So Adele’s outed as a secret Afterworder, raging on the great unwashed on Spotify shuffling her album, possibly even putting the best tracks on a playlist called ‘sad bangers’. This I think is the most Afterwordy article yet and the BTL comments are split between ‘chill out, I’ll do what I want’ to Screamadelica/OK Computer/Hounds of Love MUST be listened as sequenced.
My favourite comment is about being able to skip the tracks you don’t like. How on earth can we appreciate the gems (Love Spreads for example) without suffering through well quite a bit of the album.
Skippers or sequence fascists? Playlist ripper?
Agree that Kate Bush and Radiohead are two examples of artists where the idea of listening to albums in a different order is inconceivable.
Funnily enough, I was only recently thinking that the art of album sequencing is being lost (possibly because our pop chums are so aware of the fans’ à la carte approach to their work, in much the same way that album cover quality went through the floor when punters made their picks from thumbnails) and what a pleasant surprise it is when a contemporary release has a satisfying beginning and ending.
That’s not to say I’m one of those weirdos on here who thinks albums should be treated as sacred texts and the skip button is Satan’s clitoris or something (I may have misheard..)
If the RITDH wishes to present her work this way, I say good for her..
I actually thought the earlier Satan’s Clitoris stuff was quite good- particularly their seminal debut ‘Where The Hell Is It?’ And it’s much more exciting and engrossing when shuffled.
I looked all over for that one… Started to wonder if it even existed.
She can go do one.
What she has done is remove control of the play order from the end user. When I get a new album, I play it in order. After that, I might, or I might not. But it’s my choice.
She’s a self important self aggrandizing…*wordIcan’tuse*
You can still shuffle and build a playlist and do whatever you want.
She is completely right, Spotify having shuffle be the default way to listen to an album is ridiculous
She hasn’t done that, Spotify have. Their choice.
I think this change has been significantly misreported by the media. All that has changed is that Spotify has stopped defaulting to shuffle when you select Adele’s album to play. You can still select Shuffle once it has started playing. Some of the media reports suggest that she has forced Spotify to change this for all albums by all artists, but this isn’t the case. I just tested Adele’s album and 5 others, and Adele’s was the only one that defaulted to no shuffle.
The more perplexing issue is why Spotify thought this was a good idea in the first place. Wouldn’t someone selecting an album, rather than an Artist or a playlist, want it to be played in order? The concept of an album as a musical statement is pretty outdated now, so I imagine people selecting albums want to hear them as albums. Nothing worse than firing up Disraeli Gears and being hit with Mother’s Lament out of the gate, or, even worse, have my Abbey Road reverie fouled at the starting line with Maxwell.
Exactly
No. There aren’t a lot of albums that I think demand to be listened to in order. Most of the ones that I do, it tends to be force of habit rather than anything else.
Call it what you want: force of habit, laziness, playing it on vinyl. I always listen in order, but don’t always make it to the end (or side two).
In the past 15 or 20 years, any sequence that works as an album – beginning, middle and end – is notable. Most are just chucked together with the lead single as track one.
The Pretenders debut would be sequenced very diffferently if released today.
On the rare occasions I stream an album, Spotty always plays it in the intended sequence. I am pleased about this.
So this ‘news’ was indeed news to me.
I suspect that Spotify always defaults to playing things in what Spotify deems to be the ‘intended’ sequence. Whose intention did you imagine they respected?
I kind of agree with her..You wouldnt start a book at the final chapter and then go back to the middle. Many artists spend a lot of time considering the running order of an album before they even release it. They present it to their potential audience and ask them to consider it in the way that it has been sequenced. I think she has every right to emphasise the way she wants it to be heard. It is not an album I am likely to listen to but I think her asking for artist control certainly doesnt make her a word we cannot use.
It also shows what she must be “worth” to spotty. Irrespective of how much/little she gets per play, how much do they get. Enough for them to do the sums and agree to her demand.
Alternatively, it may just be great for each maximising their gain, as folk sit through the songs they don’t like, waiting for the one they like and would otherwise have gone straight and singlemindedly to. Is one of her trademark bangers near the end?
She probably knows that during shuffle the soggier songs are more likely to get skipped. Adele is one of the fee artists who might be making proper money out of streaming.
Well, the best track is the last one (produced and co-written by Inflo who makes those brilliant Sault records).
Girl!
Tenuous…
Completely agree, though I will give it a listen.
I agree as well, but I don’t think I will listen to it. If she could only learn to make her singing about three orders of magnitude less mannered, I’m sure she could come up with some performances that might, just might, occasionally overlap on a Venn diagram with some of the blessed Shirley’s works. She has a truly great voice that is screaming to get out from under her ‘characteristic’ phrasing, awkward melisma and pronunciation. Having said all that there have been some songs of hers that are already right up there with the best. It’s just that too often she seems to be trying too hard; but she doesn’t need to, and it puts me off.
Curious that people will spend whole weekends on “season” after “season” of some U.S. show but haven’t got the time to play one album, however long and tortuous the average running time seems to be in 2021.
During lockdown, I played all of Sandinista!* from nuts to soup.
*It’s a triple album by the choc full of hits Clash
You do not exist, Jacob Marley!
You played it backwards?
Arf!
For the 72 odd days of the first lockdown that would only mean half a song a day, something even the Clash-loving Deram should be able to accomodate.
