Your Take: To EP, or not to EP

My question would be if it would effect touring. I read somewhere recently that while artists use to tour to support the record, with declining sales its now they release records to support a tour. I have no clue whether a EP would generate as much buzz as a LP.

It’s not very responsible from a sustainability stand-point, that’s for sure.

I shudder at the thought but does this mean that Toby Keith was correct? Are we witnessing the death of albums and entering into a new era of a singles market?

From a fiscal perspective this could be interesting.

More songs on an album are always better than fewer songs. When I’m listening to a CD instead of MP3′s, I like to pop in a disc and have it play for a good 45 minutes to an hour before having to change it.

The one good thing about this approach is that if the first set of six songs turns out to be disappointing from either an artistic or commercial standpoint, it provides an opportunity to possibly change directions with the next release — as opposed to having to wait a year or two or three if a full-length album flops.

Overall, I don’t think that people who have become accustomed to downloading individual tracks are going to be persuaded to shell out for the entire CD, just because it contains fewer songs and the price has been reduced. That type of consumer will likely still only buy individual tracks, unless there’s a substantial discount to buying all six, which probably would not be profitable for the artist and label.

I’d rather wait and have a good, full album from an artist. I’m not an iTunes customer, so I have no sympathy for any of that. There’s something fulfilling about getting 10-15 tracks from an artist at once on a cd, rather than having to put them together like a puzzle. JMO.

Re: Crazybaby’s point: I do think that it must be awfully annoying for people who use CDs to have 2 EPs instead of 1 full length album. That’s a lot more CDs to organize, to store, to put in and out of the CD player.

BORN TO RUN has only 8 songs on it. Do you think it would’ve been better if it had more songs?

Probably not since I hate Springsteen, so let me amend and revise my remark to read “More songs on an album are always better than fewer songs, assuming that one likes the artist and is willing to consider buying one of his/her albums in the first place.”

I’m passing this EP up, for many of the reasons Leeann points to – it will end up more expensive than one full length CD. I have all Blake’s previous releases, but what I’ve heard from this is discouraging. With 10 or more tracks there is a greater chance of there being filler – but there’s also more chance of finding real hidden gems, too. And if “filler” means non-radio singles to the label , which is implied in at least one comment Blake made in an interview – that’s really what I want these days.

I wonder, actually, if at some point in the future, we may see the two EPs repackaged together.

Occasional Hope said: I wonder, actually, if at some point in the future, we may see the two EPs repackaged together.

Good point. I wouldn’t be surprised.

For the record, I don’t know that this route is a bad way to go, but it does seem pointless and possibly detrimental as far as the whole “filler” angle is concerned. Like Blake said, it’s forgiven if a full length album has some duds, but it’s not so acceptable if a six song set does. Of course, he says that none of his six songs are filler, but consumers, such as myself, may beg to differ. And the filler stands out more among six songs as opposed to ten or twelve.

I wanted to like Blake’s album and I was highly disappointed. I honestly enjoyed the original versions of a couple of the tunes I heard before Blake took a strangle hold on them. It puts a bitter taste in my mouth that I spent the same amount for 6 measily songs as I did for an album with 15 songs. I won’t be buying the 2nd edition.

For me – I don’t use I-tunes or mp3s simply because if my computer fails, there goes my music. (Been there, done that). Having just 6 songs on a cd doesn’t go to far and usually it will end up in the stack that I won’t listen to much.

Give the music fans their money’s worth. Produce an excellent product with beginning to end full of songs that mesh well together.

Shooter Jennings just brought out his concept album recently. I wish more artists would do something like that. Engage me as a listener to want to listen to the full product, not a song here and there. Paint a picture, make a movie, get behind the music & behind the story of the song.

I’d suggest an external hard drive rather than a thumb drive though. At this point, I have three to be safe.

I actually like this idea I am not big into downloading songs off of iTunes, or Amazon, and I understand why this is being done back to basic’s

I love this idea, too bad they can’t refer to it as an EP, but if they need to market it a certain way, then whatever. Looking at it as a way to eliminate filler tracks is pretty smart, even though you could probably find many classic full length albums with no filler.

Personally, if this shakes things up a bit, all the better. I’m doing roughly the same thing with my own music by putting out a CD/EP of six songs followed later on by another with maybe six or seven. Two different EPs, two different vibes.

For Christ’s sake, there’s no reason why an artist can’t put out multiple full-length albums a year with no filler.

Because writing good songs is so easy?

Geez, must’ve been right!!

So, Stormy, you subscribe to the “good songwriting is easy” theory?

Because writing good songs is so easy?
No, because recording good songs is. We’re not talking about Dylan or Rodney Crowell here. We’re talking about contemporary country music.

