Spoiled and Entitled

If you were a music fan growing up in the 70s and 80s, that’s precisely what you were - spoiled and entitled. Why? Because you didn’t have to deal with the album cycle.

Dig this - in 1969, Led Zeppelin released two albums (Led Zeppelin and Led Zeppelin II). They released Zeppelin III and IV in the next two consecutive years and by 1975, they had added Houses Of The Holy (1973) and the greatest double album of all time, Physical Graffiti (1975). Even factoring in two years during this period that they didn’t release new material, that’s still on pace for a new album a year.

KISS bested Zeppelin, releasing thirteen goddamned albums in five years, including two live albums and the four solo albums. You could argue that KISS released everything they would ever need for the next fifty years during this period. Between 1974 and 1976 alone, they released KISS, Hotter Than Hell, Dressed To Kill, Alive!, Destroyer and Rock And Roll Over. Even today, as they sail across the globe on their latest farewell tour, their setlists are dominated by tracks from those first five years.

The Doors released their first eight albums (including Other Voices, the first, and somewhat underrated, post-Morrison release) in their four year trajectory. Again, we’re not talking about middling, half-baked albums, lazily scrapped together to grudgingly comply with some contractual obligations with a record label; these albums all changed the world, or at least the music world. And this weird realm of sonic abundance was not relegated to the 70s, either. Iron Maiden released their debut in 1980, not hitting a creative wall until ten years later with 1990’s No Prayer For The Dying. But they also released ten albums in ten years and not a single release of their 80s output could be written off as hit or miss, let alone a dud.

This was just how it worked — a music fan could count on their favourite bands to drop a great new album every year. WE WERE SPOILED! So much so, that in the lead-up to the release of a new album, people didn’t wonder if it was going to be any good — they assumed that it would be just as good as all of the others from that band. And in the examples that I cited above, this is largely the case. You’ll find the same phenomenon throughout the 60s, 70s and 80s with most major bands. Part of this is down to how the record industry worked back then — some shithead with a fifty dollar Gibson knock-off couldn’t release an album back then unless he was the scion of a great record label empire. Today, anybody with recording software can put an album together regardless of the quality of songwriting, musicianship or production, and upload it to Spotify, Bandcamp, YouTube, etc. That very day, it becomes available to tens of millions of people. Sure, you’re not guaranteed to get more than a handful of listens if your album isn’t properly publicised — and that applies to whether it’s staggeringly good or simply abysmal — but there’s far less quality control today.

Thirty or forty years ago, you had to be really good; you had to not only know how to play your instrument, but you had to do it in a way that stood out from what other artists were doing. You needed a band of like-minded collaborators who could play to each other’s strengths in a way that inspired exciting, original music. Then, you needed to build a buzz around your band, such that you could score a gig in a club — a proper, big city club. Eventually, if you get enough friends and manage to hold the interest of the people drinking at the bar, the owner throws you a weekend gig, when the real crowds and the real money come into play. And by “real money,” we’re talking maybe $300 split among four or five people. Hopefully word gets out to a record label or two and they send some people out to see if the hype is legit or if this is just another group full of really talented musicians playing songs that sound exactly like what’s already on the radio. By this point, we’ve eliminated 95% of the bands.

But if you were one of those lucky 5%ers (and these figures are wholly speculative and meant only to illustrate how utterly impossible it was to get this far), then you’d get a record deal. If you survived your debut album, and what came out was something legitimately different and compelling, then you were off to the races. See, 95% of your competition had already been eliminated by the checks and balances above. Of course, you were now competing with the Zeppelins and Skynyrds of the world for airplay, but the labels took care of that, thanks in no small part to generous expense accounts and limitless quantities of weed and cocaine made available to DJs and programming directors across the globe. So on one hand, you were competing with the biggest names in music but on the other hand, you were now in the same conversation as the biggest names in music. It elevated you, if only for a moment. The competition was higher, but so too was the talent on the field.

The whole point is that today, the biggest bands release new music every 2-3 years, and usually more. Metallica released six albums in their first ten years (including one live album) but in the most recent ten, they’ve released only two albums of all-new material (including Lulu). Instead, they’ve relied on compilations and live albums to goose the fanbase. Ghost are one of the hottest new rock acts on the planet; they’ve released four original full-length albums in the past ten years (all superb, by the way). Avenged Sevenfold released five original albums in their first decade and three original albums in the most recent decade, plus one live offering. We’re not talking about EPs here, either, which have become a more prominent aspect of the new landscape.

The talent pool is larger than ever and it continues to expand with every New Music Friday. And because it’s so cheap to release new music, the payout is thin as well. Album sales used to translate into. mansions and guitar-shaped swimming pools — for the heavy hitters, anyway — but today they’re just sonic calling cards. Imagine paying $20 today for an album that you haven’t heard yet! Imagine anybody but a vinyl collector paying $20 or more for an album today, period.

Now, bands release a single to announce a new album and maybe one or two more to build the hype in the run-up. In most cases, there might be one or two legitimately thrilling tracks that haven’t been released yet by the time the album drops, but more often than not, you’ll have 2-4 songs that are pure filler — generic, uninspired or simply not the kind of tune that demands instant rewind. But it doesn’t matter because there’s no money in the album anyways — the money’s in touring, and specifically, it’s at the merch booth. Major bands head out for two and three year album cycles so they can wring every last drop of revenue from the ten songs they wrote for the album. And really, it’s not even the new album at that point — they’ll dutifully play two or three new songs but the fans are there for the hits. And they’re also very. much there for the $40 t-shirts to prove that they were there. And that’s where the payoff occurs. Did you know that a band makes as much money off of a single t-shirt sale as they do from over 6000 streams of one of their songs on Spotify? Yup. At the end of the day, the band are there to sell t-shirts.

I don’t mean to be cynical. It really is all about the music and it always has been. And despite its many flaws and the collateral damage that ensues with each evolutionary step forward, the music industry continues to provide a path for artists to be heard. Sure, bands need to work harder to get noticed, but that’s good for everybody involved. The days of major bands releasing phenomenal new music every year are done, however, forever relegated to the era of drive-in movies, pull-tab beer cans and the Pet Rock.