Not going to waste too much time on also-rans, obviously, but a casual wikipedia search reveals that the songs taken from that album got to 40, 56 and 34 respectively in the chart.
Whoever the poor sap was running TOTP at the time, my pound to your penny says he wasn’t going “But we simply MUST get the clash… them boys is bossing the hit parade, bro.”
“Not going to waste too much time”….apart from saying the same thing about them in nearly every post for ten years.
You fought the daze, but, the daze won.
Dark Side Of The Moon and The Wall were made to be listened to on shuffle. I also do the same with audiobooks. (Except B.S. Johnson’s of course.)
Shout to to the Unfortunates randomizer. Honestly with most of his novels (I speak as a fan) it makes no difference what order you read the chapters in.
I cannot imagine how side 2 of Abbey Road would sound if the tracks played randomly.
This is why artists get jumpy. The tracks on on album have been carefully arranged to make the whole thing seem better than it is.
In iTunes I merged the medley into one track so that any deliberate shuffling would not mess that up
The odd thing about this whole story is that the facts have not been expressed properly in most of the reporting. I haven’t used Spotify for ages, but it never used to shuffle automatically. Is it the free version that does that (I used to subscribe)? If so, that seems like a fair compromise – if you pay, you get more control.
It defaults to shuffle for me on my phone, have to deliberately go in and uncheck it every time. A pain
One of the things that persuaded me to pay was the enforced shuffle on the free version. On the paid for version the default is to play it in order in all the incarnations I use (ie Android Spotify app, Windows Spotify app, Android Sonos App & Windows Sonos App. There is a play button with a shuffle symbol on it but I never press it, I just hit play on track 1 and the albums play in order.
I have learnt something, don’t hit the play button even though it is the obvious thing to do for me
I have the paid version (mainly for my daughter). When I play vinyl the songs tend to run in sequence
Nope. I’m still on a freebie account and it doesn’t shuffle ever. I only ever access from a PC.
I’m a paying customer and have the app on my phone and on my PC. Haven’t had occasion to use the phone app yet.
On the PC, albums play just as the tracks are listed unless you hit the shuffle button to the right of the play button first, which I never do.
Prince’s Lovesexy CD springs to mind. Nine tracks with no option to skip. Warner probably wished him heaven when that idea came up in the board meeting.
I assume it’s only Spotify that has the shuffle taken away. Freegal (which I was surprised to see has the whole album as a free download) still has a big shuffle button.
It’s not been taken away
Right. What’s actually happened is that Spotify no longer shuffles albums by default, but you can if you want. This is such a fuss about nothing, and yet people are getting really aerated about it. Weird.
People getting aerated and fussing about nothing?
What’s weird about that?
I listened once to Marillion’s Misplaced Childhood on shuffle – it was all wrong.
I also listed to Dark Side Of The Moon on shuffle merely to annoy Roger Waters (who previously mooted the idea that “albums should only be listened to in sequence). Not sure that one worked cos what are the chances of Roger Waters being in my car at the time?
Actually, I’m with Rog on this: no shuffling. If To Be Someone does not follow All Mod Cons then something is not right. As Hand In Glove closes the chiming of What Difference Does It Make must start.
And what will happen to the world if I’m Waiting For The Man is not sandwiched between Sunday Morning and Femme Fatale.
Bat Out Of Hell on shuffle is acceptable because as a story arc, it’s out of order anyway
Prepare for your opinion of Adele to move up a notch or two….
https://twitter.com/HolmesWriter/status/1463208402402828289
I thought this was really nice. And funny (“Play ‘Make You Feel My Love’ and get Alan to sing it.”). Staged? Maybe, who cares? She seems genuine and genuinely nice.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6S9FKGyDinM
That was wonderful, Gary. I agree. She come across very well indeed.
Watching the “Audience With..” it struck me how these really famous women really engaged with every word of every song. A nod here, a knowing smile there, an occasional grimace as if every word hit home. At a guess I’d suggest most of her enormous sales are women who’ve been wronged and shop at Tesco, Asda or Sainsbury’s, pick up a CD for the car and see her as one of them. I imagine they belt out every line at the top of their voices and fair play to them and her. They probably listen to Magic and that’s OK too… Maybe that’s why lots of men are so quick to dismiss her. She’s gone to a global monster and said “I want THIS!” and they’ve gone “ok” and more men kick off. Some of the Twitter (I know) reaction has been bizarre. I can’t do a whole album 9f hers or all of the audience with because I can’t take too much of her voice but I adore some of her songs and just don’t understand the “she’s shit / has no merit / dreadful” attitude towards her. I wish there were more women here to perhaps support my wild hypothesis…
She’s sold far too many records for it to be wronged women in ASDA. Plus, there are tons of men who are huge fans, including Stomzy and Chorley FC.
There’s no great mystery here; she’s written some absolute bangers, she can sing like a motherfucker and she’s seemingly entirely down to Earth in a way that makes people love her. It would be a surprise if she wasn’t a huge star.
Grrrr… woman…..grrrrr….popular…
You hit the nail right on the head there, Bingo. She is wonderful and we are lucky to have her.
Obviously her reach is beyond that demographic but my point remains she reaches women in a way popular male artists may not.
The display for her CD in my local Sainsbury’s is front and centre as you walk in and must contain 500 CDs. 1400 Sainsbury’s makes for a lot of sales.
To be clear I like her. “Hello” is a wonderful song, really special.