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Author: Glenn Fosbraey, Associate Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Winchester
Original article: https://theconversation.com/four-records-that-embody-the-joy-of-the-double-album-from-the-beatles-to-outkast-255244
In the summer of 1966, a race was on between two very different opponents. On one side was Bob Dylan, the established and bestselling folk artist. On the other was new act The Mothers of Invention, a genre- (and mind-) bending band led by avant garde composer Frank Zappa. The aim? To release the first “double album” (four-sided LP) in popular music.
On June 20, Dylan’s Blonde on Blonde prevailed, pipping The Mothers of Invention’s Freak Out! by a single week. But the outcome was largely unimportant – not least because the first double album had actually been released six years prior, in the form of R&B singer Jimmy Clanton’s Jimmy’s Happy/Jimmy’s Blue.
But the “race” did at least demonstrate there was interest in the double album as a format – and that, with the commercial success of Blonde on Blonde (Freak Out! unsurprisingly failed to trouble the charts), the public weren’t put off by the inflated price of a two-LP set.
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The double album may have subsequently gone through a rocky patch in the 1970s when “self-indulgent” prog rockers used it to unleash interminable dreary eternities – but it remains a crucial, albeit uncommon, part of pop music. Here are some of the standouts that you may or may not have come across.
1. Speakerboxxx/The Love Below by Outkast (2003)
Rumours of a falling out between Outkast members Big Boi and André 3000 were rife in the lead-up to the release of Speakerboxxx/The Love Below in September 2003. The fact thia project was essentially two solo albums stuck together didn’t help matters.
Whatever the circumstances it was recorded under, the result was synapse-popping, gut-reorganising, breathtakingly adventurous music. It’s not perfect and, like many double albums before and since, critics have suggested it would have been better served trimmed down and issued as a single disc. But the benefit of the double album format is that it allows artists the time and freedom to experiment.
Across its two-and-a-half-hour running time, Big Boi and André push boundaries and create a space for hip hop to embrace its weirdness.
2. Blinking Lights and Other Revelations by Eels (2005)
American alt-rock band Eels’ sixth studio album saw songwriter-singer-producer Mark Everett (known as “E”) in reflective mood, taking stock of his entire life up to this point.
Given that his life had included his sister’s 1996 suicide, his mother’s death from cancer soon after, his father’s alcoholism and the death of his cousin in 9/11, it would have been reasonable to expect one of the most depressing albums of all time. And yet, somehow, it’s anything but.
Described by the Guardian as “one of the best albums to have arisen out of grief” and by E as “a love letter to life itself, in all its beautiful, horrible glory”, Blinking Lights manages to take all that pain and misery and turn it into something genuinely positive and life-affirming.
Recorded over several years, mostly in E’s Los Angeles basement, the album’s production veers between intricate and lo-fi. E’s singing voice – a unique combination of gruff and tender – is its only constant.
Having spent 90 minutes going through every conceivable emotion (and perhaps several more besides), we make it to the final line of the final track, Things the Grandchildren Should Know, where E tells us: “If I had to do it all again, then it’s something I’d like to do.”
After all the struggles, all the devastation and trauma, the fact he still considers life sweet enough to live all over again is goosebump-inducing: an extraordinary moment from an extraordinary album.
3. Aerial by Kate Bush (2005)
For whatever reason, the number of double albums released by male artists dwarfs those released by females. Donna Summer, Christina Aguilera and Beyoncé are among the few, and Taylor Swift almost had one with The Tortured Poets Department (technically its 15-song “second instalment” was a separate release from the first). But these are relatively uncommon examples.
As for a double album that’s been written and produced solely by a female artist – well, replace “uncommon” with “almost non-existent”.
“Almost” because in 2005, Kate Bush did it with Aerial. Her first album in over a decade, Aerial saw Bush at her idiosyncratic best. In her hands (and voice), commonplace events are made to sound extraordinary – and they’re sung to a constantly shifting palette of musical styles, ranging from baroque to dance.
It’s impossible to predict what’s going to come next, and that is joyous. Just to show how nothing is ever perfect, though, two of the tracks feature disgraced Australian entertainer Rolf Harris, whose contributions Bush removed from the 2018 re-issue.
4. The Beatles/The White Album by The Beatles (1968)
On May 30 1968, almost exactly one year after the release of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, the fab four returned to Abbey Road studios to begin work on their next album, a self-titled affair which will forever be known as the White Album.
But where do the most important band in the world go after they’ve just hit a “musically ground-breaking, hyper-influential career high-water mark”? They go bigger, of course.
Millions of words have already been written about the brilliance of the Beatles, but their prolific artistry around this period still can’t be overstated. When the White Album was released in November 1968, the band had produced a staggering 53 songs in just 18 months, spread across two albums (one a double), a double EP and four chart-topping singles. Thirty of those songs appear on this album, most of them written during the band’s meditation retreat to Rishikesh in India in early 1968.
It’s the least collegiate of all the Beatles’ albums and Harrison, Lennon and McCartney would often work on their own tracks in three different studios. But it’s also their most experimental and diverse, taking in everything from hard rock and blues-rock to saloon satire, pastoral folk, vaudeville, and avant-garde sound collage.
Its stark, plain white cover may have been designed to contrast with the colourfully trippy artwork of Sgt. Pepper’s, but it shares its acclaim, regularly making “best album cover of all time” lists.
The Beatles may have been coming apart as a group when they were making it – and the sound collage track Revolution 9 may make beginning-to-end listens a bit of a challenge – but for many of us, the White Album is still the biggest and best album from the biggest and best band.
Do you have a favourite double album? We’d love to hear about it. Let us know your pick in the comments below.
Glenn Fosbraey does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.