Against Singles

I’m something of a music fanatic. No, I’m not an encyclopedic song-freak like Dave Wiegel, but I grew up on music, playing it, listening to it, reading about it, talking about it, buying it—all pretty much constantly. Before I was a movie nerd, I was an obscure-music junky, always ready to give a spin to some bizarre new sound, and finding the newest, strangest, craziest, hippest, most exciting and unforgettable band remains a thrill I still chase regularly.

Needless to say, I second the love of urban music fanatics everywhere when I say: I love my iPod. And now that I can watch video on it (albeit on a screen that’s far too small), well—it comes close to a digital media fetish device.

But I confess: I don’t now and never have understood people’s obsession with shuffle; with playlists; with yanking out a few singles from a record (what an odd, anachronistic term to still use) and forgetting the bulk of the tracks.

So, not surprisingly, I’m totally baffled when Farhad Manjoo writes:

Like many others in the so-called iPod generation, years of surfing the Web have reduced my attention span to not much more time than the length of a typical YouTube clip; consequently, my iPod, stocked with 4,124 songs, routinely turns me into a hyperactive freak show. If you have an iPod, I'm sure you know what I mean. You put on something that you've been wanting to listen to all day. Lucinda Williams' "Car Wheels on a Gravel Road" album, say. But you're three-quarters of the way through the first track, and even though you're really digging it, something about the scratchiness of Williams' voice reminds of something else entirely -- the Carter Family. And, hey, don't you have a copy of "Wildwood Flower" on here? Why, yes, you do. So you switch. But of course, putting on the Carter Family is going to remind you of Johnny Cash. And you have the feeling that you must, just this minute, play Cash's version of "In My Life" now. So you switch again. But you're a minute into Johnny and you start to wonder about the Beatles' original version of the track...

The plethora of choice makes taking in something completely new particularly difficult. Listening to an album you've never heard before is work; it requires time, patience, and attention. You can't do it half-assed.

The singles culture just doesn’t make any sense to me. Great music, for the most part, isn’t about the ability to produce a few nifty singles; it’s about creating a complete sonic landscape and exploring it fully, or maybe even just covering more terrain in a place that someone else discovered. The artists I value—even the purveyors of raucous, rowdy stuff that many sensible folks would find obnoxious—don’t just do a quick trick or two and go on their way; they build a home and invite you in to spend time engaging with their ideas. Maybe it’s related to why I despise cover bands or can’t stand listening to the twitchy, singles-driven minefield of pop-music radio.

To ignore the majority of a record seems like a disservice to the music and to yourself. On a good album, not every song may be as essential as every other, but there's no filler. Yes, any number of radio-friendly artists round out their albums with junk just to hit the requisite album length, but why support an artist who intentionally pads their record with crap?

And in my experience, despite what Manjoo and many others think, the iPod actually encourages paying serious attention to albums in their entirety. I have a 45 minute commute to work in the morning, which is just about perfect for listening to an entire new album. It’s the beginning of the day, meaning I don’t yet have the weight of work and the omnipresent distraction of email scattering my thoughts, so I can give a record the patience it deserves. And then throughout the day I can go back to it, maybe follow some of those threads that Manjoo talks about, compare it to an artist’s previous work or other material out of the same scene, and give it some thought. By the time the day is over, I’ve got the album down. I know its ins and outs, its weaker moments and its strengths—and that’s what I like: the complete experience, not the instantaneous rush of a hot single, but the deep, settled satisfaction of listening to an artist’s complete offering, letting one set a tone and falling under the spell.