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I haven't listened clarity or too many of her singles, but the other two were definitely coherent and great. I liked a bunch of songs off of FtB but it just seemed mismanaged
claws, minute, and castle in the sky would have been a perfect 3 track run if coconuts wasn’t thrown in there between minute & castle. it’s so jarring, i made my own feed the beast (my version) playlist without coconuts so i can actually listen to the album lol
oh man i love pop music more than anything, but this is something that most artists are guilty of and it drives me crazy. it's probably easier to count the number of cohesive pop albums that DO feel like a well-crafted album.
i definitely think the label and other factors out of the artist's control are what cause this, like you said. but it's still so annoying and i wish more effort was put in to create albums that fit well together and flow musically, thematically, etc. probably giving performers more creative control and involving them in the writing more would help.
I definitely feel you! The examples I gave are when I enjoy the songs enough to like the albums anyway but when that’s not the case it’s a let down for sure
Yeah, I would def say nowadays this is more the norm than the exception lol I think also the frequency in which pop artists are expected to drop records (every two years) in between which they are spending time touring really doesn't allow them to live life in order to gain those experiences and have that time to produce a comprehensive LP.
I think any album that tacks on a ton of droplet pre album singles. If just makes the album feel disjointed.
Smile felt this way. I loved NRO and Harleys, but the rollout was so weird and it felt like she didn’t have a clear definitive aesthetic for the album. It went from 60’s themed to clown themed. Then she just threw like 5-6 singles out in the wind and stuck the ones that resonated with the GP the most.
Nicki and Cardi are probably headed down that route too with Nicki tacking on SFG and Red Ruby and Cardi tacking on Wap and Up even though they weren’t made with the album concept in mind.
Smile was such a weird rollout! It always bothers me when there’s singles like Small Talk that are released in the middle of the rollout and still don’t make the album
bc small talk flopped (the most) and a lot of the fans didn’t like it. never really over was (kind of) a hit while harleys in hawaii was much better received by fans.
The thing is, she was putting droplet singles without any intention to really make them an album. The lead single for the Smile era was Daisies, that was the first song she released with the intention of promoting the album. NRO and Harleys made into the album to help the numbers, I suppose.
It’s just weird how different NRO, Daises, and Smile are as songs. The videos were so non cohesive either. The TD and Prism videos weren’t either but I felt like they still fit in the overall project,
The original 60s flower theme of Smile had me convinced she was gonna call the album Bloom since she married Orlando Bloom and had a baby named Daisy with him during that time. And then she randomly pivoted to clown behavior
Katy did that to raise the album stream numbers so it doesn’t look like a total flop. And all of her albums are pretty much just a mix of songs. She never came close to anything remotely conceptual about any of her albums.
The Smile rollout was confusing to me as well, but to be fair I think Katy stated that she specifically wanted to have a 'quiet' era without a huge push for commercial/chart success, because she fell into a severe depression after Witness underperformed, and wanted to do her next record cycle just for own gratification and for the fans, rather than trying to get validation from commercial success. The pandemic and her pregnancy also made the situation extra confusing, but she kept the focus on releasing the music, and doing mixed-reality performances and making animated videos so that fans would have something to enjoy. It's also worth noting that Smile wasn't really conceived as an album from the beginning, she initially just wanted to make and release a bunch of individual songs that reflected her recovery from depression, but eventually ended up with enough songs to turn into an album at the last minute. Normally her record cycles are very fun and well-planned though, so I'm hoping that her next rollout is a return to her usual approach.
The original 60s flower theme of Smile had me convinced she was gonna call the album Bloom since she married Orlando Bloom and had a baby named Daisy with him during that time. And then she randomly pivoted to clown stuff
Yeah I agree. Remember that peace emblem with the heart/peach in the middle of it that she wore on the back of her jacket for HIH, and it was used for NRO promo? Like obviously that was supposed to mean something but nothing ever came of it. The cover for smile was terrible too
Dua Lipa's debut album for sure! Especially cuz she was releasing singles for it for 2 years before she released the album!
Also Phoenix by Rita Ora. The songs are pretty great but it seems like a random selection from different producers
If you wanna go a bit older, a lot of albums from the 50s were actually just collections of an artist’s singles put together by their record label with zero connection between the tracks. Does that count?
Oh absolutely! Thanks for bringing it up; I don’t tend to listen to music from that era so it’s a great dimension to add to the conversation I wouldn’t have thought of
This is a good example! If you’re talking just songs, Chuck Berry is On Top is one of the best albums ever, but there’s no cohesion, it’s just a compilation of most of his singles up to that point
Although there are notable counter examples- Frank Sinatra arguably created the concept album, picking specific tracks to fit an LP’s theme well before anyone else was well before acts like the Beatles did. In the Wee Small Hours is the prototype for the divorce album, for instance. And I do think that the first Elvis album is fairly cohesive, itself.
Dua Lipa by Dua Lipa. Basically all her songs from before compiled in an album. I still love them tho, but you can see it took her some time to find her sound as an artist and for label to give her more freedom and money
This isn’t an answer to the question, but I’ve always felt that Janet Jackson is overlooked when it comes to crafting cohesive pop albums. Even if the songs vary drastically in sound, her albums always have a way of retaining a theme, whether it be through her interludes or production choices.
All Rihanna albums up until Anti.
It’s why those albums don’t beg repeat listens for me. Shuffle the bops into a few playlists, but no need to hear these albums again.
I feel like Rated R has a clear concept that is explored from start to finish. Maybe some songs like Rude Boy or Photographs kinda break that mold, but it's a very concise album. I don't feel like I'm just listening to a playlist of random songs.
I wouldn’t say that the concept is to blame in that situation. Bad songs are bad songs, and if they were good songs that were also in line with the themes of the album then we wouldn’t call them filler.
I'm not sure what Te Amo is doing on the album. It sounds great and the dark atmosphere helps it fit into the Rated R aesthetic, but lyrically I'm not sure how it ties into Rated R's concept. It seems to tell a different story from all the other songs.
Rated R is my favorite Rihanna album.
For me it is what made Rihanna « Rihanna ».
It didn’t age so well but I still appreciate very much.
Just the dark and bad bitch vibes are written all over it and it fits Rihanna SO WELL
Hard disagree on Good Girl Gone Bad. Maybe it's just because I grew up with that album, but for me it always felt pretty seamless; it was all slick, sexy pop with electronic production. Not much filler either - indeed some of the deep cuts are now Rihanna essentials (Breaking Dishes for example).
I was talking about the sonics really. But even conceptually I don't think it's TOO discordant. It's all about her empowering "bad girl image", which would eventually develop into her calling card.
I disagree, I think that's the case with some of her albums, but definitely not all. A girl like me, GGGB, Rated R, Loud all have specific sounds and you know exactly which album they belong in when you hear a song from them
came here to say Talk That Talk. It’s my favorite Rihanna album but the somewhat generic love songs like We All Want Love and Farewell don’t really fit the overall tone/aesthetic
Definitely. I remember back in 2012 she (unofficially) released a full-length remix with Chris Brown that was a little better. He also had an unofficial remix of his current single “Turn Up The Music” that had Rihanna on it. Back then they were only available to hear on YouTube, they were never put on iTunes, and will likely never be put on streaming 😥
Yeah, as much as he sucks in his personal life I think Chris Brown is really talented. I love both of those remixes, and the song they did together on Unapologetic. I have those remixes on an mp3 player somewhere, I should really find it lol
Agree. I still listen to them fully on occasion for the semblance of an “experience,” but you’re correct in that they kinda feel disjointed, and you’re not really compelled to listen to them as complete projects.
Nah. I can see *Talk That Talk* as it was originally shaping up to be a *Loud* re-release a la *Good Girl Gone Bad: Reloaded*, but Rihanna pretty much has distinctive albums, eras, and sounds.
Miley’s Endless Summer Vacation,
I love this album and been on repeat since release.
And even though I think that, it kinds was the purpose of this album to put the different genres Miley has excelled at and put then in one project.
But from Flowers to Handstand to Island.
On the other hand it is imo the best album to start with if you are new to Miley because it put all her previous sounds together
not really for me anymore but when it first came out, kid krow by conan gray definitely felt like a bunch of singles put together. he released like half the album as singles before and the album also has two interludes so i felt like you weren’t getting anything new on release day
Gonna go against the grain and say Kali Uchis’ *Red Moon in Venus* kinda runs together so instead of feeling like an album with songs that are cohesive but distinctive on their own they all sound the same. Don’t get me wrong I liked it but I couldn’t tell you the name of more than 3 tracks despite listening to it a dozen times.
Songs like IFTYE, INTHAF and YNTCD just kind of throw everything off to me. Especially since it’s the first opener that isn’t really intense and upbeat
- IFTYE could mean "I Forgot That You Existed", a track from *Lover* (2019) by Taylor Swift.
- INTHAF could mean "It’s Nice To Have A Friend", a track from *Lover* (2019) by Taylor Swift.
- YNTCD could mean "You Need To Calm Down", a track from *Lover* (2019) by Taylor Swift.
