Last week in my intro I talked about De La Soul dropping their biggest hit song all the way down at track 20 on their debut album, 3 Feet High and Rising (1989), and that got the wheels rolling on another topic — album length. I don’t know if there’s ever been some defined rule as to how many songs it takes or how long an album needs to run to be considered an LP as opposed to an EP, but even if unspoken rules have existed, they’ve certainly changed over the years. I don’t know what the ’60s and ’70s were like, but for at least the first few years of the ’80s eight songs seemed to be the minimum amount needed for a legitimate LP. I’m assuming that’s because eight normal-length songs fit the best onto a record without it losing too much quality. Then maybe by the mid-’80s, as CDs were gaining in popularity, it climbed to ten average-length songs, though even in ‘86 Peter Gabriel’s So had nine tracks on the CD but only eight on the record. Then at some point it jumped again, but that’s where I lose track.
To me, a legit full-length record these days feels like 12 songs or more, and it’s felt that way for ages. But even that’s a struggle sometimes — all I remember hearing about Linkin Park records earlier in the decade is that people felt gipped because each album lasted only 35 minutes despite having 12 or 13 tracks. If a disc can hold 79-plus minutes and you can’t even fill half that amount with music, are you giving anyone their money’s worth? That’s not to say you have to fill all 79 minutes by including shit, but even though I’ve never listened to a Linkin Park record, I’m sure at least one or two tracks on each of their albums are filler (I’d like to say all 12, but to each his own — unless you like Nickelback), cutting down the amount of quality music to about half an hour.
Then of course track length comes into play. Something like 1981’s Circle of Love by Steve Miller has the ridiculous 16-minute “Macho City” taking up the entire second side of the disc. But even with only five tracks totaling 34 minutes, that’s a full-length album. If the total number of tracks was all that counted toward distinguishing what’s an LP or not, no doom/drone/sludge band would have released an LP. Take Sunn O)))’s White 1, for example — it only has three tracks but comes in at a whopping 59 minutes. No question that’s a full-length album. So who knows — maybe it just comes down to a general feeling these days. But if there were ever some set rules or even if someone can just give a legit time frame as to when the guidelines for album length started to increase, I’d love to hear it.
