I bought my first iPod in 2006. The iPod made it possible for you to carry your entire music library in your pocket. In a way, that was a problem because you had too many choices and you could not make up your mind on a track. And like that, shuffle became the default mode for listening to the songs.
With CDs and cassettes, you would listen to one album a time, or if you had mixed it yourself, you would have a few albums at most.
By the 2010s, internet speeds had improved wildly, and thus came streaming. Suddenly, the entire music library of the work was available at your fingertips. This broke music even further, and we are moved to consuming music piecemeal. One track at a time.
Last week, I was working from home, and I decided to just revisit an album by Michael Learns to Rock and play the entire album. One thing was that I seemed to remember was which track followed just because I had listened to the entire album so many times. But more importantly, there was a flow to the album. There was a story that they were trying to tell with the album, and all the songs were connected.
The other being that every album has good tracks and the not-so-good ones, and when you listen to the entire album, you learn to appreciate both. Songs do not have to be breakout hits for them to be worth listening to. There are so many that were not hits but are really enjoyable.
The ability to enjoy creativity in its entirety is being lost.
Everyone across the world has heard Gangnam Style by Psy, but cannot name another song by him.
It leads to the degradation of creativity as well. Everyone is chasing that one hit. They are not extending any thought into their work. They just want a quick hit. One big hit and they can call it a career.
I had written about this almost a decade ago in February 2016.
Songs have been a means through which emotions and stories were communicated. What makes a song beautiful is the poetry and the metaphors, which make several interpretations possible. It automatically implies that you must give it time to grow on you, for the interpretations to set in and for the songs to get internalised.
With the lack of time and attention, musicians are forced to produce music that is catchy and will hook you up soon. This also means that most songs do not have a soul. Most songs use a particular word repeatedly to get you to like the song.
Since I started this blog with albums, I want to know do any of you know the album that Gangnam Style was from?