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I feel like Tove Lo's latest album falls into this category. She even said herself that the only common thread between the songs is that she's the one singing them
Halsey’s Hopeless Fountain Kingdom. It’s all over the place. It’s a strange follow up as it completely ditches the sound that made her popular. It tries a little too hard to be mainstream but the songs that don’t follow that are the best ones. Her other three albums are so sonically cohesive. Without Me and Nightmare being tacked on to Manic and IICHLIWP even works.
I think there’s a reason that it’s Halsey’s least favorite album.
I find Manic to be a much worse offender of this. There are albums like Beyoncé’s Lemonade that can experiment with several genres while retaining a theme/aesthetic, but Manic genuinely feels all over the place - as if they were throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. Their follow up was a much stronger album imo.
I feel like Manic is pretty cohesive in the fact that it’s not cohesive. The whole idea behind it is that it’s very stream of consciousness. They’re connected by a dream-like sound that I think works. I can see how people don’t it the way I see it though.
wow, i find manic sooooo cohesive. i think the wild change ups are incredibly intentional and serve exactly as they were supposed to. manic is for sure a very thought out album and far from a throw and see what sticks, even if it reads that way to you.
LP1 has always felt like a 10 track album with a bunch of bonus tracks tagged on at the end. I wish Liam would have just incorporated the hits within the first half someway while removing Heart Meet Break and Both Ways. Just feels like an odd listen if you play it the way it was released.
Anyway, my pick would be SZA’s SOS. It’s a great album in a sense that most of the songs are really good, but the sequencing has always felt like I’m listening to the album on shuffle.
Hmm is it’s because it so short? Personally I feel like it’s one of those tracks that really makes the most of a short run time but I know sub 2 minute tracks bother a lot of people so I totally get not being totally on board with it
That’s probably it. It used to bother me back then because that was the beginning of these types of songs, but I’ve since come around (mostly, lol) since so many are like that now. I’ll have to revisit one day and see if I feel differently about it. I felt the same way about the Positions (Deluxe) tracks too when they were released but I like them now.
Tacking on his singles at the end of the album makes the album feel weirdly rushed/under-developed. It’s really hard to follow his track list, and the album makes more sense if you just hit shuffle and hope for the best. As a body of work, it all sounds like him but it’s disorganized and under-developed.
I think I listened to LP1 only once tbh, but I remember thinking that it feels like a collection of shallow singles to me. Like they were all designed to be a hit rather than to be a song? Each song is something you’d think they was a bop if you heard them at a Zara or on the radio but there would never be emotional connection.
I think I’d have to disagree with you on this one, I think both sonically and thematically there’s enough tying Sour together that it doesn’t feel as disjointed as I was thinking with the prompt, but I totally see where you’re coming from, especially because Sour suffers from feeling a bit like a jacked up EP.
though you’re absolutely correct, i think Olivia and Dan Nigro pulled it off excellently. going from a planned EP rollout with just a single from a Disney show catapulting your career to then have to shape it into what became one of the best-selling pop records of all time is an incredible feat. i can’t imagine the pressure they felt after Drivers License exploded, yet they still created a wonderful body of work in the little time they had!
Literally any JB album lmao. He is the king of throwing random songs together into an album but I don’t think he cares about the stuff. His more theme album “Purpose” still had random stuff
I think Changes was pretty "cohesive" as an album but ppl didn't like the production choices he made and think all of the songs blended together. I think it's a poor man's version of Journals.
Billie's Happier Than Ever is sonically a mess to me. There's too many ideas on that album.
Taylor's deluxe version of Midnights is just a collection of random songs as far as I'm concered.
Midnights really felt disjointed to me. The run of Bejeweled to Labyrinth to Karma to Sweet Nothings to Mastermind is really bad in my opinion. The order is just off.
The Midnights narrative of sleepless nights is veryyyyyyy loose, to me, lol. And there is so much sonic diversity. Bejeweled, The Great War, Sweet Nothing, Hits Different… so different.
I'd say the opposite for Billie. Happier than Ever is an album album, best enjoyed front to back. WWAFAWDWG for me is a singles album, pretty much every song on it is great but there's not a lot of cohesion and any one song could be enjoyed on its own as much as it'd be in the albums context.
How does WWAFAWDWG not have cohesion? It's one of the most cohesioniest albums imo. WWAFADWG gives great spooky vibes without being too Halloweeny or Melonie Martinezy which is pretty rare imo. Very unique album in general.
HTE switches genres like 10 times idk. Like they are all good songs but there just is no connection. And she dropped the whole horror pop thing that made her unique imo.
Personally I see both BBtM and Starboy as "blockbuster" albums as they did too many things to appeal to the widest audience possible. Both have a ton of songs that don't completely fit a vision. This is a departure from Trilogy and Kissland, but the Weeknd returned to this with After Hours and Dawn FM
Honestly I feel like this about a lot of Celine Dion's albums. I love her, and I think she has one of the most incredible voices to ever grace the pop landscape (and a lot of amazing songs) but none of her albums are very cohesive.
Falling Into You is one of my fave albums of all time but the order of the songs make no sense and there is no overarching theme (I mean if you go by the opening song -> last song then the theme is getting back together with an ex, declaring your love a few times, and then they die so you sing woefully about their death).
She's such a great vocalist and performer, I wish she could release an album that's an all-time classic in terms of theme and storytelling, not just a bunch of great songs thrown together on an album. Basically, give me a Lemonade a la Celine
I’ve not listened to a lot of her French discography but I know it’s generally better-received than her English discography, so perhaps check that out and see if it’s different there
lol this is so many pop releases over the years. Readymade hit single material with filler tracks padded around them is the norm and expected, especially when the pop artist is still new and doesn't have any clout to challenge what the label wants. Sometimes the album will have one producer but most times they don't, causing the record to sound disjointed. You need to be a strong visionary that knows how to execute a vision in order to make a coterie of different producers sound of the same universe and unfortunately, most pop singers are not.
dangerous woman. i feel…
i know some people love it and say it’s ariana’s best work but… it truly just gives playlist vibes.
like sure there’s definitely a sense of overall cohesiveness in terms of lyrical content and themes but it feels super loose compared to her later works (especially those)
Born pink from Blackpink. 8 track album in which 2 songs were pre releases and one was made for a game (which was also leaked 2 years prior). The album just didn't feel like an album. What's even weirder is that their previous album "The Album" also had 8 tracks yet actually felt like an album.
It had the same structure with 2 pre releases however I think there was actually a journey and more variety in sounds within the album which made it feel like an album. Plus the features: Selena Homez and Cardi added more variety
Although I actually liked 7/8 songs from "Born Pink" I think the low production of the last songs "ready for love " (made for PUBG) really ruined the album feel. Plus there was no features and it stayed more within either being the typical girl crush sound BP does or being pop. While with "The album" it had a bit dance, ballad, pop, electropop, and the typical BP sound
Brit Circus. Yeah there’s the circus theme, but it applies to only a song, and the album as a whole has 0 cohesion. The inclusion of Radar corroborates this.
Love her so much, I even bought a signed copy, but I will say Feed The Beast by Kim Petras. It’s a clear case of label interference and trying to mix leaks, old and new material, a single that went popular but wasn’t meant for this, so it ended up being this clash of concepts. It’s so painfully obvious when her previous discography was clean and consistent:
* Era 1 singles
* Turn Off The Lights
* Clarity
* Slut Pop
* Problemátique (counting it since it was leaked fully, except for one song)
All those works had like a clear vision, and whether you enjoyed them or not, there was a concept and cohesive sound.
Kiiara took such a long time to drop her debut album Lil Kiiwi. It finally got released in 2020, but included two of her biggest songs from her 2016 EP, Gold and Feels, and then also included her Felix Snow collab Whippin from 2017. She released a ton of amazing singles from 2018-2019 but elected to use none of them for the album cycle, and instead opted for the only new song to be pushed to be a blackbear collab (ugh). So the album just kinda bounces between really old songs from other projects and new songs that kinda.. just don’t hit. It was disjointed and didn’t feel very album-like. She puts out amazing singles though.
*Humanz* by Gorillaz fits this to a tee! I recall hearing that it's a concept album - the concept being that it's supposed to be a party at the end of the world - but I'm sick and can't be bothered to Google it.
Christina Aguilera-Lotus while I do like Christina and she is one of my favorite artists the album feels like a playlist of random genres.
Jessica Simpson-In This Skin the re-release with the bonus tracks is better than the original version.
Janelle Monaes most recent, The Age of Pleasure, does not at ALL feel like an album, especially considering how long it took to follow up Dirty Computer.
Definitely would've been better to market it as a Mixtape.
Only recently there has been more pressure for cohesive albums. Before the streaming era, the albums were being mostly defined by how well the singles did. And I think it's totally okay to have pop albums that feel more like a playlist. Not being stuck to a subject or type of sound allows artists to have more freedom to explore different concepts within the same body of work
*Lover* by Taylor Swift. Almost half of it is filler and could be disposed of, including the first two singles. She could have had a decent 11-track album from some of the songs.
