LogFAQs > #951330066

I know a lot of people who use spotify and make playlists of songs. Or other services. That is totally fine, but I feel like something is lost with playlists of random songs(not really random as the songs fit a mood or genre, but compared to albums, yes)

But I feel like you lose something in that, that if you listen to full albums, you get.

Here are some examples of what I mean: I was listening to the first album by the band Naked City, which is very odd. It combines traditional jazz elements and other styles with grindcore and other abrasive genres. So when the second track "The Sicillian Clan", which is a cover of an Ennio Morricone piece ends and you get the very short, very grindcore influenced "You Will Be Shot" you might be blown away. One band, the same musicians on both tracks, both are drastically different. That might be some sort of musical revelation. But making playlists, you could easily have film scores interspersed with grindcore or any abrasive genre you want. So if i were to put on this full album I'd be blown away by the disparity of genres present on one bands album. Once in a while, I do get blown away by genre disparity, very recently, last night, the track "Weekend Sex Change" by The Dillinger Escape Plan(metalcore) off of the album "Calculating Infinity" with its almost drum n bass slapping, or Botch(mathcore) ending their album "We Are the Romans" with some drum and bass.

I feel like to people who mainly listen to curated playlists lose some of this. To me, I'm listening to a full album blown away by the off kilter elements that somehow work even though they are different and not what you'd expect, taking in the whole of an entire album. The band has to come up and these ideas and find ways to make them work in the context of the album they are on. That fascinates me. But to playlist people, they might not even care because anybody can make a playlist with all the weird track listings they want, so the surprise of hearing grindcore after a cover of a film score track, may not mean anything.

This isn't to say playlists are bad. I have some that I put on at work because I need to filter out aggressive or offensive songs from an album or a bands discography, because I have to keep it PG. But I don't listen to playlists otherwise, and every album I am interested in I need to listen to it in full, because I need to take it all in, and trying to understand the how and why to me is fascinating. I feel like some of that magic is lost if you never consume full albums.