I think that's what most of us rappers do too often. We put too much information in some of our albums that could actually be on the next ones.
You can't just release double albums and expect people to sit there and devote their time to it.
I didn't really feel that there were any filler tracks on 'The Red Shoes,' but if I were to do that album now, I wouldn't make it so long.
One thing I always hated with CDs is when people started putting 65 to 75 minutes on their albums.
I probably could have gone in depth about a lot of things, but then the album would've been longer. You can't have a short album when you're talking about suicide and cocaine. That's not going to be a short album.
I don't wanna get into that space where a lot of guys now, their solo album is like eight or 10 songs with other people, you don't get an idea of who this guy is. I just wasn't interested in that.
I want to have a huge album that's, like, 18 or 19 tracks. I hate those albums where there's only, like, ten tracks, and you're left thinking, 'Is this it?'
I think there's only eight songs on 'Born to Run' - I don't think it's much more than 35 minutes long. But as you move into it, where every song comes up in the sequence makes a lot of sense - though we weren't thinking about it; we were going on instinct at the time.
I think 12 songs is too much to listen to all at once. When I buy a record, I get to the fifth song, and then I don't get to really hear the rest of the record.
I started running to different albums, and I was starting with the short albums and moving on to the longer albums. I was interested in how they built up, in tempo and intensity. it made me interested in albums again, too.
'Close To The Edge,' we actually had played it from beginning to end before we recorded it in the studio. So we knew how long it was, and we knew it would fit on the album fine, so we didn't do any editing.
It's a double-headed coin, because technology is a convenience but it's stifled our attention spans. At one time, albums had songs that were like ten minutes long, with different variations and chord progressions and changes.
I also don't like to make really big records, because I feel then that the songs don't get enough space to be themselves, so I would never want to make a record that's like seventeen songs.
People don't want to hear the same song 12 times in a row on an album.
The trouble with records is that they're too short.
One thing I always loved about vinyl was the length of a side, around 20 or 22 minutes. That's the perfect length of an attention span for listening time, you know? You could listen and give it all your attention. Put on something that's 70 minutes, and nobody's sticking around past the first 20 or 30 minutes.
I don't know if I'd ever sing a whole album because I don't know if I'd want to hear my voice for more than three or four songs.
I hate the way CDs just drone on for bloody hours and you stop caring.
We toyed with the idea of making it a double album, but I think that would only have confused everybody even more, so we decided to stick with the songs we picked.
As far as what made it on there [The Art of Elegance record], it was tough. It's probably one or two songs too long, but I just couldn't (cut any more). That's what I ended up with. I'm really proud of it.
I didn't enjoy 'Topographic Oceans' at all. It was a double album, and the truth is it was padded out, and I didn't like that. But I was a fan of Yes - still am - and as such, I'm entitled to say what I think.
People often forget this - a vinyl album could only contain a maximum of 20 minutes per side!
My favorite albums are really short.
With vinyl you had twenty-two minutes per side. CDs came along, and you had sixty, seventy, eighty minutes and people felt like they had to fill them up. They were like those Fuji apples from Japan. They look like perfect, super-gigantic versions of American apples.
I didn't want to do a double album. I just felt like the last two records I made were like that, and a lot of records I was buying were like that, and it started to feel like it was too much music to digest at once.