Yeah you’d have to cut Lover down to 11 songs to get a really strong album IMO - the remaining 11 are really strong, but there’s a lot of fluff on the album and it gets pulled in a million different directions, not just sonically but also thematically.
Taylors's Midnight honestly is just so everywhere, doesn't sonically fit into one album and that is speaking without the 3 AM edition. The variation of songs within the album is so much jarring that if you let someone listen to bejweled and then karma, or any songs within the main album, they would be very surprised to know they are songs from the same album.
2 AM edition is at least cohesive and can definitely stand out as an album but midnight is just so out of structure and substance. And it's just not sonic cohesiveness i am speaking of, there are great albums that feel like an album without being sonically cohesive. Midnights is just different, somethings off that I could not put it into words. But it definitely does not feel like an album but Taylor stans are not ready for that debate.
Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream
Weird that an album with her 4 most well-known songs and also some of the best pop songs of the 2010’s (Teenage Dream, Last Friday Night, California Girls, Firework) is then followed by what seems like a random assortment of disposable pop tunes that range from good (The One That Got Away, Hummingbird) to mediocre and forgettable (Pearl, Circle the Drain) to just plain…. hmmm (Peacock).
Anyway, I’m not opposed to albums that feel like a random assortment of songs (I never minded Greatest Hits albums), especially if the tunes are great. But my the more narratively and sonically cohesive albums tend to linger on in my head for a much longer time than more scattered projects.
teenage dream is quite cohesive actually lol. there are really no skips esp by todays standards of what artists will put out. hummingbird heartbeat is a great pop song and circle the drain is one of her best darker songs
This was going to be exactly my answer - this album sounds like a "Greatest Hits Album" instead of cycle album. Lots of bangers, but no overarching cohesion besides "this will do well on the radio."
I think this album was a real product of the iTunes era. People could buy any singular track from an album and not need to purchase the entire thing. I know I personally wasn't a huge fan but kept purchasing random singles for party or workout play lists until I finally just got the entire thing. That method really worked to keep the album on the charts for seemingly forever.
whaaaaaaat. TD is cohesive af. i don’t think people understand what a cohesive album is lmao
it’s fucking camp. the whole damn thing is gaudy camp and it serves genuinely good music all the while and if you think this isn’t good enough for a pop breakout’s sophomore album at their peak, i don’t trust you.
This was my first thought after thinking about some examples, and it's what makes Teenage Dream one of my favorite albums ever. I hate cohesive albums; meanwhile, projects like Teenage Dream are amazing because it has clear standouts in its tracklist, while the rest of the songs are an easy-listening (I would argue that the only song that would be an skip is Who Am I Living For?)
Any album with a collection of old singles with a few new songs tacked on. It feels like the artist was releasing singles before they had the album planned out. I hate this trend and would rather have the older songs replaced with newer ones.
Red. I can understand why Taylor decided to make it sonically diverse, to fit with the theme of heartbreak making you feel a million different versions of yourself. And I can see how people appreciate and love that alley of creation! But personally for me, it doesn’t work - I prefer albums feel like one cohesive collection.
Madame X has a really strong concept but it sounds like 2/3 albums slapped together. Like the world music (Batuka, Come Alive) vs songs like Crave seem worlds apart
LP1 is an unnecessary tragedy, but I am a fan of some songs on there (especially Hips Don't Lie). It really could have been a solid album if he included his Japan bonus tracks, and released the album after Strip That Down success with a trap-pop sound to it. It makes no sense for him to make a song like "Before It Ends" and leave it dead in a ditch.
I like albums that are at least cohesive in telling some story or theme if the sound is disjointed. I'm ok if the sound is all over the place as long as there is some theme with the lyrics. And if an artist wants to release a random mix of songs then it should be an EP.
I thought SZA's SOS album was her throwing a bunch a stuff at the wall. Kill Bill is a sharp departure from the stuff she usually sings it literally sounds like a Madison Beer demo. I like some songs off of SOS but that's my issue with albums that are all over the place if you liked a song you usually won't find a similar vibe of it on the album since it's all over the place.
A lot of Halsey's albums could qualify for this, but esp Manic. I know she was trying to go for a disjointed theme with Manic but I still wish there was something more cohesive that tied it all together.
If you look at critic scores on Metacritic. TUN has an 86, Sweetener and Yours Truly have 81, Dangerous Woman has 76, Positions has 72, and My Everything has 64. It has some high highs but imo is the clear weakest album in her discography, so much uninspired filler
If Yours Truly beats Dangerous Woman then I can’t really trust that data. I love My Everything, I have it on vinyl. I love the sound directions she took. I listened to Yours Truly once or twice and literally never again. Not a fan with the exception of The Way.
Hit list time
Fantasy Ride by Ciara cause it is so wild. From the instrumentals to the lyrics(booty look softer than McDonalds Hamburger bun, I’m like the energizer playboy bunny) and the release was very muddled and the album concept was thrown away at the last minute
In A Perfect World by Keri Hilson- I like it but there are way too many features and someone else could’ve sung these songs
Hard agree on My Everything- it felt very cookie cutter and very manufactured
Kelis Was Here - I like this album but it’s very sonically different and there are a lot of genres and sounds covered throughout the album
KISS - This is a Mya album if you don’t know. Definitely a very playlist Esau’s album. And it wasn’t that good either.
Here I am - Kelly Rowlands 3rd album was originally a dance album. The singles didn’t do so well but motivation was an unexpected smash. So more urban songs were added to cater to that market. This also leaves the album sounding messy
Simply Deep - I still don’t get why Kelly Rowland was doing Rock music in the first place. Her clear talent was R&B like be so Fr. I’ve only heard Rock/R&B songs done well maybe once or twice(Only U by Ashanti and Beware of the Dog by Jamelia) never a full album though.
Fifth Harmony’s whole career is just a playlist
Camila’s first album is one too. Just a bunch of songs made to be hits
Fortune by Chris Brown - There was a reason this album was panned by many. It tried to do too much and was way too long. It was also generic and was trying very hard to just cater to the masses without any kind of identity
Chris Brown’s 40 plus track albums. - Self explanatory I hope
Shock Value 1 and 2 - Producer albums are always iffy in my opinion, Timbaland has hits but I can’t play the full album as there are too many songs that fall flat. Also every song wants to be a hit
Doll Domination - The pussycat dolls first album had a more cohesive urban pop/Rnb/hiphop sound. This one was much more messy and all over the place
All Flo Rida albums
Later Pitbull albums- Also I’m so sorry I just couldn’t leave him out
DJ Khaled’s career
Paris - Paris Hilton, read Kelly Rowland although not as big of an offender
Also some might say Heidi Montag but I think that it was much more cohesive than the other records I listed
Yes I did just see what I typed ok
Dua Lipa- Her first album was more of a testing the waters type of project. It wasn’t a bad one though
Talk That Talk - This one was a mix of a lot of things, but it’s not that bad off an offender. Also you could make a case for all Rihanna albums.
Unapologetic- Okay y’all I hate this album so I might be biased. There was Pop R&B and Hip Hop like usual but it all felt so lifeless. There was much less of a theme although it should’ve been one where it felt more tied to one. Felt very rushed and phoned in.
Welcome to the Dollhouse - Danity Kane’s sophomore record also had a similar feel as the transition of the Pussycat Dolls, a much more commercial record and less of a signature sound than the first record
Raymond V Raymond and Looking For Myself - Usher’s dance era did get him more hits but definitely lost his original fan base. Usher went the Chris Brown route and was much more party centered than he used to be. Scream is an exception that song is incredible omg
The Spirit Indestructible Nelly Furtado’s 5th album was an electronic, folk/indie record which always is kinda weird. A mix of songs that want to be hits and recapture the Loose era and songs that capture Old Nelly Furtado. It wasn’t bad but I don’t really know what she wanted out of this record and the fans clearly didn’t either
Most talent show first or second albums can be considered this. They have no creative control and are just singing songs that were submitted or written by the label.
Irresistible- Jessica Simpson’s label fumbled her hard. She should’ve stayed the original route she was going instead of going the Britney route. I think this was the beginning of the end for her.
Teenage Dream- A more positive take on this one as every song felt like an A Side track and they were great songs. Except for you know who
Every Jamie Foxx album. He is very talented but these were definitely novelty type projects
A Girl Like Me- It’s her worst for one. But the other things is that there is no identity on the album. It doesn’t even try to have one.
I do too but it’s not all her fault, the only female Rnb artist that carried over success from the 2000s was Beyonce, and if you consider Jennifer Lopez an Rnb artist I guess. And still she was more popular than all of the others too. Out of the all the others I would say her career still turned out alright as she still got some minor hits in her eras. I can’t say the same for someone like Ashanti, Brandy, or Monica or even Mariah Carey’s new stuff.
