Listen at midnight
Header: Annie Bueler
When an album I’ve been anticipating is released, I have a set ritual. The first step is to pour a glass of wine or make a cup of tea. The choice of beverage depends on the expected mood of the album; synth-ish pop merits wine, while tea is preferred for mellow records. With a drink in hand, I then head to my room, light a candle, sit cross-legged on my bed with a blanket, and wait for midnight. As soon as it strikes 12 am, I hit play on the album's first song and listen all the way through without skipping any tracks. Sometimes, I perform this ritual with a friend, but honestly, I prefer to be alone with no distractions, reading the lyrics as the album plays out. The next day, I wake up groggy and skip my classes, but it’s almost always worth it. I’ve even been rumoured to reject a Thursday night Stage Rage offer due to my date with a brand-new album at midnight.
With the introduction of shuffle, streaming platforms, and social media, the music industry has faced drastic changes. Most of which are beneficial to both listeners and artists. For listeners, discovering new music is easier than ever – you can look up the lyrics of a song you heard in a store and immediately add it to your playlist. By aimlessly scrolling on an app, you can discover new songs that will grow to be your favourites. Communities of fans across the globe can now connect online, sharing a common love for their favourite artists. On the flip side, artists now have an accessible way to market themselves to listeners. It doesn’t matter who you or your connections to the industry are, you can post a video of a song you wrote and have it blow up. Take Noah Kahan, for example – his overnight popularity stemmed from a thirty-second video of an unfinished song, later to be titled Stick Season. From there, he’s been able to capitalize off his internet success, cultivating a massive following that eagerly awaits his next release date.
Sadly, the corresponding disadvantage to these developments in the music industry is the disappearing art of the album. From surveying my friends and my own listening habits I’ve recognized that it’s now rare for people to listen to an album from front to back without any skipping songs. Adding a song heard on TikTok, shuffling a playlist, or listening to singles is much more common. Although convenient, adding a single song to your library in isolation from the rest of its body of work removes the song from any context the artist created. Reading a single chapter of a novel would leave you searching for answers– you wouldn’t consume other media partially, so why music? When picking the title, the order of songs, and the cover art for an album, an artist is creating a story, and by ignoring the whole album and only listening to one song, you're only getting a snippet of the narrative. I’m not saying that you should always be listening to albums front to back, but I do believe that some songs are simply better when you listen to them in the order of the album they’re produced for.
The increased industry value placed on singles has not only watered down the emotional potency of a song but has also seemed to discourage artists from crafting cohesive albums. The number of songs that are quickly put out due to online comments begging for a release date is evidence of single-track listening affecting artists' release plans. Why wait to release a song on an album if you can feel the immediate gratification of popularity and pocket the financial gain of releasing the track as a single? As an artist, you might as well release the song on its own, capitalizing on its small window of popularity, disregarding any narrative that could weave the song into a whole greater than the sum of its parts.
Preacher’s Daughter by Ethel Cain is a standout example of an album that demonstrates how consuming a record in chronological order can add value to the listening experience. Tracks like “Ptolemaea” are musically jarring enough within the album's context, so listening without knowing the story Ethel is stringing together would be outright confusing and unsettling. The need for the backdrop of the track list to understand each song is what makes the album so great; each song builds off the last’s narrative, adding to the shocking and gruesome story Ethel is telling. You cannot fully understand the excellence of Preacher’s Daughter without listening to it in order all the way through. Albums like For Emma, Forever Ago by Bon Iver, Pressure Machine by The Killers, Melodrama by Lorde, and Home Video by Lucy Dacus are other great examples of listening in entirety enhancing the listening experience – not solely because of the storytelling, but because of the perfection of song placement on the tracklist.
Ultimately, you’re the only one who decides how you prefer to consume music, and no one can force you to sit down and stream a whole album, but what I can do is highly recommend it. Listening to an album doesn’t have to be an activity that holds your undivided attention. You can play it through while you’re making an overly ambitious dinner and have 1000 dishes to clean, while you’re reorganizing your room after neglecting to put anything back in its place for a month, or while taking a long walk to rebrand yourself after a weekend of bad decisions. Experiencing the curated mood of an album upon the first listen is a feeling I adore. I can vividly remember my surroundings while listening to some of my favourite albums for the first time in my childhood bedroom, residence room or room in my Kingston house. Next time an artist you love releases new music, consider planning a date with the album at midnight.
