Rightfully So

Ahh… the music biz. For the past several years, the music industry and its consumers have seen unprecedented upheaval, technologically, politically, and culturally: ClearChannel-style homogenized FM radio broadcasts, darknet-style MP3 sharing, shotgun-style RIAA lawsuits… the list goes on and on. Nobody is satisfied with the status quo, yet there don’t appear to be any imminent solutions. How all of this plays out over the next decade will be truly remarkable to witness.

I want to focus on a tiny aspect of a tiny sliver of the debate: the “album.” The “album” is a collection of songs packaged as a unit. Often there is a unifying theme, a concept, or a message the artists are exploring, but, just as often, the “album” is just a bunch of songs that the artists happened to make at the same time.

À la carte music sales, one-hit wonders, and 45-RPM records all threaten to destroy the “album”, much to the chagrin of those who would be chagrined by the destruction of the album, and, with the destruction of the album, say the chagrined, so too go the financial rewards and incentives and modern civilization and other grandiose mumbo-jumbo whatever. You know the arguments: a single sells for x, an album sells for 10x, so, therefore albums are better. Or, they’re better if you’re selling; if you’re buying, singles are better.

But, I like albums. I like listening to songs I would not have otherwise heard, had I cherry-picked my songs individually. Some of my favorite songs would never ever have been played on the radio, because they were never “hits.” I heard them only because they came packaged in an album with another song I was wanting.

In my vast collection of music, there are very, very few “Greatest Hits” compilations. I don’t buy them. I hate them. I want albums.

So, to demonstrate my point, I have made a list of albums where the popular hit songs are, in fact, the worst songs on the album. If a “hit” is a “hit” because it is popular, and it is popular because people like it, and if the “hit” is in fact the worst song on the album, what does that say about the rest of the album? What does that say about the “album” concept in general?

Here’s my list. Please add yours in the comments section.

¹How exquisitely awesome must this album be if these are the worst songs?

Right now there is a debate going on in Congress over what to do about all the illegal immigrants coming into the U.S. from Mexico. As with most debates, neither the Republicans nor the Democrats asked me what to do in this situation. No one wants these aliens to take away jobs from American workers so all we have to do is give them a job nobody else wants, personal butlers. Richie Rich, Batman, The Fresh Prince, they all had butlers and now its time the middle class gets them too. Under my plan each illegal immigrant would be issued suit and then shipped out to a middle class family. There they could do simple tasks that you don’t want to do like cleaning, cooking, bringing you drinks and organizing your Sega cartridges. Never again would you have to take out the trash or run out to the store in the middle of the night because you are craving pancakes. There are still some details to be worked out like how the aliens would get paid, where the suits would come from and how to keep the U.S. economy from collapsing but I am sure these things would all work out somehow. It’s time that the middle class gets to lead the extravagant lifestyle that the rest of the world already thinks we have.

In conjunction with the Internal Revenue Service, the Bush administration is proposing a set of forms and regulations that must be followed by anyone wishing to engage in a romantic and/or physical relationship with a member of the opposite sex (same sex relationships are forbidden).

Forms include:

• Form 10-VE: Acknowledgment of romantic interest
• Form 53-X: Acknowledgment of physical interest
• Form 1D-10T: Marriage Proposal
• Form 5E-ND3R: Gender Verification

All citizens who wish to engage in any relationships must have a Form 5E-ND3R signed and notarized and must display the Gender Verification card when courting of the opposite sex begins.

Form 53-X must be signed by both parties and notarized before sexual relations may begin. Federal funds will be provided to bars and pimps to facilitate the distribution and notarizing of the particular forms.