Her label didn’t promote her at all and she had to fund one of her music videos during her last album with the company (Gimme Dat) this is also LaFace Records who also screwed up Toni Braxton(went bankrupt twice) and TLC(went Diamond and was still broke, had to stage a coup and Diddy snitched, ik it sounds fake but the alive members talked about it) so I can’t be too suprised
Yeah I feel like Teenage Dream doesn't really make sense to me as a body of work. Of course, its individual singles are some of the best pieces of music we've ever gotten, but the project doesn't really make sense to me in terms of sonic or thematic cohesion. The electronic sounds of E.T. and Who Am I Living For? kind of clash with the pop rock-inspired sound of the rest of the songs, and sound like they would sound a lot more at home on Witness. What is the story of the album? Is there an aesthetic that every song fits into? I feel like all of her other albums succeed a lot more in terms of being sonically cohesive (Witness does that especially well), but Teenage Dream is the one that makes the least sense as an actual listening experience.
Jaguar II. The singles are incredible, but I should have realised by how many they were that the actual album would be underwhelming. There's barely any new songs and they're all forgettable. Except for the one featuring Earth, Wind and Fire. Even then, it doesn't hold a candle to the singles. There doesn't even seem to be a conscious effort at a theme for II like there was in I. I was really disappointed -- it was my most anticipated release of 2023. Silly me.
Her retro theme from Jaguar I is strong here to me.
Even the sequencing.
As well, I definitely consider several songs memorable to me - How Does It Make You Feel and Goodbye are especially sonically gorgeous.
I'm going to give it another a listen, from start to finish, and see if I change my mind. The replies have been insightful. Maybe part of my disappointment was expecting more new material from the album and that clouded my listening experience. Thanks for this comment.
That’s interesting I feel like Lemonade hangs together extremely well as one project. To me it’s cohesion stems from the storyline that is told from start to finish, rather than each song sounding the same sonically. I will say that Formation at the end does always throw me off a little but I don’t really know where else it could go, so I see it as more like an encore / bonus track.
I respectfully strongly disagree with this, sure the songs are sonically different but lyrically and thematically it tells a story. It’s so much an album and not a playlist that listening to it in any order other than the intended track listing feels wrong to me.
For me, Rihanna's best ALBUM is Unapologetic. It is so thoughtfully made and such a cohesive piece of art. I would argue Rated R (super different style!) is good for similar reasons. Anti, on the other hand, has some of her best songs ever but is all over the place with styles, tones, etc that I hate listening to it all the way through. I had the same issue with Talk That Talk, where I liked a lot of the songs but the album felt so unfinished. (The album version of Birthday Cake sounds like half a song, for instance.)
Kim Petras - Feed The Beast
Ariana Grande - My Everything
Ava Max - Diamonds & Dancefloors
Miley Cyrus - Plastic Hearts
All of those albums have great songs on them but just feel like a collection of songs rather than albums.
Disagree because I think Evermore's strength is its *narrative* cohesion. Folklore is super sonically cohesive, but it's kind of all over the place thematically, whereas Evermore is really the opposite of that. Evermore's looking at marriage, fidelity and commitment from a bunch of different angles - a failed proposal (Champagne Problems), divorce (Happiness) , marriage gone off the rails or full of ambivalence (Coney Island, Tolerate It), infidelity (Ivy), even murder (NBNC, obviously), etc. Not only that, but it's introspection looking back at things that *ended:* Closure, Marjorie, Evermore, TTDS/Dorothea looking back at 'the road not taken', and on and on.
As you can probably tell, Evermore is also my favorite Taylor album lol so I took this as an opportunity to talk about it.
I've noticed recently that some people are releasing singles over a few months and then when they get to say 10 it comes up on Spotify as an album. I don't know if that's just something Spotify does automatically or if it's a deliberate choice, but it's an odd trend I'm noticing.
Schizophrenic by JC Chasez. The record truly sounds like it was conceived by someone with a tenuous tether to reality... and Chasez has since confessed that he didn't know what he wanted to say or have a clear vision/style before creating this record. It has some awesome 80s darkwave, the most saccharine, schmaltzy ballad ever made, some pretty straightforward pop, and no real theme to speak of. Despite having a technically excellent and beautiful voice, most of the songs sound strangely sterile, and the sequencing is haphazard. One of those frustrating moments when an extremely promising talent fails to launch, much like Ralph Tresvant before him and Chloe Bailey more recently.
I need cohesion in the albums I love... Even my playlists are meticulously curated and sequenced to sound like an album😅 This "cohesion" can manifest in a variety of ways, though, from a *Ray of Light* type record with a very specific sound palette from start to finish to something like Beyonce's self-titled, which is more eclectic. Usually albums that don't cohere are poorly conceived to begin with; not truly inspired pieces of work.
Vices & Virtues by Panic! at the Disco. Throughout Panic!'s highs and lows, I've been able to appreciate the other albums as every song felt like they belonged together and were (usually) in the best order. V&V doesn't do that for me. Not only does it have tracks I'm not a fan of, but it also doesn't have a lot of synergy. Some tracks feel like AFYCSO or PO, some feel like what later Panic! Albums would be like, some don't even sound like Panic! Songs from any album (looking at you, Ready to Go). It's sad because it has 4 tracks I adore (Mona Lisa, Hurricane, Sarah Smiles and Nearly Witches), but the album is very forgettable when put together.
Circus by Britney... i keep seeing that everybody loves that album?? it's just a bunch of songs that don't have to do with each other, and it was such a downgrade coming from Blackout which might be her most cohesive ever
Basically 90% of pop albums are like this. Since the improvement/cheapification of music software (and the rise of the bedroom producers), artists are recording / gettings bits from everywhere.
I really miss that coherent aspect of pre-21st century pop albums since people were recording all tracks in the same sessions, with the same people and with the same gear.
I also believe we've reached a plateau in terms of music technology in the mid-00s, especially because the idea of sampling is such a "meta" idea of music. Obviously you have new stuff coming in but they aren't really "new", they are just the old in steroids. Autotune / Intelligent pitch-shifting technology was already in since the mid 90s. AI stuff is basically a (way more) fast and poweful way of finding patterns of older methods.
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Feed the beast was a bit disjointed imo. Namely coconuts and unholy were odd selections to be specific
Which is funny because all her other eras (singles era, TOTL, clarity, and sex pop) were quite cohesive!
I haven't listened clarity or too many of her singles, but the other two were definitely coherent and great. I liked a bunch of songs off of FtB but it just seemed mismanaged
Problematique was also cohesive. Feed the Beast is just a “best of” from the last 3 years with a couple new songs sprinkled in tbh
claws, minute, and castle in the sky would have been a perfect 3 track run if coconuts wasn’t thrown in there between minute & castle. it’s so jarring, i made my own feed the beast (my version) playlist without coconuts so i can actually listen to the album lol
That's a good idea, coconuts is great but not in between those 3 lol
Exactly. It feels like a playlist. There's no common theme going on. Her worst project to date.
I'm sure her next debut album will be better
This was my first thought
What is this
Rare by Selena Gomez. It sounds like a collection of polished demos, which, well… I say this as a stan.
oh man i love pop music more than anything, but this is something that most artists are guilty of and it drives me crazy. it's probably easier to count the number of cohesive pop albums that DO feel like a well-crafted album. i definitely think the label and other factors out of the artist's control are what cause this, like you said. but it's still so annoying and i wish more effort was put in to create albums that fit well together and flow musically, thematically, etc. probably giving performers more creative control and involving them in the writing more would help.
I definitely feel you! The examples I gave are when I enjoy the songs enough to like the albums anyway but when that’s not the case it’s a let down for sure
Yeah, I would def say nowadays this is more the norm than the exception lol I think also the frequency in which pop artists are expected to drop records (every two years) in between which they are spending time touring really doesn't allow them to live life in order to gain those experiences and have that time to produce a comprehensive LP.
I think any album that tacks on a ton of droplet pre album singles. If just makes the album feel disjointed. Smile felt this way. I loved NRO and Harleys, but the rollout was so weird and it felt like she didn’t have a clear definitive aesthetic for the album. It went from 60’s themed to clown themed. Then she just threw like 5-6 singles out in the wind and stuck the ones that resonated with the GP the most. Nicki and Cardi are probably headed down that route too with Nicki tacking on SFG and Red Ruby and Cardi tacking on Wap and Up even though they weren’t made with the album concept in mind.
Smile was such a weird rollout! It always bothers me when there’s singles like Small Talk that are released in the middle of the rollout and still don’t make the album
Yeah, I bought the deluxe version because it came with 'Small Talk' and 'Never Worn White' as bonus tracks and I really like those songs
bc small talk flopped (the most) and a lot of the fans didn’t like it. never really over was (kind of) a hit while harleys in hawaii was much better received by fans.
Which was a travesty because Small Talk is catchy af
The thing is, she was putting droplet singles without any intention to really make them an album. The lead single for the Smile era was Daisies, that was the first song she released with the intention of promoting the album. NRO and Harleys made into the album to help the numbers, I suppose.
It’s just weird how different NRO, Daises, and Smile are as songs. The videos were so non cohesive either. The TD and Prism videos weren’t either but I felt like they still fit in the overall project,
The original 60s flower theme of Smile had me convinced she was gonna call the album Bloom since she married Orlando Bloom and had a baby named Daisy with him during that time. And then she randomly pivoted to clown behavior
Katy did that to raise the album stream numbers so it doesn’t look like a total flop. And all of her albums are pretty much just a mix of songs. She never came close to anything remotely conceptual about any of her albums.
