POLL: Ideal # of trax for an album to have

what is your ideal # of songs for an album

DAMMIT

did you follow thru on doing a ideal minute-length poll?

lol, was gonna vote 12

voted 5792.5

i don't think i did but there is this: perfect album length

Very few albums over 10 tracks don't have any filler.

Though very few albums of any length don't have any filler.

my pet theory is that there's kind of a psychological thing at work, where songs that would automatically be "filler" on a 14-track album or a double LP behemoth sound more like a natural piece of the whole when they're only one of 8 or 10 tracks.

Or it could be that the musicians/producers involved are just better at quality control.

xpost i agree. one naturally gets bored during practically any album, below a certain length it's just a mediocre song and above a certain length it becomes "filler"

maybe. it doesn't seem like the '60s-'80s artists that were making concise 10 albums were necessarily holding themselves to a higher standard or better at cutting the wheat from the chaff, it doesn't seem like there's usually a ton of outtakes or rejected early versions of songs from those albums. more likely they just cut the 40 minutes' worth of material they knew would fit on the LP, and then went back in the studio 6-12 months later when they had the same amount of material ready to go again. (xpost)

sometimes the weird/less great songs don't even sound mediocre! Houses of the Holy is my favorite Zep album and i've come to regard "The Crunge" and "D'Yer Maker" as essential pieces of the album's character, even if they're by no means the best songs. meanwhile there are probably much more listenable songs on Physical Graffiti that you could wave a wand and make disappear and I'd never notice.

yeah i see your point. good example.

anything less than 10

A non-Compilation album? Less than 12.

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