Album Structure Quotes

I wanted to make an album that plays from the top to bottom and feels together and complete. That's just something that felt important.

I sequence during the entire recording process. The sequencing changes as I'm recording and as I'm listening. From when I'm, like, four songs in, I start trying to figure out which song should come after which. Which is important, and it changes as the album goes.

'Sol Invictus' works like your basic FNM record: the sequencing is an artful job, hustling you politely through all the gentle, harsh, weird surprises that follow - and then when it's over, you get back on the ride and start over, just like Space Mountain.

I believe in doing vinyl. As long as vinyl can still be made into a high-quality standard, I'm going to still make all my records as a side A and a side B because that's how I grew up listening to music.

I realized at a young age that sequence in an album is almost as important as the songs that are on the album.

'Summer Babe' is the start of Pavement front-loading their albums with the catchiest song first.

I grew up in the era of the concept album. What I do now is pick up on singles, and they are their own complete stories; you don't necessarily have to hear the rest of the album because I don't think albums are created like that anymore. They get songs from all over the place.

Cause when you're sequencing a record, you want the listener to stick with it from beginning to end, and in order to do that, you really have to map out the journey from the first song to the last.

I think the best rappers practice concept albums in their work.

When I was growing up, you would put on a KISS record or a UFO or Aerosmith record and listen to it from the first song through the last song. It's been so long since a band has put out a record like that.

It seems when I put together records, as Henley used to say, they're just like movies. They should have action, tension, love scenes, places to relax.

You don't put your only No. 1 single on the last cut of side two!

Every single song on 'Torches' was a little self-contained pop song, so there wasn't any fat on the songs; there wasn't a lot to cut.

What I appreciate about Radiohead's work - and it's most evident in 'Hail to the Thief' - is how the juxtaposition of narratives on the band's albums somehow creates a sense of wholeness.

I strongly believe in the art form of the album.

I'm a fan of records you get and you listen to them from beginning to finish - records where everything is there for a purpose. There was never any filler on those records - it was all well planned out.

My vocation is more in composition really than anything else-building up harmonies using the guitar, orchestrating the guitar like an army, a guitar army. ... I always felt if we were going in to do an album, there should already be a lot of structure already made up so we could get on with that and see what else happened. ... I always believed in the music we did and that's why it was uncompromising. ... I don't think the critics could understand what we were doing.

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 find that albums generally tell a story. Because it's music, it doesn't have to be in chronological order.

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.

My favorite records are, like, The Pretty Things' 'Parachute' and 'S.F. Sorrow' and The Mothers of Invention's 'We're Only in It for the Money' and The Kinks' 'Village Green Preservation Society' - these records that have a story - even if it's not a literal story - because of how they're sequenced and flow. It's like a novel with sound.

I always felt if we were going in to do an album, there should already be a lot of structure already made up so we could get on with that and see what else happened.

'The Awakening' is meant to be listened to in its entirety. Every song ultimately explores a character dealing with life, making mistakes, fighting, trying. But we also live in a singles-type world, and it works on that level, too.

People don't want to hear the same song 12 times in a row on an album.

A lot of people put out albums with sort of crappy songs and a couple of singles because they know no one's going to listen to it anyway. We very much wanted it to be something that you do listen to from beginning to end and had a narrative that was important.