I was 13 when I bought my first album. A handful of change from an allowance my parents had given me burning in my pocket, I wandered the rows of a local music store until I spotted Radiohead’s “Hail to the Thief” on CD.

Something about the album art drew me in, a watercolor of a shadowy blue sky over a mound of brightly-colored boxes with words like “TV,” “FEAR,” and “BANGBANG” enclosed in all caps. Like songs on an album, these words express little by themselves. Unified, however, they reveal subtle attitudes in each other that would otherwise be missed, and it is this unifying quality that keeps the album relevant for a generation dominated by the single.

Today we enjoy a music industry that embraces a culture whose cornerstone is the single, not the album. Music streaming services like Pandora and iTunes Radio present an endless string of songs at the mere entry of an artist or genre. Results are tailored according to complex mathematical algorithms involving hundreds of musical attributes, ensuring a maximized level of enjoyment and demanding little attention in return: just click and go. Similarly, YouTube dispenses single servings of its vast and varied digital content, becoming equally a go-to for music as it has been for visual media.
Spotify touts “music for every moment,” and as a music streaming service it comes closest to providing a cohesive musical experience, offering an expansive library of albums available without ads at a monthly premium. Still, it is a playlist oriented service, favoring the fluidity of personalized playlists with no subdivisions for artists, albums or tracks, as if uneasy with letting its customers grapple with albums in full.

At 13, I grappled with “Hail to the Thief,” specifically with its first single, “There There.” Thematically, it wasn’t so different from what I was used to — songs about frustration, powerlessness and anger from the likes of Linkin Park and Marilyn Manson — and yet I was profoundly resistant to it. I found the song musically unpleasant, the muddied drums and croaking guitars unnerving. Listening to the album over and over, however, I began to “get it.” What I had initially found repellent had been given a context by which I developed a taste for what it did well, which in turn engaged me deeper in the music.

What clicked about “There There” is one of those pleasures that rarely occurs outside the context of an album. In the case of “Hail to the Thief,” Radiohead had put notes and words to emotions and ideas that were best served in relation to each other. The thing I love about albums is that sometimes my favorite songs are ones that take time to truly reveal themselves. Tracks like that typically don’t work as singles, but not everything should come at the click of a button.

amaenche@mavs.coloradomesa.edu