Against the Extra Long Pop Album

From VIEWS to Starboy to Dangerous Woman, since when—and why exactly—have big pop albums become 15+ tracks long?
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Graphic by Jessica Viscius

When I was a kid, my dad tasked my brother and I with a fun challenge: edit The White Album* *to fit onto one CD. That meant shaving off about 14 minutes, down to a cool 80. Which songs you selected supposedly said something about what kind of Beatles fan you were, but after living with my edit for years, I can’t deny there are obvious weak spots on the original. “Don’t Pass Me By” is advice not to be followed; more than one “Honey Pie” is unnecessary; eight minutes of sound collage on “Revolution 9” is self-indulgent. Ninety-four minutes is a lot, even for the greatest pop group we've known yet.

There were four Beatles, but thankfully there is only one Drake. Earlier this year, he decided to release an 81-minute album, VIEWS. Over the course of 20 songs, Drake’s petty, jaded worldview wears out its welcome about as quickly as a Hooters waitress he shoos away in an Uber before 9 a.m. Great moments appear in just brief flashes, on undeniable high points like “Controlla” and “One Dance.” He could lose five songs easily—let’s say “U With Me?”, “Redemption,” one of the OVO collabs, the interlude, and “Fire & Desire”—and that’s generous. The cuts would also make a more understated song like “Views” get the shine it deserves. That the album is too long was a characteristic that kept coming up in discussion*, *and yet *VIEWS *was rewarded handsomely in part *because *of its bloat.

There were many factors as to why *VIEWS *ultimately broke single-week streaming records (Apple marketing dollars included), but its length certainly played a part. It’s been two years since *Billboard *modified the formula for calculating the album chart, the Billboard 200, to reflect the streaming age. In the most significant change to chart methodology in 23 years, *Billboard *incorporated SEA (streaming equivalent album) figures into the album chart in a major way: by equating 1,500 individual song streams on Spotify, Apple Music, and the like to the sale of one album. It wasn’t until this February, though, that the RIAA—the organization that awards the sales certifications often touted by highly commercial artists—shifted its policy to factor in streaming data, again with 1,500 song streams equaling one album sale. The policy change automatically awarded gold or platinum status to 17 albums, including To Pimp a Butterfly; even Kendrick’s label boss thought that was a “cheat code,” since streams and sales are inherently different beasts.

By allowing individual song streams to count towards the album tally in Nielsen and RIAA data, there is an actual incentive for Drake to tack the nearly-year-old “Hotline Bling” onto his already saggy album because “Hotline Bling” is popular, and by virtue of that fact, it will continue to rack up streams (of which it already has 573 million on Spotify alone). VIEWS’ public play counts in Spotify vary wildly among non-singles, suggesting a pattern of skipping, or at least that people aren’t consuming the LP in linear listens (don’t discount the power of the streaming playlist). The very first song, “Keep the Family Close,” is among the least-streamed *VIEWS *tracks on Spotify (around 36 million); if that’s not one sign a record isn’t being heard front to back, I’m not sure what is.

This length problem was not uncommon across pop this year (and last), *VIEWS was just the most egregious offender. The Weeknd’s 18-track, 68-minute Starboy *saw the unedited trend through to November, while Zayn’s Mind of Mine (18 tracks on the version streaming via Spotify), Ariana Grande’s Dangerous Woman (whose 15 tracks is at least three too long), and the 1975 (whose album title is as self-indulgent as its 74-minute runtime) kept it alive throughout 2016. At least when pop stars release obnoxious deluxe editions to milk the length of their record cycles, those versions can be ignored easily in favor of the originals. Are the rewards of streaming so valuable that they’d make Drake release an album that’s both mediocre and overlong?

Increasingly, it seems so. More tracks means more streams means more royalties. This is why the problem seems somewhat unique to top-tier pop artists, zeitgeist-dominating figures that the major labels invest a lot of money in and depend on to earn it (and much more) back. Someone like Bon Iver likely doesn’t value the commercial prestige of No. 1 albums and gold records to the point where Justin Vernon and Jagjaguwar would water things down with a couple filler tracks to really juice those streams, baby. Bon Iver is also not pulling in the scale of listeners that Drake and other pop stars are (“One Dance” has nearly a billion streams on Spotify, “33 “GOD”” has 16 million), so the financial payoff would be more negligible, given Spotify’s notoriously low payouts. As always, lowered financial stakes equal further artistic freedom.

When, exactly, pop albums grew to be quite so long remains a mystery, considering the average length of an LP was 15.8 songs circa 2003, and for the last five years, it’s held at around 14 tracks across all genres. There is a certain joy in the short pop album, and an undeniable confidence in the work. Madonna’s eight-track self-titled debut hovers near perfection; had she added another four or seven or 12 songs to the 40-minute runtime, it’s hard to imagine they’d all be quite as good. Thriller**, Purple Rain, *and Janet Jackson’s *Control all work their magic in nine songs. Maybe blockbusters like Amy Winehouse’s Back to Black make it look easy to pull off even 11 classic songs in a row, but it’s just not. None of Michael Jackson’s most iconic albums (Off the Wall, Thriller, Bad) are longer than ten tracks. So while Drake may boast that he’s “MJ in every way” on VIEWS, the platitude rings even more false than previously believed.

Artists could do what Rihanna did with ANTI: Keep the dusty singles that don’t fit off the final product. (Admittedly even that 13-track LP, easily Rihanna’s best as an album, could lose two songs towards the end.) Look to Bruno Mars is a strange sentence to type, but he put nine songs on 24K Magic; can’t say more was needed. You can always relegate overage to an outtakes collection for the diehards, à la Carly Rae Jepsen’s E•MO•TION Side B, if it’s really that necessary.

Formats and distribution models have always played a practical role in shaping what music can be to a listener, and the average album length has shifted as technology has changed. When vinyl was the only format in the game, there were rigid restrictions for single albums: 20 minutes on each side. In the cassette age, 30 minutes per side was the standard maximum. CDs can hold 80 minutes, not that most artists tested those limitations (though the hidden track suddenly became much more popular). Whatever the limitation was, there weren’t inherent missed monetary opportunity with shorter albums; you simply sold one unit, whether it was nine tracks or 16. The internet can accommodate unlimited versions of everything, giving no natural check on an artist (and their labels’) baser interests in profit.

The funny thing is, the new streaming rules, combined with a tracklist that rolls 21 songs deep, likely helped Solange score her first No. 1 album, too. A Seat at the Tablebeat out Bon Iver’s 10-track 22, A Million *on the Billboard 200 this fall in large part because of its high stream count—the equivalent to 72,000 units sold, whereas physical sales were only 46,000. But Solange’s album seemed to fit into another category of too-long LPs this year: Those that embraced the spoken-word interlude as a means of articulation within challenging, cohesive albums. Most everything serves a role in the narratives Solange and Frank Ocean present in *A Seat at the Table *and the 17-track Blonde, respectively, even if the interludes aren’t ripe for listening on repeat. So there’s an argument to be made that the incorporation of streaming data can shine mainstream light on ambitious music that captures the internet’s attention but doesn’t cater to radio play. That feels like progress on the charts. Major labels and their superstars finding more ways to game the system, not so much.