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The Woes Of Being Single...

Have you ever been in the following, rather dismal situation?

Your best friend just told you she’s uploaded a bunch of new music onto her iPod. You two have similar tastes in music, so you are looking forward to a lunch hour spent consuming new tunes instead of that awful-looking egg salad sandwich you’ve got in your lunch bag. As you start to eagerly go through her artists, you see a bunch of bands you love, and wonder if she’s got the latest album, or some of their early material.

Your excitement fades to dismay when you begin to look at the measly track listing under each artist. Bedouin Soundclash – When The Night Feels My Song, Bloc Party – Helicopter, Oasis – Wonderwall. There’s not a Jeb Rand, Biko, or Bittersweet Symphony to be found!

I don’t know about you, but this is a frequent occurrence in my own life, and I am often left to listen yet again to overplayed singles while suffering through an awful sandwich.

Bands release singles to promote themselves and their music, and radio play is one of the best ways they can expose themselves to a vast audience. Some of these songs become hits. Most radio stations play only the hits – the songs that everyone wants to hear and everyone’s got memorized. These songs then find their way onto most people’s iPods or computers.

Artists put years of effort into writing, recording and releasing their music, and a part of the reward for this effort is financial. The band hopes that by releasing a single to the radio or having it as a free download, they will encourage their listeners to buy the album from which that single was taken. However, many listeners do not bother to dent their paychecks in order to discover what else the artist has to offer.

By ending a musical journey with the singles we hear on the radio, we miss out on multiple dimensions of a band. Often songs are tagged as “radio-friendly,” meaning they have a wide audience appeal that can be beneficial to the artist. These songs only illustrate one side of the artist though. By listening to an entire album, we begin to develop a deeper appreciation for the artist, who may show incredible musical versatility within a single album (Marianas Trench – Masterpiece Theatre - enough said).

Once you realize that you’ve fallen in love with one album, your interest will be caught and you may purchase an older album of the same band. This not only helps out the band, but also leaves you with over fifteen songs you otherwise wouldn’t have heard had you just listened to the one single that started it all.

Let’s take Kings of Leon’s new album, Only by the Night. Yes, Sex on Fire is an unbelievable song, as is Use Somebody. But Cold Desert and Revelry show a different side of the American rockers, and the band’s previous release, Because of the Times, is completely unlike its successor.

What about the bands that don’t even get onto the radio?? If we stay single-minded when it comes to music, we are missing out on an immeasurable amount of music that deserves to be heard. So, if you hear a catchy song on the radio, take the $12 dive and buy the album – who knows where it could take you?