Well?

I jump about all over the place with double albums
for example, with the Beatles White Album it's usually Dear Prudence, then Martha my dear, then Glass Onion, then Happiness is....etc

depends on the album. usually i'm just in the mood for one disc or the other.

I just get angry and yell at those shiny things for wasting my muthaf****n time.

Whole Even if it's triple

If it is patchy mixedbag, I'll usually skip some of the tracks.

If it's near-flawless, i'll listen to the whole thing! I wonder why artists do double-albums. They are probably the riskest things they'll ever do in their careers.

I listen to the whole thing. That's how the artists intended the albums to be heard.

The one exception is Tori Amos' 'To Venus And Back'. The live disc doesn't really go with the studio disc.

To answer my own question, I tend to listen to one disc or the other, except for live albums, where I tend to listen to the whole thing.

sextonseven said:

With all due respect, I've never really bought into that kind of thinking. What the artist intended is important, but not above what pleases the listener IMO. Besides, how often have we heard stories about things not turning out like the artist intended? Does that ruin it for you? What about singles and radio play?

Prince went so far as to single-track Lovesexy (my favorite Prince album), but I have absolutely no problem separating the tracks so I can listen to "Anna Stesia" or "I Wish U Heaven" easily whenever the mood strikes.

Anyway, SITKOL is about the only one I regularly sit through (with the exception of live double albums). If I ever had to listen to "Revolution 9" every time I wanted to hear "Martha My Dear," I think I'd become very violent.

Pretty much one disc at a time.

I think most multi-disc sets are broken in pieces not only by their packaging but their arrangement, as well. So I hear each disc as seperate and complete, but related. I don't feel incomplete having only listened to one per sitting.

Some (like the White Album) aren't that long, and I can listen to the whole thing.

AlexdeParis said:

At least it's at the very end of the record. If you were the type who insisted on letting the albums play from start to end, you could always choose that time to fold your laundry in another room.

AlexdeParis said:

What about them? Singles are played on radio and video channels to promote the album. That's different than listening to an album and dropping out songs here and there. It's like cutting holes in a painting.


The one-track thing never bothered me because I listen to it all every time.


The White Album sounds incomplete to me without "Revolution 9".

The White Album is the main reason I started this thread. For the last 5 years or so (since I first heard Marwa Blues from George Harrison's Brainwashed album) I have had a playlist on my computer and now iPod called "Just Great Songs" - songs I adore but that I'd never hear on the radio and would hardly ever listen to a whole album to hear. Recently I started a new playlist called "Just Great Albums" to include complete albums that are 'perfect' as a whole, which I listen to shuffled-by-album, so an album plays in order before moving onto another album. I decided not to take tracks off any album, but when adding The White Album, I decided to only add disc one - disc one is almost perfect, but disc two has some tracks I'm not so keen on - Revolution 9, which I loathe, and tracks like Long Long Long which I'm just not keen on... Since I created the playlist for complete albums, though, I've been wondering - should I add disc two, take off disc one, or just get over myself and find something more important to do with my time...

Anyway, ramble over...

booyah said:

Listening to bad album tracks makes the good ones sound better to me. Now if the bad tracks outnumber the good tracks on an album then I just chuck the album and get the greatest hits.

PANDURITO said:

same here

I'm a whole album person, which might only be saying I have a lot of time to kill.

I find listening to single songs, even in an artists' greatest hits compilation, to be rather jarring.

sextonseven said:

No, it isn't... unless the parts you're cutting out are separate entities unto themselves. As far as singles go, that wasn't always the case.


I think it sounds much more complete without it.


So you're not totally against songs being heard outside of their albums.

Depends.

Usually not though, I'll listen to the other disc some other day.

Just one, unless I'm famming out on one particular artist.

AlexdeParis said:

When I've painted in the past, I've painted different parts of the painting at different times so to me it's the same.


I never was. I'm against leaving songs out during an entire album listening experience.

sextonseven said:

That makes much more sense to me. I guess we just don't have the same number of entire-album listening experiences. More than half the time, I'm in my "personal radio station" mood.

I only buy what I really love, so I would listen to the whole shebang!!