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Album Filler: Difference between revisions
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As most people know, the music industry has two forms of release in stores. There is the standard two song single and the "full-length" album. However, with most artists, the unfortunate reality is that they usually just aren't creative enough to produce a large number of good songs. This especially gets compounded once they officially make it big, having used up years worth of songs tried and tested with audiences and are usually expected to produce a second album within a year while touring heavily to cash in on their new found fame. So what does one do? Produce Album Filler.
Album Filler are songs that take a perfunctory, [[Strictly Formula]] stance on creation in order to have something distinct to fill in some time. They're usually straightforward, unimaginative, and otherwise forgettable. Of course, it isn't set in stone that a song will suck for being filler. Just as how some of the most beloved episodes of many a TV show are quite intentional filler, some of the most popular songs were explicitly created as filler. A famous example of a filler track gaining large prominence is "You've Got Another Thing Comin'" by [[
As a policy for the music industry, this is a bit of a [[Cyclic Trope]] as times change and is not entirely consistent across the board. In [[The Fifties]], the single was the primary sales unit and albums were just hit singles thrown together with whatever other crap they didn't have confidence in. It was actually pretty uncommon for artists to enter the studio with the intent of recording an album. Most albums from popular artists of this time were more like [[Greatest Hits Album|Greatest Hits sets]]. For example, [[Chuck Berry]] recorded and released his first hit song ("Maybellene") in 1955, but it wouldn't show up on an album until 1959.
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This trend continued in [[The Sixties]]; a particularly infamous band were [[The Beach Boys]], who were [[Executive Meddling|forced by executives]] to hastily record some filler to make an album out of a hit single. The hit-factory label [[Motown]] took it even further, re-recording hit singles for an album with a new singer and never releasing the new version as a single. So you could get all the versions of the hit song you wanted, if you didn't mind paying album price for a single with junk added.
When groups like [[The Beatles (
A side-effect of this was the tendency of bands with [[Epic Rocking|long songs]], such as [[
One can hope that due to the advancement of digital sales (e.g. iTunes) and the slow ebbing of the album as the unit of music sales, that creators of the near future could, if they wish, concentrate on putting out quality songs again rather than having to pad out an album.
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=== Parodies and mentions: ===
* ''Subnormality'': [http://www.cracked.com/article_17075_every-album-ever.html Mentions it].
* [[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]] by Finnish artist'' Allekirjoittanut'' in the [[Exactly What It Says
{{quote| ''We've got some extra space on our record, even though we thought it was full''<br />
''Our situation is desperate, and our producer is oh-so-restless''<br />
''We need to fill this album, at least halfway''<br />
''Looks like we'll have to put in a filler song among the rest.'' }}
* Similarily lampshaded by the German comedian Hape Kerkeling with the similarily [[Exactly What It Says
{{quote| ''Noch zwei Minuten dreißig die fehlen ja das weiß ich (...) Auf Text und Inhalt sch*** ich''<br />
(''Still 2m30s are missing, I know (...) I (expletive - roughly "don't care about") lyrics and music'') }}
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