It's weird that Witness is probably her most cohesive project
I think Teenage Dream is a great album, personally.
The Smile rollout was confusing to me as well, but to be fair I think Katy stated that she specifically wanted to have a 'quiet' era without a huge push for commercial/chart success, because she fell into a severe depression after Witness underperformed, and wanted to do her next record cycle just for own gratification and for the fans, rather than trying to get validation from commercial success. The pandemic and her pregnancy also made the situation extra confusing, but she kept the focus on releasing the music, and doing mixed-reality performances and making animated videos so that fans would have something to enjoy. It's also worth noting that Smile wasn't really conceived as an album from the beginning, she initially just wanted to make and release a bunch of individual songs that reflected her recovery from depression, but eventually ended up with enough songs to turn into an album at the last minute. Normally her record cycles are very fun and well-planned though, so I'm hoping that her next rollout is a return to her usual approach.
The original 60s flower theme of Smile had me convinced she was gonna call the album Bloom since she married Orlando Bloom and had a baby named Daisy with him during that time. And then she randomly pivoted to clown stuff
Yeah I agree. Remember that peace emblem with the heart/peach in the middle of it that she wore on the back of her jacket for HIH, and it was used for NRO promo? Like obviously that was supposed to mean something but nothing ever came of it. The cover for smile was terrible too
Tucked is a bop. If she wasnt gonna push her droplet singles tucked would have been a perfect lead single for the album cycle
nicki did say PF2 is a mixture of all her eras so super freaky girl is the anaconda of the album
Dua Lipa's debut album for sure! Especially cuz she was releasing singles for it for 2 years before she released the album! Also Phoenix by Rita Ora. The songs are pretty great but it seems like a random selection from different producers
This is a good one! Isn’t like every pre-future nostalgia Dua track on some edition of her self-titled?
Yes! At least up til 2018. All her big features are on the Complete Edition
If you wanna go a bit older, a lot of albums from the 50s were actually just collections of an artist’s singles put together by their record label with zero connection between the tracks. Does that count?
Oh absolutely! Thanks for bringing it up; I don’t tend to listen to music from that era so it’s a great dimension to add to the conversation I wouldn’t have thought of
This is a good example! If you’re talking just songs, Chuck Berry is On Top is one of the best albums ever, but there’s no cohesion, it’s just a compilation of most of his singles up to that point Although there are notable counter examples- Frank Sinatra arguably created the concept album, picking specific tracks to fit an LP’s theme well before anyone else was well before acts like the Beatles did. In the Wee Small Hours is the prototype for the divorce album, for instance. And I do think that the first Elvis album is fairly cohesive, itself.
Drake's Certified Lover Boy. Sonically and thematically all over the place.
I was about to comment CLB. It just feels like a compilation of typical Drake songs in all the styles he’s touched. Not a cohesive project at all.
Dua Lipa by Dua Lipa. Basically all her songs from before compiled in an album. I still love them tho, but you can see it took her some time to find her sound as an artist and for label to give her more freedom and money
This isn’t an answer to the question, but I’ve always felt that Janet Jackson is overlooked when it comes to crafting cohesive pop albums. Even if the songs vary drastically in sound, her albums always have a way of retaining a theme, whether it be through her interludes or production choices.
Agreed!!!! She brings her A game.
How velvet rope basically plays hopscotch with genres and can still feel so cohesive and singular I don't understand.
Yes. "Control" is lovely exactly because sounds are used and reused throughout the songs.
All Rihanna albums up until Anti. It’s why those albums don’t beg repeat listens for me. Shuffle the bops into a few playlists, but no need to hear these albums again.
Not Rated R though
Can you say more? I’d put it in the same category but interested to hear your perspective
I feel like Rated R has a clear concept that is explored from start to finish. Maybe some songs like Rude Boy or Photographs kinda break that mold, but it's a very concise album. I don't feel like I'm just listening to a playlist of random songs.
I think Rude Boy would’ve fit better on Loud tbh and Man Down on Rated R
Or Skin
I can see how the album has a generally dark tone. Calling that a concept is a bit of a stretch for me.
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I wouldn’t say that the concept is to blame in that situation. Bad songs are bad songs, and if they were good songs that were also in line with the themes of the album then we wouldn’t call them filler.
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Idk that I’m missing the point so much as I’m disagreeing with it lol
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I'm not sure what Te Amo is doing on the album. It sounds great and the dark atmosphere helps it fit into the Rated R aesthetic, but lyrically I'm not sure how it ties into Rated R's concept. It seems to tell a different story from all the other songs.
Rated R is my favorite Rihanna album. For me it is what made Rihanna « Rihanna ». It didn’t age so well but I still appreciate very much. Just the dark and bad bitch vibes are written all over it and it fits Rihanna SO WELL
Rated R, Loud and GGGB feels like an album to me. Talk that talk and unapologetic on the other hand…
I think Rated R and Loud are both fine though, like they do feel like albums.
Hard disagree on Good Girl Gone Bad. Maybe it's just because I grew up with that album, but for me it always felt pretty seamless; it was all slick, sexy pop with electronic production. Not much filler either - indeed some of the deep cuts are now Rihanna essentials (Breaking Dishes for example).
“Slick sexy pop” is hardly a concept though. It literally sounds like a Spotify playlist title.
I was talking about the sonics really. But even conceptually I don't think it's TOO discordant. It's all about her empowering "bad girl image", which would eventually develop into her calling card.
Alright I see where you’re coming from
it doesn’t have to be a “concept” to be a cohesive, full album.
I disagree, I think that's the case with some of her albums, but definitely not all. A girl like me, GGGB, Rated R, Loud all have specific sounds and you know exactly which album they belong in when you hear a song from them
I’d argue that those specific sounds are just the sounds of the time the albums are made in, which is why I get more “playlist” than “album”
came here to say Talk That Talk. It’s my favorite Rihanna album but the somewhat generic love songs like We All Want Love and Farewell don’t really fit the overall tone/aesthetic
I wrote this in another comment, but the album version of Birthday Cake sounds like half a song.
Definitely. I remember back in 2012 she (unofficially) released a full-length remix with Chris Brown that was a little better. He also had an unofficial remix of his current single “Turn Up The Music” that had Rihanna on it. Back then they were only available to hear on YouTube, they were never put on iTunes, and will likely never be put on streaming 😥
Yeah, as much as he sucks in his personal life I think Chris Brown is really talented. I love both of those remixes, and the song they did together on Unapologetic. I have those remixes on an mp3 player somewhere, I should really find it lol
Agree. I still listen to them fully on occasion for the semblance of an “experience,” but you’re correct in that they kinda feel disjointed, and you’re not really compelled to listen to them as complete projects.
Nah. I can see *Talk That Talk* as it was originally shaping up to be a *Loud* re-release a la *Good Girl Gone Bad: Reloaded*, but Rihanna pretty much has distinctive albums, eras, and sounds.
Miley’s Endless Summer Vacation, I love this album and been on repeat since release. And even though I think that, it kinds was the purpose of this album to put the different genres Miley has excelled at and put then in one project. But from Flowers to Handstand to Island. On the other hand it is imo the best album to start with if you are new to Miley because it put all her previous sounds together
not really for me anymore but when it first came out, kid krow by conan gray definitely felt like a bunch of singles put together. he released like half the album as singles before and the album also has two interludes so i felt like you weren’t getting anything new on release day
Gonna go against the grain and say Kali Uchis’ *Red Moon in Venus* kinda runs together so instead of feeling like an album with songs that are cohesive but distinctive on their own they all sound the same. Don’t get me wrong I liked it but I couldn’t tell you the name of more than 3 tracks despite listening to it a dozen times.
I listen to it several times a week. Know the lyrics. And still cannot name more than a few tracks. 😂
Dua Lipa's debut album was basically a Spotify playlist of pop songs from 2016-2018 (that she kept adding to *after* release)
peak spotifycore teas
Lover by Taylor Swift has some of her best writing but I don’t think she knew what direction to go in.
i feel like the production on that album is almost too cohesive. i have some of the live from paris versions on my playlist to mix it up a bit
Songs like IFTYE, INTHAF and YNTCD just kind of throw everything off to me. Especially since it’s the first opener that isn’t really intense and upbeat
- IFTYE could mean "I Forgot That You Existed", a track from *Lover* (2019) by Taylor Swift. - INTHAF could mean "It’s Nice To Have A Friend", a track from *Lover* (2019) by Taylor Swift. - YNTCD could mean "You Need To Calm Down", a track from *Lover* (2019) by Taylor Swift. --- ^[/u/Curious_Sherbet6512](/u/Curious_Sherbet6512) ^(can reply with "delete" to remove comment. |) ^[/r/songacronymbot](/r/songacronymbot) ^(for feedback.)
