paragiraffe

Something I’ve been kind of interested in lately is the “album-ness” of an album, which is a sort of binding quality amongst the songs, whether it be a theme, shared lyrics (my favorite), similar or complimentary music (besides a band’s sound), flow, all of the above, a combination thereof, or some other indescribable property. For example, and this is incredibly cliché, but I think Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is a very album-y album, but, although I enjoy many of the songs individually, I don’t consider A Ghost is Born to be very coherent, album-wise.

Something that really, really tickles me is when songs on an album share bits of lyrics, which to me says the songs were written close to the same time, or at least with a theme or plan in mind. Okkervil River’s Black Sheep Boy is a great example of this, with numerous mentions of a girl the singer presumably loves loving a stone (presumably a hard, cold man). Spoon’s Gimme Fiction has some lyric sharing as well. (Related, I also enjoy it when artists reference lyrics from other artists’ songs.)

On the theme front, Self’s Gizmodgery was recorded entirely with toy instruments. Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea was inspired by Anne Frank: The Diary of a Young Girl. I’ve mentioned Weezer’s Pinkerton before. Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots by the Flaming Lips can be considered to follow a loose storyline summed up by the title.

Read about concept albums or share your own thoughts.

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