thoughts?
i used to say this a bit more ironically, but now i definitely mean it
vests by d2lta is a good example of a song in this range i really like
thoughts?
i used to say this a bit more ironically, but now i definitely mean it
vests by d2lta is a good example of a song in this range i really like
Such bullshit. This is what capitalism does to music. The only reason the 4 minute song became a thing is because of physical limits of records around the time radio became popular and in order to make the most money all songwriters had to conform. Prior to the 1920s songs were as long as they needed to be.
boundaries set by technology are not characteristic of capitalism, prior to vinyl people were operating under lots of other constraints too, some of them also related to modes of sale and employment. in any case there are lots of pre-recording examples of short songs so i’m disinclined to believe the notion that ‘natural’ listening/composing actually favored longer lengths in the past. longer-form music never got its’ chance on the radio but it certainly remains in the settings it predominated in the first place
Your smugness is endearing. No one said boundaries set by technology are characteristic of capitalism. Before pianos there was no piano music. Before the invention of musical strings there was no fiddle music.
But capitalism absolutely drives form to fit function through profit motive. The drive to produce new music in pursuit of beauty drove the pursuit of innovation in musical technologies. The drive to profit drove the industry to take every single act that came through the door and tell them they need to cut their songs down or they wouldn’t work with them. The radio played songs and then mixed in advertising so they had a formula for how many songs to play between ads. Every aspect of the rent-seeking behavior of the abusive music industry pushed the 4-minute song despite what tradition, art, or artist had to say.
Of course there are short songs before recordings. Songs were as long as they needed to be. But the 4-minute norm was established for profit.
okay let’s go along with your thesis: so 4-minute song norms were established for profit. does that make a 4 minute song bad? because that’s the only way i can see this mattering, or you’re just pissed at the abstract concept of someone telling a musician how long they can play.
that does not follow. a constraint is a constraint - musicians will make the best songs they can given constraints. most 4 minute songs are good. the issue is that they then become the only songs, and longer songs are presented as per se bad; this greatly limits miusic. genres that don’t get radio play have always ignored that constraint, such as all the metal albums people are referencing or my own love of math rock. a lot of the songs i like tend to last in the 5-10 minute range, more a result of genre and just liking staying on a good song without gaps from loops then sone insistence that a particular length os good music.
It makes the idea of preferring individual creative pieces based on their duration a perversion. It comes entirely from the social dissonance of making songs that aren’t in the norm and then crafting entire aesthetic identities around either preferring or not preferring pieces based on that measure.
Yes, people can say a particular piece was too long or too short, and they did, as critique of a piece. Saying that 1:30 is the perfect duration for a piece is so many layers of referential aesthetics based on perversion for profit that I cannot even fathom having this fucking conversation but here we are.
it has nothing to do with capitalism if i just like songs that are a minute and a half on average
The very concept of liking songs based on their length is itself highly suspect unless you are some sort of temporal aesthetician.
you’re being really weird about this
Nobody said it was based ONLY on its length, that’s just a strawman you made up.
Many composers and musicians are temporal aestheticians. The quality of different durations contain aesthetic information whether we’re talking about individual notes, individual phrases, or entire sections. There are lots of ways that it extends beyond that as well. Placement of songs on an album. Placement of songs in a live set. And yes, duration of songs.
Such bullshit, it’s what post-punk experimentalism did to music. FOUR minute songs became a thing due to physical records, 1-2 minute songs became a thing because Wire’s Pink Flag changed how everyone thought about music.
Not really. 1-2 minute songs were also common before the 1960s, like you said because of physical records. For example, the longest song on Elvis’ first album from 1956 is 2:43 long, while his 1969 “From Elvis in Memphis” has 2:35 for the shortest song.
33 revolutions-per-minute LongPlay vinyls can house roughly 22 minutes of music on each side, and the concept of an album was rare until the late 50s/early 60s. Many 1930s releases etc. had one song per vinyl, and ran at very high speeds like 78 rpm.
Depending on the artists’ intentions, you could have like eight two-minute songs, like for example on the 1982 punk record Milo Goes to College by the Descendants, or have a 22 minute long song on one side as was not uncommon in progressive rock or prog electronic or in the 1970s more in general. For example, Autobahn by Kraftwerk.
With the advent of CDs, that have managed to replace the Vinyl as the main data carrying device for music starting in the late 1980s, the time restriction was lifted in favor of a data restriction. Longer albums became a possibility. I own a 1988 CD copy of 1981’s Speak & Spell by Depeche Mode and with the bonus tracks for that release, the running time is of 61 instead of 42 minutes.
Nevertheless the 3 to 5 minute song length remained standard until the late 2010s probably. Part of it is certainly due to commercial radio, needing songs that won’t take up advertisement space and won’t make the listeners switch the channel because they don’t like the song and it’s been running for 6 minutes already. This is also a reason why radio playlists are so stale for the most parts, as stations compete with each other over ad revenue. Risk can make a company go bankrupt.
As for why songs and albums for wide audiences are getting shorter - Probably TikTok, as well as a general trend among zoomer music listeners and commercial music producers following the money trail. There’s a few other aspects, but I am not sure of them, so I won’t make those claims.