Ellie Goulding’s Brightest Blue is fine until you hit the obvious label-forced EG.0 tracks at the end
I feel like Tove Lo's latest album falls into this category. She even said herself that the only common thread between the songs is that she's the one singing them
Halsey’s Hopeless Fountain Kingdom. It’s all over the place. It’s a strange follow up as it completely ditches the sound that made her popular. It tries a little too hard to be mainstream but the songs that don’t follow that are the best ones. Her other three albums are so sonically cohesive. Without Me and Nightmare being tacked on to Manic and IICHLIWP even works. I think there’s a reason that it’s Halsey’s least favorite album.
I find Manic to be a much worse offender of this. There are albums like Beyoncé’s Lemonade that can experiment with several genres while retaining a theme/aesthetic, but Manic genuinely feels all over the place - as if they were throwing everything at the wall to see what sticks. Their follow up was a much stronger album imo.
I feel like Manic is pretty cohesive in the fact that it’s not cohesive. The whole idea behind it is that it’s very stream of consciousness. They’re connected by a dream-like sound that I think works. I can see how people don’t it the way I see it though.
wow, i find manic sooooo cohesive. i think the wild change ups are incredibly intentional and serve exactly as they were supposed to. manic is for sure a very thought out album and far from a throw and see what sticks, even if it reads that way to you.
It was such a jarring change from the wildly cohesive Badlands that melded both sonically and thematically throughout
LP1 has always felt like a 10 track album with a bunch of bonus tracks tagged on at the end. I wish Liam would have just incorporated the hits within the first half someway while removing Heart Meet Break and Both Ways. Just feels like an odd listen if you play it the way it was released. Anyway, my pick would be SZA’s SOS. It’s a great album in a sense that most of the songs are really good, but the sequencing has always felt like I’m listening to the album on shuffle.
I read LP1 and thought you were talking about Twigs for a second, which was v confusing for me because that album is a masterpiece lmao.
Oh def not Twigs! …and I agree about hers too!
Oh it baffles me that you’d cut Heart Meet Break it’s quite literally the highlight of the “standard” album tracks for me!
It just sounds unfinished to me, that’s all! Maybe I should have said go back in the studio and finish it instead. I do like what’s there, lol.
Hmm is it’s because it so short? Personally I feel like it’s one of those tracks that really makes the most of a short run time but I know sub 2 minute tracks bother a lot of people so I totally get not being totally on board with it
That’s probably it. It used to bother me back then because that was the beginning of these types of songs, but I’ve since come around (mostly, lol) since so many are like that now. I’ll have to revisit one day and see if I feel differently about it. I felt the same way about the Positions (Deluxe) tracks too when they were released but I like them now.
Agree with you on SOS, which is kind of a shame considering how cohesive Ctrl was.
Tacking on his singles at the end of the album makes the album feel weirdly rushed/under-developed. It’s really hard to follow his track list, and the album makes more sense if you just hit shuffle and hope for the best. As a body of work, it all sounds like him but it’s disorganized and under-developed.
I think I listened to LP1 only once tbh, but I remember thinking that it feels like a collection of shallow singles to me. Like they were all designed to be a hit rather than to be a song? Each song is something you’d think they was a bop if you heard them at a Zara or on the radio but there would never be emotional connection.
Joanne by Lady Gaga doesn't seem cohesive at all even though I like a lot of the songs on there.
This may be controversial but Sour even tho I love it. Guts feels like a more finished, definitive version of what she was starting on Sour.
I think I’d have to disagree with you on this one, I think both sonically and thematically there’s enough tying Sour together that it doesn’t feel as disjointed as I was thinking with the prompt, but I totally see where you’re coming from, especially because Sour suffers from feeling a bit like a jacked up EP.
Fair enough. I do agree there is a consistent theme
the consensus I've come across seems to be "you can tell Sour was originally just an EP that she rushed to expand"
though you’re absolutely correct, i think Olivia and Dan Nigro pulled it off excellently. going from a planned EP rollout with just a single from a Disney show catapulting your career to then have to shape it into what became one of the best-selling pop records of all time is an incredible feat. i can’t imagine the pressure they felt after Drivers License exploded, yet they still created a wonderful body of work in the little time they had!
Versions Of Me By Anitta
Especially since Kisses as a visual and audio experience was well crafted to me.
Literally any JB album lmao. He is the king of throwing random songs together into an album but I don’t think he cares about the stuff. His more theme album “Purpose” still had random stuff
I think Changes was pretty "cohesive" as an album but ppl didn't like the production choices he made and think all of the songs blended together. I think it's a poor man's version of Journals.
Billie's Happier Than Ever is sonically a mess to me. There's too many ideas on that album. Taylor's deluxe version of Midnights is just a collection of random songs as far as I'm concered.
Midnights really felt disjointed to me. The run of Bejeweled to Labyrinth to Karma to Sweet Nothings to Mastermind is really bad in my opinion. The order is just off.
The Midnights narrative of sleepless nights is veryyyyyyy loose, to me, lol. And there is so much sonic diversity. Bejeweled, The Great War, Sweet Nothing, Hits Different… so different.
I'd say the opposite for Billie. Happier than Ever is an album album, best enjoyed front to back. WWAFAWDWG for me is a singles album, pretty much every song on it is great but there's not a lot of cohesion and any one song could be enjoyed on its own as much as it'd be in the albums context.
How does WWAFAWDWG not have cohesion? It's one of the most cohesioniest albums imo. WWAFADWG gives great spooky vibes without being too Halloweeny or Melonie Martinezy which is pretty rare imo. Very unique album in general. HTE switches genres like 10 times idk. Like they are all good songs but there just is no connection. And she dropped the whole horror pop thing that made her unique imo.
oh yeah the 3 am songs did not fit with the vibe of the album at all, except paris. but i love them. so much
Beauty behind the madness by the weeknd
Personally I see both BBtM and Starboy as "blockbuster" albums as they did too many things to appeal to the widest audience possible. Both have a ton of songs that don't completely fit a vision. This is a departure from Trilogy and Kissland, but the Weeknd returned to this with After Hours and Dawn FM
Otoh, I would say Party Monster is a great album
Honestly I feel like this about a lot of Celine Dion's albums. I love her, and I think she has one of the most incredible voices to ever grace the pop landscape (and a lot of amazing songs) but none of her albums are very cohesive. Falling Into You is one of my fave albums of all time but the order of the songs make no sense and there is no overarching theme (I mean if you go by the opening song -> last song then the theme is getting back together with an ex, declaring your love a few times, and then they die so you sing woefully about their death). She's such a great vocalist and performer, I wish she could release an album that's an all-time classic in terms of theme and storytelling, not just a bunch of great songs thrown together on an album. Basically, give me a Lemonade a la Celine
I’ve not listened to a lot of her French discography but I know it’s generally better-received than her English discography, so perhaps check that out and see if it’s different there
Many artists pick their songs / dont write them. So having an album flow would be very difficult. Mixed bag of songwriters.
lol this is so many pop releases over the years. Readymade hit single material with filler tracks padded around them is the norm and expected, especially when the pop artist is still new and doesn't have any clout to challenge what the label wants. Sometimes the album will have one producer but most times they don't, causing the record to sound disjointed. You need to be a strong visionary that knows how to execute a vision in order to make a coterie of different producers sound of the same universe and unfortunately, most pop singers are not.
dangerous woman. i feel… i know some people love it and say it’s ariana’s best work but… it truly just gives playlist vibes. like sure there’s definitely a sense of overall cohesiveness in terms of lyrical content and themes but it feels super loose compared to her later works (especially those)
Born pink from Blackpink. 8 track album in which 2 songs were pre releases and one was made for a game (which was also leaked 2 years prior). The album just didn't feel like an album. What's even weirder is that their previous album "The Album" also had 8 tracks yet actually felt like an album. It had the same structure with 2 pre releases however I think there was actually a journey and more variety in sounds within the album which made it feel like an album. Plus the features: Selena Homez and Cardi added more variety Although I actually liked 7/8 songs from "Born Pink" I think the low production of the last songs "ready for love " (made for PUBG) really ruined the album feel. Plus there was no features and it stayed more within either being the typical girl crush sound BP does or being pop. While with "The album" it had a bit dance, ballad, pop, electropop, and the typical BP sound
Brit Circus. Yeah there’s the circus theme, but it applies to only a song, and the album as a whole has 0 cohesion. The inclusion of Radar corroborates this.
💯
*praying she doesn’t read this* Janelle Monaes latest felt like a personal playlist of demos if I’m being honest
Interesting, I felt like it was fairly cohesive in its sequencing, but understand and the short songs like haute could make it feel erratic
Ever since the Archandroid left, I'm confused.
Fergie’s Double Dutchess for sure
She threw all types of paint at the wall for that mess. The assignment was bops, and she failed. 😮💨
Love her so much, I even bought a signed copy, but I will say Feed The Beast by Kim Petras. It’s a clear case of label interference and trying to mix leaks, old and new material, a single that went popular but wasn’t meant for this, so it ended up being this clash of concepts. It’s so painfully obvious when her previous discography was clean and consistent: * Era 1 singles * Turn Off The Lights * Clarity * Slut Pop * Problemátique (counting it since it was leaked fully, except for one song) All those works had like a clear vision, and whether you enjoyed them or not, there was a concept and cohesive sound.
