An album should ideally be no longer than 50 minutes, but artists regularly push this boundary and give us albums that are well over an hour long. There are some instances where this works (somehow, all two hours of Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness is worth hearing), but most of the time, these albums are simply too long. Here are seven classic albums that should have been much shorter.
1. The Cure - Disintegration (1989)
Robert Smith had written some excellent pop songs for the Cure during the '80s, but the band's 1989 opus Disintegration almost entirely discards any pop leanings, opting instead for loosely composed gothic jams such as "Pictures of You". Because of its free flowing nature, the songs tend to go on for longer than they need to, resulting in a 70-minute album of just 12 songs.
2. Modest Mouse - The Lonesome Crowded West (1997)
Although Modest Mouse's second LP The Lonesome Crowded West contains the best songs the band ever wrote, this doesn't mean that some of the (74-minute) album's tracks couldn't be shortened. Classic songs such as "Teeth Like God's Shoeshine" and "Lounge (Closing Time)" don't really need to be seven minutes long, while other tracks could be removed altogether. Either "Heart Cooks Brain" or "Out of Gas" could be cut, since they're basically the same song, and "Jesus Christ Was an Only Child" sounds like someone other than Isaac Brock trying to write a Modest Mouse song and not doing a great job.
WARNING: strong language
3. The Olivia Tremor Control - Black Foliage: Animation Music Volume One (1999)
The track listing for Black Foliage: Animation Music Volume One looks a lot like a rap album, in which there are an exorbitant number of tracks, but only about half of them are songs. The Olivia Tremor Control was known for blending pop songwriting with avant-garde sound collages, but the avant-garde elements of Black Foliage take up a bit too much room. If stripped down to just its pop songs, this album could easily be 45 minutes instead of 69.
4. Yo La Tengo - And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out (2000)
Yo La Tengo has released a few albums that go on for over an hour, but the best of these is its 2000 dream pop classic And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out. Though most of the 13 tracks are slightly too long (only one track is under 4 minutes), the real killer here is the final song "Night Falls On Hoboken," which comes in at an absurd 17:42. It's a fine, beautiful song, but it sounds like the band simply chose to play it until no more space was left on the CD.
5. The Notorious B.I.G. - Ready to Die (1994)
In my article for Illmatic's 20th anniversary, I mentioned how that album's brevity is one of its strong points, seeing as how many hip-hop artists feel the need to release 70-minute albums for whatever reason. This entry could have been any hip-hop album, from The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill to Stankonia, but Ready to Die is one of my favorite rap albums, despite the fact that it's 76 minutes long. I probably would have heard Biggie's posthumous album Life After Death a long time ago if I wasn't so intimidated by its even longer 109-minute running time.
WARNING: strong language
6. Fleetwood Mac - Tusk (1979)
Fleetwood Mac's Tusk was the band's first double album, and while the 74-minute running time doesn't bother me so much, this could have easily been split into two different but still great albums. Instead of releasing each disc separately, however, Lindsey Buckingham should have taken his punky, lo-fi experiments such as "The Ledge" and "Not That Funny" and expanded that sound into an entire solo LP, which would have been another classic album under his belt.
7. The Clash - Sandinista! (1980)
The Clash's Sandinista! is a three disc, 144-minute album. There is no reason to release an album that long, even if you are the only band that matters.
WARNING: strong language
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