Somewhere between the algorithm and the 15-second attention span, we stopped listening to music. We started consuming content.
You can engineer a craving without ever satisfying it. You can write a song that gets stuck in someone's head without ever touching their heart.
Remember when songs were built to last?
When a songwriter rewrote the bridge sixteen times because almost wasn't good enough. When a song could wreck you—not because it was loud, but because it was true.
Pink Floyd
Post-Waters Floyd made a song you can actually hum. Gilmour proved you don't need a concept album to break your heart.
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Lynyrd Skynyrd
Nine minutes. Two guitars. One of the most shouted requests in concert history. And underneath it all, a man who can't stay.
Phil Collins
The guy who gave us 'Sussudio' also wrote this—a quiet meditation on the masks we can't seem to take off.
Coldplay
Coldplay made an EDM song with Avicii and somehow it still sounds like Coldplay.
Led Zeppelin
John Bonham played drums in a stairwell and accidentally invented the sound of doom.
U2
U2 looked at their earnest stadium-rock empire and burned it down. This was the smoke signal.
Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd got so tired of record executives they wrote a song in character as one. And then got someone else to sing it.
The songs that stayed.