For example: Shelton has one writing credit on this new EP, out of six songs. He can cut tracks by whichever writers he feels like. It’s not a matter of him having to sit down on back porch with his Takamine and come up with twelve masterpieces everytime he wants to cut a record.

Maybe he’s not getting pitched great material, but if so, there’s nothing that says he can’t raid the catalogues of people like Jim Lauderdale, Odie Blackman, Rivers Rutherford, etc. for tunes.

I think the thing a lot of us are overlooking here is this: No one in this kind of setup records filler intentionally (with the occasional royalties related exception). I believe the Hillbilly Bone represents what Shelton, Scott Hendricks and whoever the A&R guy involved was thought would be the most effective collection of six songs. One man’s filler is another man’s classic. We make these judgments after the fact.

@Stormy. That line’s getting kind of old. All disagreements with you are not rooted in the failure of others to correctly read what you write.

@Steve Harvey. Same thing; you can’t record more good songs than are written. You are talking about dozens of artists recording multiple albums a year; that’s many hundreds of songs. I don’t know where you thnk all those good new songs are likely to be coming from. Can you give some examples of years past in which hundreds of good country songs were written?

you can’t record more good songs than are written. You are talking about dozens of artists recording multiple albums a year; that’s many hundreds of songs.
Jon, these aren’t topical songs. They don’t have to date from a twelve month period before the studio session.

Jon: Or, alternately, you can use multiple songwriters.

Not every single song on an album have to be written by the same person. Are you seriously saying it would be impossible to come up with 45 good songs to put on three records out of all of the songs that have been written in the world ever?? Because, like I said, not all songs on an album have to be written by the same person.

Now do you understand why the second part of my post was rather large for you to ignore?

…a filler doesn’t have to be a dud. a good filler is a song that serves a purpose such as highlighting the potential hit-songs, maintaining the mood of an album, keeping or changing the pace, making a statement etc. a dud is a song that you wouldn’t miss in a million years if you hadn’t heard it.

george strait’s albums are perfect examples for using “lesser material” very effectively to round off the whole album. interestingly enough, this seeems to be an art a lot of people are not even able to copy properly. then again, the work ethic of george strait and the people around him is simply exemplary. compared to that the blake sheltons (whom i quite like) of the business look like jokes.

As far as the issue of quality songs, I think we have to ask this question: Does a mainstream country artist want to release a record filled with emotionally dense songwriting? Would that resonate with the audience? I think, as Will Smith said, “…if you go too high, then you’re alienate and they won’t buy.”

You’re underestimating the audience. An “emotionally dense” album mignt not resonate with radio, which admittedly drives sales, but that’s a separate matter from the audience itself being too unsophisticated to appreciate the music.

For one thing, there would be substantial overlap between everyone else’s lists of 100 songs. And how many lists are they supposed to compile over the course of a career?

There’s a reason why “Dreaming Fields” wasn’t a #1 hit. It sure as hell wasn’t because it wasn’t a good enough song.

Are you referring to the Trisha Yearwood song? I don’t think it was released as a single, was it?

Do I believe that Jim really thnks that success at radio is a great measure of what the country audience thinks of records? And who says that emotional density is the only, or even the best measure of an album’s qualiy? Sheesh.

but if this is possible, then why is it that “top” artists such as George Strait, Tim McGraw and others seem to release a few duds per album (and yet they release only at most 1 album a year)?
Because they don’t think the songs are duds. They might not think they’re potential smash hit singles, but I don’t believe many artists would deliberately put a song they believed to be crap on their record, aside from when there’s outside pressure to do so because it might make a potential single.

I’m saying there aren’t that many, unless you’ve got lots of folks doing the same songs over and over.
Which wouldn’t bother me in the slightest. I’d rather have that what we have now – a lot of artists who seem to be recording the same song, slightly altered each time: Country Man, That’s How Country Boys Roll, I’m A Little More Country Than That, etc.
Jim Lauderdale’s song ‘What’s On My Mind’ has been recorded by Gary Allan, Blake Shelton and Lauderdale himself, all of whom brought different things to the song and all of whom cut it across about a four year period. It’s a good song and worked well on the respective albums it appeared on.

I’d much rather hear, say, Tim McGraw, Joe Nichols and Jack Ingram all record, say, Fred Eaglesmith’s ‘Water In The Fuel’ than a lot of the material on their recent albums. I’m sure that as distinct artists with different producers, they could come up with their own, unique versions.

On a semi-related note, whether or not one thinks that albums are too long these days, I reckon songs are. Albums have more filler in wasteful intros and outros than in actual songs. Your average pop single, in my opinion, should be around 2.30 to 3.10 in running time. By pop, I mean popular music as a whole, not the genre, because I start getting flayed.

