It’s hard enough for a band or musician to come up with enough material for a full-length record. So why take it upon themselves to do twice the work? The proverbial White Whale of the successful double album has been chased by some of the biggest artists of the past forty years, and very few of these musical Ahabs have ever successfully caught one. To be clear, I’m talking about albums released as double CDs, not double LPs. Two of the greatest records of all time, the Rolling Stones’ Exile on Main Street and The Clash’s London Calling were originally released as double LPs but have total running times that fit comfortably on a single CD, which can hold about 75 minutes of material. Artists like Nas, Shania Twain, Prince, Iron Maiden, Drake, Nine Inch Nails, and more have released double or even triple albums, which, while frequently achieving commercial success, often leave critics wondering…why?
The most common critique of double albums is that there is almost always fat that could have been trimmed. Jay-Z acknowledged this after releasing The Blueprint 2: The Gift and the Curse in 2002. He released a single disc version of the album, titled The Blueprint 2.1 five months later. But Hova is, so far, the only major artist who has admitted that their opus was overrun with filler and ego. Some degree of hubris is necessary to believe that one has 80-120 minutes of worthwhile material. A handful of artists, like Chris Brown, have even done it twice in a row (Heartbreak on a Full Moon, Indigo). Some double albums have been career highlights and critical successes, such as Red Hot Chili Peppers’ Stadium Arcadium and Smashing Pumpkins’ Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, but still contain repetitive ideas and bloat. So again, why?
On one hand, it’s a sign of success. Nobodies don’t get the opportunity to put out a double album. It’s a status symbol, like a platinum record or a song parodied by Weird Al Yankovic. It shows that you are big, important, and ambitious enough to unleash a sometimes comically excessive amount of music to your adoring fans. And there’s always a lean, muscular record somewhere in that excess once the songs that could have been b-sides or saved for future compilations are edited down. The urge to be Ozymandias is understandable.
The double album as we know it may be a dying breed, as CDs become increasingly obsolete, and even the concept of a cohesive album has taken a backseat to the eternal importance of singles. However, the most prolific stars will always feel the pull of the grand artistic statement that is the double album. Vanity and ambition will never go out of style.
PHOTO: MarcoSwart, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
