I tried listening to the full album, and I started to think the songs were noticeably dipping in quality around track 17 "Plastic Cigarette". I think I need to listen to the back half of the album on its own though, because I honestly can't tell if it's the songs themselves or if I am just getting enough of the album / this sound by track 17. Might've just hit my wall around that point, I can't quite tell yet. I'm a pretty huge Zach Bryan fan, and I really don't mind long albums at all as long as they still feel like intentional albums and not just a dump of what the artist has been up to the past few years. I do think though that 25, 27, 29 tracks is probably far too many for almost every artist out there.
Album-equivalent-units is one of the dumbest things the industry ever came up with, and ironically the one thing they are definitely not is any kind of workable equivalent to actual album sales
The way he sings "sing the wrong damn song in the wrong damn key" scratches something good in my brain.
I think that they should have gone in a different direction and counted the total number of streams on like the fourth lowest song when calculating SEAs.
I think the problem is that there is no comparison to be made between streams and actual record sales and they should stop trying. Stop saying an album sold this and this many units when it did not, just say how many people streamed it or whatever. The remaining actual sales (physical and digital downloads, if the latter is even measurable at this point) can be listed separately.
I like big 20-30 song records but usually when it happens once (maybe twice) in an artists discography. Everyone gets to do their big ambitious double album. When you do it every go around it just makes me question if you know which songs of yours are the best ones. I love an artist who is a good editor.
The run from Say Why to South & Pine is the strongest part of the album. Really dies off as an album listen after that, despite there being a few good songs like the title track.
yeah, I've listened to just the back half and also the whole album thru a few times now, and while I don't think the songs themselves are necessarily bad on their own, or honestly that much weaker than the others really, I think this album would be far better overall if it dropped a chunk of songs out around ⅔ of the way thru. I love the title track/closer, and "Camper" is a great song too, so I can't go for just lopping the whole end off / stopping this somewhere at normal album length.
They already used Say Why as a bumper on the Eagles game. Like the overarching theme on the album but feel like it gets redundant. Gonna start the album mid through today and see how I like the back half as a stand alone.
Anyone done a condensed playlist version of this yet? I feel like I'll come back to this playlist pretty regularly:
Interesting that we're ultimately pretty similar. You kept five songs I didn't, and mine had three that aren't on yours.
I know it's still early days, but the ones I cut are really just where I think I start to get tired of this album, but he reels me back in at the end. He is absolutely one of my favorite artists right now, but the dude just puts too many songs on an album. I also have only listened to the whole thing a few times all the way, and I still feel like I'm not giving those later songs a fair shake.
my younger brother texted me basically the exact same thing with a bunch of fire emojis I told him he has too much free time
On repeat listens, the issue is definitely more “I’m tired of hearing songs that sound kind of the same” than “these songs I’m cutting are bad.”
Big albums like this - I prefer to listen to the first half a bunch and then treat the 2nd half basically like a different album. It's not ideal but it's easier for me to give the whole thing a fair shake that way. And that makes it less of an album (to me) and more of a collection of songs. Trying to get through 24 songs in a row is tough even if they are all good.