I love the Beatles
Through the Beatles, I’ve been reminded of one of the downsides of digital music. About a year ago, I checked out Magical Mystery Tour from the library. Now I had heard and was familiar with every song on that album. By themselves, the songs just didn’t have the same impact. Line them up in order and listen to them, and the experience is totally different. Joyful, awesome, fun, etc… (As a good friend of mine put it, it’s easily the most “fun” Beatles album).
I was again reminded of this when listening to their last album, Let It Be.
Magical Mystery Tour
This album has a much different feel then Magical Mystery Tour…you can tell that it’s a band that’s at some sort of emotional breaking point. The music has a much more introspective, serious tone to it. Again, take the songs a la carte, it’s just not the same. But together, it’s a great album. It was a good reminder that I need to listen to albums in their entirety more then I do.
I’ve heard talk that the ways that the web has changed music will result in a kind of reversion to the 50s model of popular music….when bands were paid to record singles, and not entire albums. In a way, the world apart from rock is already like this. Not sure if rock will ever entirely go back to that model, and I kind of hope that it doesn’t. Some of the best experiences of my life were buying new albums, and getting off on what was in there.
I don’t intend to sound like some old, out of touch codger.
I’ll just be putting more complete albums on my iPhone then before.
