Friday, April 18, 2025
Time: 10:57 AM
Song: All My Friends
Artist: LCD Soundsystem
Mode of Consumption: Listening to Spotify while working.
This song is 7 minutes and 42 seconds long. I’ve always been
curious about song lengths, especially when they get longer than five minutes.
This song is consistently the same all the way through. No
major movements or shifts in tone or speed. No guitar or drum solos. I don’t
know much about this group, but it feels a little like they are mimicking a
club sound, where songs can sort of linger on and on with the beat carrying
those dancing.
This isn’t “Bohemian Rhapsody” where there are clear shifts,
musical breaks, operatic interludes, all sorts of whistles and bells to keep the
listener interested. It’s not something like “Free Bird” where the guitar solo
can keep going and going and nobody really seems to mind. The long-song lineage
is vast and sprinkled with all sorts of approaches.
I wonder if a songwriter sits down and thinks I want to
write a long song today. Is it driven by the lyrics created? Do they need the
time and space to tell a complete story? Or are there elements of musical
theory that mandate a song spill from the three to five-minute expectation of popular
music.
Is it harder to
write long or to distill ideas down to shorter times?
As a writer, longer
stories sound like they would be a bigger challenge, but sometimes it easier
just to type away at a long piece without concern for constraints. A shorter
piece demands precision to hit the points necessary to deliver a complete
story.
I imagine it depends
on the artist. Some probably sit down with a distinct vision for the song they
want to create, and others probably have an idea and tinker until they feel the
piece is complete.
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