In Praise of Short Albums: Why the Brutal Criticism of Olivia Rodrigo’s New Album’s Length Makes No Sense
variety.comJem Aswad Executive Editor, Music Along with the tracklist for Olivia Rodrigo’s hotly anticipated sophomore album, “Guts,” came its total time — 39 minutes — which has rather inexplicably led to hundreds of complaints online that the album is somehow short-changing her fans due to its apparently brief length. “So short!” one fan complained. “They really be calling anything a ‘Album’ nowadays huh,” groused another. “So basically an EP,” wrote another. “I think I’m speaking for everyone who feels like we miss when albums used to be longer than an hour,” one more articulate reader wrote.
It’s hard to know where to begin in refuting any such criticism, but we’ll dive right in. First: 39 minutes is not a short album. In fact, that was around the average length in the days when vinyl ruled the music world and an artist could only fit a maximum of around 18 minutes on each side of a vinyl album without a loss in sound quality.
There were exceptions, of course — Todd Rundgren and Elvis Costello are just two artists who indulged in “groove-cramming,” as the latter termed it on his 20-song 1980 album “Get Happy!” — but some of the greatest albums in history clock in at less than 40 minutes, including the Beatles’ “Sgt.
Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band” and “Revolver,” Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On,” Fleetwood Mac’s “Rumours,” the Beach Boys’ “Pet Sounds,” Aretha Franklin’s “Lady Soul” (29 minutes!), David Bowie’s “The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars” and countless others. Second: Size doesn’t matter — it’s what you do with it. Pardon the off-color analogy, but it holds as true for music as many other things.
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