Desperately Seeking Singles

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Desperately Seeking Singles

by Jonno Seidler (One A Day)

Last week, I woke up to the news that serial chart-slayer and hit-writer Calvin Harris had done the unthinkable and broken a UK record for the highest number of Top 10 singles from one album. Across the pond, Rihanna achieved a similar feat for her slew of dance-inspired hits, discounting the fact that at least one of these was shared between them. The announcement got me musing about the entire concept of a dance music album, and what (if anything) it really means in 2013.

Harris is an easy target but he’s also a very good example of how these things work. At least four of the singles from 18 Months, which dropped last year, were hits before it was even completed. These include the aforementioned ‘We Found Love’, as well as ‘Bounce’, ‘We’ll Be Coming Back’ and ‘Feels So Close’, which is definitely giving Gotye a run for his money in terms of an ancient track still spinning as new in clubs across the world. The four that followed piggybacked off the release of the record in October, but to be frank, they really didn’t need it. It’s likely that with the exception of that super-annoying ‘Drinking From The Bottle’, they would have all shot up to the top on their own merit anyway.

Any record label executive will tell you that with a few exceptions in terms of talent (Ed Sheeran) or audience (teenage girls), albums are for chumps. Particularly in a world that has fallen back in love with the world’s most useless, whitewashing acronym, the concept of presenting a whole body of work seems pretty pointless when the kids are grabbing for bite-sized snacks. Harris happens to be so adept at making these that he could literally fill a traditional CD with them, but this is not normal. His contemporaries are pumping out hits, but staying away from albums. That may be because it exposes their weaknesses – seriously, Avicii can’t get away with ripping off dead jazz legends twelve times in a row – but probably also because it’s pointless.

An album is a statement of intent, and ideally, it presents a cohesive view of the artist and presents a sound suite that moves beyond a song. 18 Months is certainly not one of these, but judging by the recent media blitzkrieg, Daft Punk’s management would like to have you believe that Random Access Memories will be. That’s perhaps the only way to explain the complete saturation of robot news in both traditional and new media; it’s much harder to sell an album in 2013 even if it is the next Thriller. Daft Punk have never had more mainstream love than they have now. Discovery would have been a much harder sell in 2001. But back then, people like you and I bought CDs.

How long has it been since a proper electronic album (and I use the term loosely) captured the popular imagination? Where the tracks flowed into one another, and picking out singles seemed petty, rather than obvious? Locally, Cut Copy’s In Ghost Colours sticks out, while Justice’s sacrilegiously synth-heavy debut from 2007 has a similar feel. You could listen to those from start to finish, as an experience rather than trawling for hits. Their live sets reflected this ideology, too; liquid, loose and real.

Perhaps it’s unfair to expect such a thing, even from Daft Punk who, according to recent collaborator Chilly Gonzales, have moderated mood through key signatures across their record. The other day I interviewed Jimmy2Sox of Flight Facilities, and he suggested that putting out singles is a far better way to build your audience and express your unique sound than an album. He argued that ‘Clair De Lune’, the duo’s seven-minute, downtempo sleeper single that was a surprise critical and commercial hit at the end of last year, would have disappeared on an album. “It would have been some people’s favourite track,” he explained, “but most listeners may have missed it entirely.”

After all, even with all the Wee Waa stunts and VICE-driven video content, the simple economics that we now know to be true mean that the only people who really sell albums by the bucketload are universal singer-songwriters named Taylor or Adele. Daft Punk may buck the trend and make an entire album of throwback disco that just so happens to appeal to the newly minted generation of yuppies who remember Bee Gees and Chic, but one doubts it. The vultures will peck at the carcass of their offering the same way they do with everyone who isn’t Getting Lucky enough to be Calvin Harris; sucking out the fat and leaving the bones.

Being bitterly nostalgic is pointless and also reductionist. Even on our own shores, Flume has managed to net a number one with a bullet for an album rather than a single. But more and more, our relationship to electronic music is feeling less like a marriage than us desperately seeking singles. And that’s sort of sad.

Jonno Seidler is a Stoney Roads contributor, music writer and podcaster.

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