@RazorX: There is a big difference between country radio’s audience and the few people who purchased Trisha’s album. You have to understand that distinction in order to understand my statement.

I understand the distinction. You said:

Does a mainstream country artist want to release a record filled with emotionally dense songwriting? Would that resonate with the audience?

And then you cited “Dreaming Fields” as a song that aims “too high.” I don’t see anything wrong with aiming higher, especially for album cuts that are not potential hit singles. I’m sure no one ever considered “Dreaming Fields” for single release. If I’m interpreting your statement properly, you’re saying that Yearwood aimed too high in including this song on her album and in doing so alienated her audience. I’m saying that this is exactly the type of song her fans expect from her. Releasing it as a single would likely have jeopardized her position with radio (though they seem to have discarded her anyway), but not every song on an album is recorded with radio in mind, nor should they be.

Of course, I’m from the school that says that song lyrics aren’t poetry.
They are if you take the music bit away. Some are pretty crap poetry, but it’s all poetry nonetheless, just like all music is art.

Brady asks: “Secondly, how many singles is the label going to be pushing from each EP?”

As far as Blake is concerned, he’s said that they’re only releasing “Hilbilly Bone” from this EP and then moving onto the next project for singles.

“artists should record what I think they should record rather than what they think they should record.”
No, I didn’t say that. I mean, I’d like artists to record what I’d like them to record, but that doesn’t mean they should, and I’m sure as hell not thinking they’re going to.

Actually, Johnny Cash managed to spend decades picking great songs.

In the first place, only someone who knows his body of work only through greatest hits compilations would imply that he didn’t turn out plenty of, ah, less than stellar songs. And in the second place, you’re the one that brought up his list of 100 songs in the first place; if that wasn’t what you wanted to talk about, why’d you talk about it? Or do you forget what you’ve written as soon as it’s escaped?

If 3 song writers turn in 1 good to great song each per week, there is your quoata.

Well, actually, no. That would be half my “quota,” which was actually a serious lowball of the requisite number.

Is it really so difficult to believe that all the songwriters in the entire world can come up with more than three good to great songs a week?

Oh, well, if you’re talking about all the songwriters in the entire world, then you’re talking about all the genres in the entire world. So now instead of talking about a steady diet of something like 300 good to great songs year in year out for just 1 album apiece by 30 country artists – that was my “quota,” and remember, Steve was saying there’d be no problem for them to turn out 2 or 3 albums a year each full of good stuff – you’re talking about several orders of magnitude more songs. And yes, I found it difficult to believe that there are thousands, much less tens or hundreds of thousands of good to great songs being written every year. As they say, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. Why don’t you list off a few hundred good songs written, say, in 2000? According to you, it ought to be easy.

Jim, if your point about airplay and sales was simply that there isn’t a strong link in each and every case, then it was a pretty trivial response to Brady’s post. And if the country radio audience isn’t mostly buying what it hears on the radio, how the hell do you know it likes it? In a capitalist society, the basic way of expressing consumption tastes is through buying. Or stealing – but there again, what’s trafficked in in illicit downloads seems to track pretty closely with what’s being sold, which – what a surprise – *generally* tracks with what’s being played. Tweaked or not, your arguments are not only individually dubious, but fundamentally contradictory.

Country radio tries to run through the center of various tastes and demographics so as to appeal to as broad a cross-section as possible. I think that’s pretty obvious.

That you think so serves mostly to show that you don’t know much about radio – at least, not as much as you think you know. This hasn’t been the basic goal of any large commercial format station for the past decade and more; in fact, the basic goal is far more often the opposite – to retain the listening of one or two fairly narrow demographic groups.

As for my personal views, they are that song lyrics are not poetry, and that attempting to gauge the quality of country songs by evaluating the “literary depth” of their lyrics is an enterprise which serves only to demonstrate that its undertaker doesn’t “get” country music in at least one profoundly important way.

he’s putting out 3 of them i think so he can throw 18 songs out a year instead of 12. after that one coming out in august theres supposed to be one out before the year is over with a new single coming out for each. its obviously working because it sold 71,ooo copies its first week. i like the idea because if im walking in walmart and looking around and all i got is 5 bucks and some change and i can get the new blake shelton album im pretty damn happy. not only that instead of putting 12 songs on an album and only 6 of those songs are worth a crap they can choose their best 6 and put them on an album. i bought hillbilly bone and its by far the best album from blake and you will want to listen to every song on it because they’re all pretty damn good. if you dont like it well i guess you can just kiss all them bsers country asses then.