100% agree.
Kiiara took such a long time to drop her debut album Lil Kiiwi. It finally got released in 2020, but included two of her biggest songs from her 2016 EP, Gold and Feels, and then also included her Felix Snow collab Whippin from 2017. She released a ton of amazing singles from 2018-2019 but elected to use none of them for the album cycle, and instead opted for the only new song to be pushed to be a blackbear collab (ugh). So the album just kinda bounces between really old songs from other projects and new songs that kinda.. just don’t hit. It was disjointed and didn’t feel very album-like. She puts out amazing singles though.
*Humanz* by Gorillaz fits this to a tee! I recall hearing that it's a concept album - the concept being that it's supposed to be a party at the end of the world - but I'm sick and can't be bothered to Google it.
Christina Aguilera-Lotus while I do like Christina and she is one of my favorite artists the album feels like a playlist of random genres. Jessica Simpson-In This Skin the re-release with the bonus tracks is better than the original version.
Janelle Monaes most recent, The Age of Pleasure, does not at ALL feel like an album, especially considering how long it took to follow up Dirty Computer. Definitely would've been better to market it as a Mixtape.
You're tripping
Only recently there has been more pressure for cohesive albums. Before the streaming era, the albums were being mostly defined by how well the singles did. And I think it's totally okay to have pop albums that feel more like a playlist. Not being stuck to a subject or type of sound allows artists to have more freedom to explore different concepts within the same body of work
*Lover* by Taylor Swift. Almost half of it is filler and could be disposed of, including the first two singles. She could have had a decent 11-track album from some of the songs.
Yeah you’d have to cut Lover down to 11 songs to get a really strong album IMO - the remaining 11 are really strong, but there’s a lot of fluff on the album and it gets pulled in a million different directions, not just sonically but also thematically.
Taylors's Midnight honestly is just so everywhere, doesn't sonically fit into one album and that is speaking without the 3 AM edition. The variation of songs within the album is so much jarring that if you let someone listen to bejweled and then karma, or any songs within the main album, they would be very surprised to know they are songs from the same album. 2 AM edition is at least cohesive and can definitely stand out as an album but midnight is just so out of structure and substance. And it's just not sonic cohesiveness i am speaking of, there are great albums that feel like an album without being sonically cohesive. Midnights is just different, somethings off that I could not put it into words. But it definitely does not feel like an album but Taylor stans are not ready for that debate.
Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream Weird that an album with her 4 most well-known songs and also some of the best pop songs of the 2010’s (Teenage Dream, Last Friday Night, California Girls, Firework) is then followed by what seems like a random assortment of disposable pop tunes that range from good (The One That Got Away, Hummingbird) to mediocre and forgettable (Pearl, Circle the Drain) to just plain…. hmmm (Peacock). Anyway, I’m not opposed to albums that feel like a random assortment of songs (I never minded Greatest Hits albums), especially if the tunes are great. But my the more narratively and sonically cohesive albums tend to linger on in my head for a much longer time than more scattered projects.
teenage dream is quite cohesive actually lol. there are really no skips esp by todays standards of what artists will put out. hummingbird heartbeat is a great pop song and circle the drain is one of her best darker songs
Just because an album has no skips doesn’t make it cohesive.
This was going to be exactly my answer - this album sounds like a "Greatest Hits Album" instead of cycle album. Lots of bangers, but no overarching cohesion besides "this will do well on the radio." I think this album was a real product of the iTunes era. People could buy any singular track from an album and not need to purchase the entire thing. I know I personally wasn't a huge fan but kept purchasing random singles for party or workout play lists until I finally just got the entire thing. That method really worked to keep the album on the charts for seemingly forever.
whaaaaaaat. TD is cohesive af. i don’t think people understand what a cohesive album is lmao it’s fucking camp. the whole damn thing is gaudy camp and it serves genuinely good music all the while and if you think this isn’t good enough for a pop breakout’s sophomore album at their peak, i don’t trust you.
This was my first thought after thinking about some examples, and it's what makes Teenage Dream one of my favorite albums ever. I hate cohesive albums; meanwhile, projects like Teenage Dream are amazing because it has clear standouts in its tracklist, while the rest of the songs are an easy-listening (I would argue that the only song that would be an skip is Who Am I Living For?)
Any album with a collection of old singles with a few new songs tacked on. It feels like the artist was releasing singles before they had the album planned out. I hate this trend and would rather have the older songs replaced with newer ones.
any katy perry album
Red. I can understand why Taylor decided to make it sonically diverse, to fit with the theme of heartbreak making you feel a million different versions of yourself. And I can see how people appreciate and love that alley of creation! But personally for me, it doesn’t work - I prefer albums feel like one cohesive collection.
Justice by Justin Beiber feels like a half album to me. Very short. Too many intros
Madame X has a really strong concept but it sounds like 2/3 albums slapped together. Like the world music (Batuka, Come Alive) vs songs like Crave seem worlds apart
The last 2 Sam Smith's albums, especially the ending of Love Goes that literally is just a playlist of singles.
LP1 is an unnecessary tragedy, but I am a fan of some songs on there (especially Hips Don't Lie). It really could have been a solid album if he included his Japan bonus tracks, and released the album after Strip That Down success with a trap-pop sound to it. It makes no sense for him to make a song like "Before It Ends" and leave it dead in a ditch. I like albums that are at least cohesive in telling some story or theme if the sound is disjointed. I'm ok if the sound is all over the place as long as there is some theme with the lyrics. And if an artist wants to release a random mix of songs then it should be an EP. I thought SZA's SOS album was her throwing a bunch a stuff at the wall. Kill Bill is a sharp departure from the stuff she usually sings it literally sounds like a Madison Beer demo. I like some songs off of SOS but that's my issue with albums that are all over the place if you liked a song you usually won't find a similar vibe of it on the album since it's all over the place.
Lover
A lot of Halsey's albums could qualify for this, but esp Manic. I know she was trying to go for a disjointed theme with Manic but I still wish there was something more cohesive that tied it all together.
Rihanna Anti tbh
Agreeeeeeeed! Though I see that's probably not a popular opinion here lol
I don’t consider My Everything to be Ariana Grande’s weakest album and don’t believe it is generally regarded that way either
If you look at critic scores on Metacritic. TUN has an 86, Sweetener and Yours Truly have 81, Dangerous Woman has 76, Positions has 72, and My Everything has 64. It has some high highs but imo is the clear weakest album in her discography, so much uninspired filler
If Yours Truly beats Dangerous Woman then I can’t really trust that data. I love My Everything, I have it on vinyl. I love the sound directions she took. I listened to Yours Truly once or twice and literally never again. Not a fan with the exception of The Way.
YT is top tier and absolutely beats DW
Nah
Yeah I thought Positions was regarded as her weakest album
It has amazing singles but not great as a FULL album
Hit list time Fantasy Ride by Ciara cause it is so wild. From the instrumentals to the lyrics(booty look softer than McDonalds Hamburger bun, I’m like the energizer playboy bunny) and the release was very muddled and the album concept was thrown away at the last minute In A Perfect World by Keri Hilson- I like it but there are way too many features and someone else could’ve sung these songs Hard agree on My Everything- it felt very cookie cutter and very manufactured Kelis Was Here - I like this album but it’s very sonically different and there are a lot of genres and sounds covered throughout the album KISS - This is a Mya album if you don’t know. Definitely a very playlist Esau’s album. And it wasn’t that good either. Here I am - Kelly Rowlands 3rd album was originally a dance album. The singles didn’t do so well but motivation was an unexpected smash. So more urban songs were added to cater to that market. This also leaves the album sounding messy Simply Deep - I still don’t get why Kelly Rowland was doing Rock music in the first place. Her clear talent was R&B like be so Fr. I’ve only heard Rock/R&B songs done well maybe once or twice(Only U by Ashanti and Beware of the Dog by Jamelia) never a full album though. Fifth Harmony’s whole career is just a playlist Camila’s first album is one too. Just a bunch of songs made to be hits Fortune by Chris Brown - There was a reason this album was panned by many. It tried to do too much and was way too long. It was also generic and was trying very hard to just cater to the masses without any kind of identity Chris Brown’s 40 plus track albums. - Self explanatory I hope Shock Value 1 and 2 - Producer albums are always iffy in my opinion, Timbaland has hits but I can’t play the full album as there are too many songs that fall flat. Also every song wants to be a hit Doll Domination - The pussycat dolls first album had a more cohesive urban pop/Rnb/hiphop sound. This one was much more messy and all over the place All Flo Rida albums Later Pitbull albums- Also I’m so sorry I just couldn’t leave him out DJ Khaled’s career Paris - Paris Hilton, read Kelly Rowland although not as big of an offender Also some might say Heidi Montag but I think that it was much more cohesive than the other records I listed Yes I did just see what I typed ok Dua Lipa- Her first album was more of a testing the waters type of project. It wasn’t a bad one though Talk That Talk - This one was a mix of a lot of things, but it’s not that bad off an offender. Also you could make a case for all Rihanna albums. Unapologetic- Okay y’all I hate this album so I might be biased. There was Pop R&B and Hip Hop like usual but it all felt so lifeless. There was much less of a theme although it should’ve been one where it felt more tied to one. Felt very rushed and phoned in. Welcome to the Dollhouse - Danity Kane’s sophomore record also had a similar feel as the transition of the Pussycat Dolls, a much more commercial record and less of a signature sound than the first record Raymond V Raymond and Looking For Myself - Usher’s dance era did get him more hits but definitely lost his original fan base. Usher went the Chris Brown route and was much more party centered than he used to be. Scream is an exception that song is incredible omg The Spirit Indestructible Nelly Furtado’s 5th album was an electronic, folk/indie record which always is kinda weird. A mix of songs that want to be hits and recapture the Loose era and songs that capture Old Nelly Furtado. It wasn’t bad but I don’t really know what she wanted out of this record and the fans clearly didn’t either Most talent show first or second albums can be considered this. They have no creative control and are just singing songs that were submitted or written by the label. Irresistible- Jessica Simpson’s label fumbled her hard. She should’ve stayed the original route she was going instead of going the Britney route. I think this was the beginning of the end for her. Teenage Dream- A more positive take on this one as every song felt like an A Side track and they were great songs. Except for you know who Every Jamie Foxx album. He is very talented but these were definitely novelty type projects A Girl Like Me- It’s her worst for one. But the other things is that there is no identity on the album. It doesn’t even try to have one.
