The Edges of Greatness

In my posts on underrated albums, I've been talking a lot about how critics fall into the trap of pigeonholing an artist into a particular style, and thus miss great music that doesn't fit the artist's designated style. Today I want to talk about the other side of the coin--albums that are not so much overrated, as they are, at least seemingly, superfluous to an artist's catalog, often because they hew too closely to their standard style. The trouble with this category of albums is that it is incredibly subjective, much more so than simply deciding whether an album is any good or not. Because once you've decided an album is good, you still have to figure out how and when to listen to it in the real world--in other words, how useful it is.

It might be helpful to start with an example. I love the Rolling Stones. There are at least ten Stones albums that, for me, are absolutely essential, and which I listen to all the time (in roughly descending order: Exile on Main St., Let it Bleed, Some Girls, Their Satanic Majesties Request, Sticky Fingers, Between the Buttons, Beggar's Banquet, Out of Our Heads, England's Newest Hit Makers, and Now!).

But then, what do I do with great albums like December's Children, 12 x 5, Aftermath, Tattoo You, Dirty Work, and A Bigger Bang? In practice, what I've done is purchased 3 of those 6 (December, Aftermath, and Tattoo You), but I rarely listen to them. We could argue about my selection of Stones albums, but that's not really the point right now. The point is, that for me, all 16 of the above listed albums are somewhere between great and perfect in terms of quality, but in my personal listening habits, I've made a somewhat arbitrary cutoff between them. Why? If I were to pit December's Children against a minor, non-Stones, album in my collection--let's say Sandanista! by the Clash--it might depend on the day of the week, but I would almost certainly tell you that the Stones record is objectively superior. It's got "Get Off of My Cloud," "The Singer Not the Song," some amazing covers, and it is a fabulous slice of gritty blues-rock; Sandanista! is great, but it is messy, meandering and takes way too damn long to play. But. I've put Sandanista! in my CD player many many times more often than Decemeber's Children.

So what's going on here? In this particular case, the pleasures that I find in Sandanista!--its sprawl, its crazy dub experiments, its more relaxed feel--are very particular to that record. Whereas, if I want mid-60s blues-powered Stones, I'm just much more likely to reach for Out of Our Heads or Now! More generally, I think the issue is that everyone has a different tolerance level for a particular artist or style of music. Once you've got a certain number of Stones albums in your rotation, you just don't need any more--unless of course, they turn around and do something radically new and change your perception of their music (as I argued about Their Satanic Majesties Request).

To take a different example, I have a friend who needs to have pretty much every Prince album ever recorded (some 30 or so studio albums, plus who knows how much bootleg and live material). He knows that some are much better than others, but he gets off on them all, and they are all useful to him. For myself, I have a pretty high tolerance for Prince (probably 12 or so albums) but great as they are, have no personal use for Prince, Diamonds and Pearls, or the Black Album (and I still haven't made up my mind about his most recent albums). You, the reader, may have different needs--maybe you just need Purple Rain and Sign O the Times, and you've got your Prince fix taken care of. All three of us probably agree that there are more than 2 great Prince albums--I might even be coaxed into saying that there are more than 12--but each of us has a vastly different need for Prince in our lives.

The reason I think this is worth talking about is that I think it opens up a completely different way of thinking about the way albums get rated or talked about. Most reviewers, and many fans, are interested primarily with whether an album is good or not--that is, whether it merits 4 or 5 stars, or an A, or whatever rating you give to good albums. But what I'm trying to argue is that once you've sorted out all the good albums--the albums that you subjectively think are worth listening to--you still have a problem: what to buy and what to listen to.

I don't think there is any way of codifying this into a new critical category (5 stars, but superfluous; 4 stars, essential, etc.)--as I said, it's a much more highly subjective decision than determining which albums are great in the first place. But I think it's an interesting (and possibly important) concept for listeners to be aware of. I know I, for one, often feel guilty about all the great albums I let linger on my shelves (why don't I listen to Aftermath more?). By looking at albums in terms of their utility rather than their artistic greatness, I think we can get better perspective on how and why we listen to what we do in the first place.