Scavenger. That's how friends might describe 16-year-old Alex Ostrovsky.
Cheating a record company and its artists came easy. His wallet rarely left his back pocket in record stores. His friends bought albums; he copied them, illegally. His own money? He hoarded it for concert tickets. Last February, hours after attending a Coldplay concert, the teenaged cheapskate shelled out $0.99 to iTunes for "Speed of Sound". Then the phone rang: it was Apple. His purchase was its one-billionth song sold. His reward: a 20" iMac, 10 iPods, a $10,000 iTunes gift card, and the establishment of a Julliard scholarship in his name. Few mention it prominently, but he ended up buying Coldplay's album, X&Y, too. The billionth song was the news and it alone snatched the headlines: "iTunes sells billionth song" or "Michigan teen downloads one-billionth song".
Video killed the radio star, right? Well, the single is slaughtering the album.
A magnet for the masses, the single attracts audiences and money. To sell albums, you need one. Failure to comply provokes the old record label standby, "We can't sell this album; we don't hear a single." At one time or another, Wilco, Fiona Apple, and the Hives, among countless others, have been targets of this tired tirade.
This is no startling revelation. But in the bloated behemoth of the music biz, as time and innovation improved technology, something changed. To pinpoint when is pointless. One song now maligns or defines you and one hit song is the exact distance from obscurity to overnight success. Sadly, the album is an afterthought.
Was it always this way? Do I long for some historical utopia, a time when albums were crafted instead of churned out? Is it too much to ask for albums sans filler, not just 11 tracks spooned from a public pool where pain and pleasure have been pissed into disproportionately? Rare is the album started and finished without lifting a finger to skip songs. One co-worker in his mid-30s beholden to that utopian era of album-oriented rock (AOR) blames mp3 players, and the one-hit wonder generation raised with them.
Singles belong to the ADD-afflicted youth, he says, albums to their baby boomer or Gen-Xer parents.
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Everywhere: that's where Sugar Ray's "Fly" was in 1997. Diluted reggae intro. Neutered but still attractive all-American frontman sings a song bursting with sunshine. Castrated rock filtered through a pseudo-ska/punk band looking to go pop. It was fun, for a while. But as an assault launched from all media fronts — radio, television, magazine — it bred backlash. In the mall while you were killing time, growing old, and scoping chicks, some automaton Gap employee would return from a lunch break singing, "Who knows how long I've loved you...". So you'd escape to HMV, slip on the headphones, feel someone else's ear sweat lubricating your listening and whap! "I just want to fly, like a bird in tha sky I'm so high..." Walk away from the headphones, left dangling, discarded in disgust, and now over the loudspeaker: "All around the world statues crumble for me..."
Everyone wanted it, the single and, naturally, its corresponding album. Kids and their parents, even elderly grannies with their hearing aids pressed to streets. Disappointment then when the album, Floored, proved to be comprised of songs unlike the cavity-inducing candy gloss of "Fly".
Everybody has a hustle; singles lie. Not always, but often enough, it is art altered for mass appeal — calculated commoditization. It is the free sample in the supermarket that leads to a purchase neglected and regretted once at home. The single says, "Believe me, I am the best this artist has to offer." It may not be true but we — the public, the media, the consumers — buy it because it tasted good from a platter.
"Juicebox", the first single from the Strokes' third album, said, "Hey, we're the same Strokes."
When it was released, First Impressions of Earth said differently. "Ask Me Anything", with its clammy stay-your-distance synthesizer and piercing hypno-hook ("I've got nothing to say" repeated ad nauseam) is a better first impression — honest in a way "Juicebox" is not.
iTunes eliminates this by making available 30-second snippets of every song on an album they sell. Buy only what you like. This helps prevent misinformed purchases, but it too diminishes the album as a whole. Snatched from the comfort of their context, songs no longer jut up against each other according to their authors' intentions. Shuffled on an iPod, songs lose themselves amidst the mix: Juvenile's "Back That Azz Up" gets cozy with the Yeah Yeah Yeah's "Maps"; the juxtaposition is jarring. And the artistry of the album, it's shattered into units befitting online sales.
More than that, though, I feel for the neglecteds, those songs relegated to the shadows of hit singles. Often, they're better than the hit single.
Hit singles are like disease-infected prostitutes (the author informs you that this simile, while truly unsavory, bears no relation to his own life). They will sleep with anyone, passing Hit Single Transmittable Diseases (HSTDs) from one person to the next, often regardless of age. You pass it to friends, telling them: "I just got burnt by Gnarls Barkley's new single, 'Crazy'." Only later, longing the inexperience of a less promiscuous lover (and when the HSTD reaches mass epidemic), will you lust for the album's other songs. And if those songs — made with low-quality emotional glue — come undone, the discount bins of low-end retail distributors await the albums on which they appear.
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The Tipping Point will continue to explore the state of the single with Part Two, "Where Do You Go", a look at the hits we remember for being forgotten: one-hit wonders. Coming soon to a future installment.
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