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writing about your favorites/writing about songs vs. writing about albums

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a two parter:

in the nylpm link to my blog (i was beginning to think that tom didn't wuv me), young master ewing makes a point of saying how he doesn't like writing about albums (especially his favorite), at least in blog form, whereas he can write about great songs forever and ever.

i agree with him on some level (it's irredeemably rockist of me to start a list like this in the first place.) like raggett with loveless, words fail when it comes to laughing stock, and i actually sort of dread the notion of having to come up with anything tangible to say about it. writing about my favorite things is generally a lot harder for me than something which i'm merely "interested" in (or, alternately, the extreme ease of just slagging something terrible off. the hard part comes in doing it entertainingly.) to have to condense those hard won coherent thorts into two or three paragraphs (or less) is even harder. it may well be the toughest writing exercise (and honestly, that's all it is. i've already posted several disclaimers/meta discussions about the fallability of such a list on the site) that i've ever given myself. plus it can be well boring. (would love to stop writing the damn thing, but i'm comitted now.)

writing about songs vs. albums has always been harder for me, even when i was listening to nothing but chart hiphop and r&b for two years. it's probably a laziness thing in my approach: having the canvas of an entire album to work worth invariably makes writing easier; there's more "physical" meat to work with, more ways to fill space on a page. when a song really *hits* me - enough to write about it - again, it's typically a words fail scenario anyway. when i do find an "angle" to play, i typically spin off into sociologist jr. mode and move away from the song itself. is *this* the answer to the great rockist/popist debate...a subconscious attraction to the album format as a vehicle for projecting your own obessions and ideas onto, rather than the pop single as a vehicle for social commentary, etc.? does anyone else find themselves remotely wrestling with these questions?

― jess, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

admittedly this question might be of little interest except to the backslapping blogwhore/otherwise musicwrite obsessed contingent of ile. apologies.

― jess, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

(and by ile i of course mean ilm. my freudian slip shows just how little i've been able to focus here lately, no? this question is a stop-gap salve to hopefully remedy that.)

― jess, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I don't think it's harder or easier for me to write about songs vs. about albums. I just tend to write longer things about albums, because there's more there to write about, and also the flow and sequence to be addressed, instead of just the one piece of music floating in the ether. Or unless the album is a wonderful PACKAGE in which case it starts to be about design and marketing, not about music.

This poppist/rockist divide confuses me, I don't pretend to understand it, even this vague assertation that "pop is singles, rock is albums". Is it poppist or rockist to obsess about one particular song out of a whole album?

― kate, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Is it poppist or rockist to obsess about one particular song out of a whole album?

i think that's still rockist. especially if the song wasn't a single.

― jess, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Misunderstanding here! What I'm saying is that given I can spend several paras banging on about ONE SONG, to then write about twelve of the bastards, and how they all interrelate, which is what an 'album review' implies to me, seems quite beyond me. I'm not saying "oh, albums, feh".

The poppist/rockist thing Kate isn't about saying singles are better but a comment on how most criticism and music writing is centred on LPs and leaves out singles, whereas a lot of non-rock genres are better covered by concentrating on singles. There's nothing bad about LPs, I love lots of them, but I think more of my listening is done to single songs and so the way I write reflects this.

― Tom, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

my questions still stand, despite my seeming inability to read.

― jess, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

The problem I have with writing about my favorite stuff is I constantly battle between drier analytical type of thinking with all the engaging cultural/social currency, and really personal commentary (which is always a big deal with favorites) which I enjoy writing more, but would probably bore any reader with it except myself. I'm not exactly much of a reviewer and usually end up going off long stream-of-consciousness trips so I can't be too careful about getting self-absorbed.

Writing about albums does provide more meat to work with, but it can also mean a looser and more succinct take. I don't think itd be much fun to write about albums as if I were writing 15 singles reviews, so there's more leeway to toss things around and take broader strokes. Still.. the amount of material alone can make it a bit daunting to build confidence that you have something significant to say. Sometimes I even freak out and feel I have to go back and revisit whatever artist's entire discography so I can work with a larger frame of reference. Then I realize it's all for some stupid blog-type-exercise and laugh, scratch my head obsessively, etc. etc.

― Honda, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Also what I like about focussing on a single song is that you can then wander out and talk about other songs by that person, or by other people, or anything really, and nobody can say "Yes but you left out this". Whereas if you say that an album is, I dont know, samey, and you mean 11 out of 12 tracks and track 12 is an ill- conceived ragga exercise (say) then you can guarantee that someone will say "oh oh what about track 12". So it means more grief as a reviewer.

― Tom, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I find writing about songs much easier, especially as I often do it stream of consciousness during the song itself. Somehow I consider writing about albums to be a mammoth task, seeking to discern the larger themes and movement of the album, placing it in a comparative framework, etc. At the same time, I'm an album rather than a singles person -- I listen to singles on the radio & sometimes napster, but even if a group is shitty outside of one or two songs I'd rather have the album than the singles or even a singles comp.

― Sterling Clover, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I don't really know how to write about albums.

― Ian, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

I don't really know how to write about albums.

Start with my surefire model opener for Album Reviews:

"With their latest album, the So-and-Sos have achieved new heights/depths of wonderful experimentation/idiotic masturbation combined with an appreciation of what makes pop great/a constant running out of the most tired cliches imaginable."

Delete as appropriate.

― Ned Raggett, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)

Super-secret secret to writing about albums: do same thing as for singles. Super-secret secret to writing about singles: do same thing as for albums.

― Josh, Thursday, 29 November 2001 01:00 (twenty-four years ago)


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