I've read reviews about what made particular albums great, but I've never read what the criteria for a great album would be. I'm not looking to turn this into an equation and I get why Robin Williams tore the Pritchard pages out in 'Dead Poet's Society', but I'm curious to hear from you, nonetheless.
Is it a certain number of tracks? How many duds is an album allowed before it can no longer be great? How much does being unique have to do with it? How important is melody vs. lyric?
Or is this really just like the thing about pornography "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it"?
Thoughts?
5 comments:
i think the elements of a great album are similar to the elements of any great piece of art. it's all subjective, you know, subjective to individual tastes. but i think there is a collective taste as well. there's a cultural opinion, many of them, so when an album is generally considered to be great, like Sgt. Pepper's, it's only really considered great by one collective cultural opinion. that of a western, post wwII consciousness. while an african post wwII consciousness might not think there's anything special about it. or an american pre-wwII consciousness. which is why a man in his eighties might never have thought sgt pepper's was anything to write home about, but a man in his fifties might think it's fantastic.
i still haven't answered your question, but i'm getting to it. i just think it's necessary to point out that even though there are albums that it seems everyone agrees are great, it is still subjective. it's just a mass opinion we're talking about, rather than an individual one. this accounts for the guy in kill your idols who doesn't like sgt. pepper's, for example.
my thought is that our culture (meaning mine and yours, the 21st century, under 40, predominantly white, western, pop-oriented, most likely liberal, etc.) chooses its great pieces of art (particularly albums) based on two things. accessibility and surprise. that is, easy to groove to beats and lyrics that make us see elements of the human condition that we have either never thought about before, or have never thought about in that way. take the beatles' white album. the beats are just kick ass. the sound is great. it took elements of rock and country and the blues and threw them together in a conglomeration of songs that make us want to move our collective western heads in 30 different ways. all of the songs would sound great even if they didn't have words. there's surprise in the sound too, from the wacked out screaming in helter skelter to the mountain strums of rocky raccoon. then, of course, there's john's sound piece revolution 9. that was definitely a surprise to the mass pop public listening. then you throw in the lyrics, which sound just as good and are just as surprising. 'happiness is a warm gun', etc. and they say something we know but we haven't thougth about in that way before, like 'i'm so tired', ya know? and 'why don't we do it in the road?' that's pretty surprising too.
anyway, this is pretty long winded, but i'll let it go. i think it can all be summed up with accessibility and surprise.
There are a lot of interesting things about Sam's response and I could say something insightful but I think for now I'll just point out that he used the phrase "easy to groove to."
Awesome.
Sam, your comments here are amazing. I think you may have intimidated others away with this. I was pretty stunned by it. Accessibility and surprise really are such excellent benchmarks for how we define something artistic as great. Do something I never could have imagined in a way that seems oddly familiar.
That's probably the only addition I'd make to your comments, is that nostalgia is a factor. Part of what people want with accessibility is that "this reminds me of something", but in a way that hasn't been done before.
yeah, sorry about that. i just thought it was a really interesting question. in a few days, i'll be able to talk to you about it in person. i'm really excited about it.
In addition to what has already been said--Sam, your response is wonderful--when I think of albums I deem great, they all stir strong emotional responses. I suppose some of that may be tied to what Kester said concerning nostalgia. But typically something in the lyrics of a song/album sparks a feeling of nostalgia for me, whereas music alone can generate an emotional response. I'm not sure if I'm making myself clear. I should be in bed by now.
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