '90s, I saw and heard people judging the worth of a CD based solely on the number of tracks they saw on the back of the CDs. The word “tracks” is important though, because everything listed on the back of a CD isn't always a song.
TOO MANY SONGS, TOO LITTLE TIME
CDs in general (and hip-hop CDs in particular) seem to constantly be padded with intros, outros, interludes, skits, comedy bits, and other unnecessary tid-bits between the songs that often kill the flow of the music. More importantly, the CDs have been padded with weak songs. A typical cd may have 16 or 18 tracks, but how many of them are actually good? In some cases, we have actually been "treated" to bonus tracks which are often even worse than the crap we had to sit through in the main part of the CD. A note to anyone associated with the music industry: just because a CD can hold nearly 80 minutes of music doesn't mean it should actually have nearly 80 minutes of music! Technological breakthroughs like the internet and downloading have affected the sales of CDs and cut into record company profits. But there is another reason many people have decreased the amount of CDs they purchase: they are sick and tired of spending their hard earned money on whole CDs, only to find that there are only a few more good songs on them in addition to the ones they heard on the radio or saw videos for. It's not about quantity, it's about quality! Word of mouth spreads quickly, and when word gets out that so-and-so's new CD isn't worth buying, it won't sell.
Part of the problem with today's music industry is the lack of development of new artists. Pick any legendary act from the 1960s, '70s, or '80s, and there's a good chance they were not successful right away. In those years it often took artists a few albums to hit their stride commercially. One reason they had the opportunities to grow was the expectations of the releases themselves. If an act released an album that didn't do well, they could come back with a new album 8 months to a year later and try again with new material. If the album sold well, they would come back with more new material the next year and try to build on the momentum they established with the previous release. In each case, the new albums would contain the best 6 to 10 songs the act cut in the studio during those album sessions, with the remaining songs being left unreleased or "in the can". While every album might not have been good all the way through, it's a lot easier to deal with 3 or 4 bad songs than it is to deal with 9 or 10 of them. In the current music climate, an artist may not get a chance to release new music for another 2 years or more after a new release. That's not necessarily a bad thing, if the CD did well. If it didn't, the inability to come right back again with something new to erase the public's memories of a bad release can be serious damage to a career. When a new act doesn't sell by the second album (or the first in some cases), they're usually dropped from the label. Once that happens, the chances of the act getting another deal aren't very good. Although talent, management, and other issues contribute to an artist's survival, I believe that having less songs on a CD can help raise the quality to some degree. It can also decrease the amount of unsatisfied buyers; if the expectations of how many songs should be in a CD are lowered.
WILL B DAY START A NEW DAY?
In 2004, the final Destiny's Child CD Destiny Fulfilled contained 11 songs. Beyonce's new CD B Day has 10 songs on it. Considering the attitude of most music buyers toward the number of tracks, I was very surprised to see that. I was also sure there was something extra on it and I was right. Not only is there an extra song at the end, there's also a spoken intro from Ms. Knowles herself preceding a second extra song. This brings the total amount of songs on the CD to a reasonable 12. Hopefully Beyonce has started a new trend of having fewer songs on a CD. In my opinion, 10 new songs (with or without 2 bonus tracks) is a much more achievable goal for artists to make a quality CD than 16, 18, 20 or whatever else. After all, if many artists and producers in the creative heyday of the 1970s had a hard time coming up with 8 or 9 quality songs for an album, how can we expect those on today's music scene to give us so many. I say cut the number of songs (and the prices), and come back sooner with more new songs for us to groove to. Maybe then the industry can get better, and more acts can have a chance to improve. In the meantime, I'll play my Van Halen 1984 CD with only 34 minutes of music and 9 songs on it. Then again, there are only 8 songs on it because the title track is just a one minute instrumental intro. As with much of the music in my collection, including the #1 album on my list, 8 is enough.
Marcus Chapman
October 2006