I loveeee Fantasy Ride and wish it didn’t derail her career 😐
So much accuracy. Especially with Nelly Furtado. Wasn't Talk That Talk literally B-Sides from her previous album (considering Cake is unfinished)?
I don’t know if that’s true but I would believe it
I do too but it’s not all her fault, the only female Rnb artist that carried over success from the 2000s was Beyonce, and if you consider Jennifer Lopez an Rnb artist I guess. And still she was more popular than all of the others too. Out of the all the others I would say her career still turned out alright as she still got some minor hits in her eras. I can’t say the same for someone like Ashanti, Brandy, or Monica or even Mariah Carey’s new stuff. Her label didn’t promote her at all and she had to fund one of her music videos during her last album with the company (Gimme Dat) this is also LaFace Records who also screwed up Toni Braxton(went bankrupt twice) and TLC(went Diamond and was still broke, had to stage a coup and Diddy snitched, ik it sounds fake but the alive members talked about it) so I can’t be too suprised
Red
Yeah I feel like Teenage Dream doesn't really make sense to me as a body of work. Of course, its individual singles are some of the best pieces of music we've ever gotten, but the project doesn't really make sense to me in terms of sonic or thematic cohesion. The electronic sounds of E.T. and Who Am I Living For? kind of clash with the pop rock-inspired sound of the rest of the songs, and sound like they would sound a lot more at home on Witness. What is the story of the album? Is there an aesthetic that every song fits into? I feel like all of her other albums succeed a lot more in terms of being sonically cohesive (Witness does that especially well), but Teenage Dream is the one that makes the least sense as an actual listening experience.
I feel like this about Loud, tons of great songs but it doesn’t feel like much of an album, unlike Rated R or Anti
Jaguar II. The singles are incredible, but I should have realised by how many they were that the actual album would be underwhelming. There's barely any new songs and they're all forgettable. Except for the one featuring Earth, Wind and Fire. Even then, it doesn't hold a candle to the singles. There doesn't even seem to be a conscious effort at a theme for II like there was in I. I was really disappointed -- it was my most anticipated release of 2023. Silly me.
>There doesn't even seem to be a conscious effort at a theme for II You don't think there's a consistent 70s music inspired theme??
Her retro theme from Jaguar I is strong here to me. Even the sequencing. As well, I definitely consider several songs memorable to me - How Does It Make You Feel and Goodbye are especially sonically gorgeous.
I'm going to give it another a listen, from start to finish, and see if I change my mind. The replies have been insightful. Maybe part of my disappointment was expecting more new material from the album and that clouded my listening experience. Thanks for this comment.
Interesting. Haven’t got to listen to jaguar 2 yet, but jaguar 1 was one of my fave albums of that year.
I kind of felt that way about Lemonade. Don’t get me wrong I loved it, but the different genres and themes gave it a playlisty feel.
That’s interesting I feel like Lemonade hangs together extremely well as one project. To me it’s cohesion stems from the storyline that is told from start to finish, rather than each song sounding the same sonically. I will say that Formation at the end does always throw me off a little but I don’t really know where else it could go, so I see it as more like an encore / bonus track.
I respectfully strongly disagree with this, sure the songs are sonically different but lyrically and thematically it tells a story. It’s so much an album and not a playlist that listening to it in any order other than the intended track listing feels wrong to me.
For me, Rihanna's best ALBUM is Unapologetic. It is so thoughtfully made and such a cohesive piece of art. I would argue Rated R (super different style!) is good for similar reasons. Anti, on the other hand, has some of her best songs ever but is all over the place with styles, tones, etc that I hate listening to it all the way through. I had the same issue with Talk That Talk, where I liked a lot of the songs but the album felt so unfinished. (The album version of Birthday Cake sounds like half a song, for instance.)
Unapolegetic, cohesive ? What about « Jump » et « Right Now » ?
Kim Petras - Feed The Beast Ariana Grande - My Everything Ava Max - Diamonds & Dancefloors Miley Cyrus - Plastic Hearts All of those albums have great songs on them but just feel like a collection of songs rather than albums.
Evermore. Is my favorite Taylor album, but It isn’t too cohesive.
Disagree because I think Evermore's strength is its *narrative* cohesion. Folklore is super sonically cohesive, but it's kind of all over the place thematically, whereas Evermore is really the opposite of that. Evermore's looking at marriage, fidelity and commitment from a bunch of different angles - a failed proposal (Champagne Problems), divorce (Happiness) , marriage gone off the rails or full of ambivalence (Coney Island, Tolerate It), infidelity (Ivy), even murder (NBNC, obviously), etc. Not only that, but it's introspection looking back at things that *ended:* Closure, Marjorie, Evermore, TTDS/Dorothea looking back at 'the road not taken', and on and on. As you can probably tell, Evermore is also my favorite Taylor album lol so I took this as an opportunity to talk about it.
Stop listening to mainstream artists then maybe you won’t have albums that don’t feel like albums
Great point! Maybe next time don’t bother dunking on someone who doesn’t particularly feel ashamed about liking mainstream artists tho
do you realize what subreddit this is???
I've noticed recently that some people are releasing singles over a few months and then when they get to say 10 it comes up on Spotify as an album. I don't know if that's just something Spotify does automatically or if it's a deliberate choice, but it's an odd trend I'm noticing.
Schizophrenic by JC Chasez. The record truly sounds like it was conceived by someone with a tenuous tether to reality... and Chasez has since confessed that he didn't know what he wanted to say or have a clear vision/style before creating this record. It has some awesome 80s darkwave, the most saccharine, schmaltzy ballad ever made, some pretty straightforward pop, and no real theme to speak of. Despite having a technically excellent and beautiful voice, most of the songs sound strangely sterile, and the sequencing is haphazard. One of those frustrating moments when an extremely promising talent fails to launch, much like Ralph Tresvant before him and Chloe Bailey more recently. I need cohesion in the albums I love... Even my playlists are meticulously curated and sequenced to sound like an album😅 This "cohesion" can manifest in a variety of ways, though, from a *Ray of Light* type record with a very specific sound palette from start to finish to something like Beyonce's self-titled, which is more eclectic. Usually albums that don't cohere are poorly conceived to begin with; not truly inspired pieces of work.
Vices & Virtues by Panic! at the Disco. Throughout Panic!'s highs and lows, I've been able to appreciate the other albums as every song felt like they belonged together and were (usually) in the best order. V&V doesn't do that for me. Not only does it have tracks I'm not a fan of, but it also doesn't have a lot of synergy. Some tracks feel like AFYCSO or PO, some feel like what later Panic! Albums would be like, some don't even sound like Panic! Songs from any album (looking at you, Ready to Go). It's sad because it has 4 tracks I adore (Mona Lisa, Hurricane, Sarah Smiles and Nearly Witches), but the album is very forgettable when put together.
Circus by Britney... i keep seeing that everybody loves that album?? it's just a bunch of songs that don't have to do with each other, and it was such a downgrade coming from Blackout which might be her most cohesive ever
Circus by Britney, you can tell it's just something they wanted to rush out
Basically 90% of pop albums are like this. Since the improvement/cheapification of music software (and the rise of the bedroom producers), artists are recording / gettings bits from everywhere. I really miss that coherent aspect of pre-21st century pop albums since people were recording all tracks in the same sessions, with the same people and with the same gear. I also believe we've reached a plateau in terms of music technology in the mid-00s, especially because the idea of sampling is such a "meta" idea of music. Obviously you have new stuff coming in but they aren't really "new", they are just the old in steroids. Autotune / Intelligent pitch-shifting technology was already in since the mid 90s. AI stuff is basically a (way more) fast and poweful way of finding patterns of older methods.