Author Topic: What do you think about the trend to shorter songs?  (Read 3492 times)

Offline Front-Ranger

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What do you think about the trend to shorter songs?
« on: August 12, 2008, 11:34:07 am »
Not only are recent songs becoming shorter, but old songs are being remixed so they are shorter. In fact, there's a version of "Free Bird" by Lynard Skinnard that is just a little over two minutes long! What do you think of this trend?
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Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: What do you think about the trend to shorter songs?
« Reply #1 on: August 12, 2008, 08:44:00 pm »
Yes? No? Indifferent? Songs are shrinking everyone! This is your chance to have a say about the matter!
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Offline CellarDweller

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Re: What do you think about the trend to shorter songs?
« Reply #2 on: August 12, 2008, 09:51:43 pm »
Really?

I thought songs were getting longer?  In the 50s, wasn't the average time of a song under 3 minutes.

Today some songs go over 4 minutes.


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Offline Brown Eyes

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Re: What do you think about the trend to shorter songs?
« Reply #3 on: August 12, 2008, 10:09:17 pm »

I voted for "Don't mess with classic songs!"

It seems like a terrible idea to edit classic songs to fit some kind of new, trendy format.  But, if new artists or folks writing new songs feel the urge to make them shorter, I guess that's OK as long as the quality is still high.

There are some good, old songs that are short, particularly good, old punk songs. 

But, it's interesting if this really is a trend towards shorter songs these days.  My Dad always tells me about the days in the '60s when it was radical for songs to become long and filled with complex lyrica, a la Bob Dylan.  And, then there were the long, complex songs that highlighted instrumentals, a la Led Zeppelin.  But, then you listen to the studio versions of folks like Hendrix and realize how short some of those songs were in studio-form vs. the really long live versions.

As far as today's market goes, I wonder if the shorter songs reflect shorter attention spans. 

I'll admit that I really feel like my attention span is pretty short these days when it comes to things like watching TV or giving a new song a shot.

Don't even get me started on Bowin and song lengths....

It's really a pretty interesting topic Sister Mod!

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Offline Sheriff Roland

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Re: What do you think about the trend to shorter songs?
« Reply #4 on: August 12, 2008, 11:08:16 pm »
Songs were shorter but complete in the 50's & 60's. The (late) 70's and 80's brought sounds instead of songs; a mood instead of a melody.

Don't know that songs are really getting shorter, but if that's the case, maybe we'll get back to hearing a larger number of songs. In the 60's there were twice as many songs being played on the radio (and making the charts) than later in the 80's. And even fewer offerings were available in the 90's.

I have hundreds of charted songs for each year starting with the early 40's (and a bit less for those decades before the Big Band era). The tunes are all about 3 minutes in length until the rock era (late 50's) when they were shortened (to just over two minutes, on average). The 3 minute hit tune of the early 70's were replaced by album cuts of the late 70's & that's when hit tunes became 4 and 5 minutes long.

Don't have as much information beyong 1990 except for what I already mentioned (about there being as little as half as many charted songs as in the 60's - thanks mostly to the disappearance of the 45 or the singles cassettes.

Guess I didn't really answer the question though. Don't listen to much 'new' music.
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Offline Front-Ranger

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Re: What do you think about the trend to shorter songs?
« Reply #5 on: October 18, 2008, 01:03:01 am »
I love the songs of Gustavo, but sometimes I need to play them repeatedly because they are so short. Recently I bought Narrow Stairs by Death Cab for Cutie and one of the things I really like is that some of the songs are long...about 8 minutes or more.
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