I wanted to explore this, it seems like it mostly happens in classic rock. I like it because it’s like the group delivering a thesis statement for the content of their music or their intended commercial trajectory.
I think it works even better when it’s done by a band later into their career, like they’re reflecting on the culmination of their work. Can people link me examples? I’d love to see if this has happened more outside of the rock genre
Off the top of my head:
Bad Company (debut album)
Black Sabbath (debut album)
Damn Yankees (debut album)
Blue Öyster Cult (11th album)
Dimmu Borgir (8th album, black metal)
Run the Jewels (debut album, rap)
Eyes of Noctom (debut album, black metal, fun fact: this is Nicholas Cage’s son)
Highwaymen (debut album, country)
Self-titled albums were a big thing in the sixties, when the record industry was still starting properly. David Bowie’s first two albums are both named ‘David Bowie’. With some artists, it’s a bit difficult to track all this crap, since vinyls were basically issued whenever anyone was at the factory and not when the artist had a particularly artistic vision.
Weezer had a gag about it, putting out seven albums named ‘Weezer’ over thirty years, the latest one upcoming in a week.
Songs are different, of course, but the reason you see them in classic rock is probably because those dudes are old.
This explains a lot. I wasn’t aware of the Weezer gag, that’s pretty funny
Wait until you hear why vinyl singles had different sizes of the center hole. It’s just because RCA wanted their singles to be incompatible with any other jukeboxes. So there was a whole micro-industry of adapters made to play RCA vinyls on normal turntables.
You know seem to know a lot of lore about the music industry. Do you have any documentaries you’d refer me to? I’d like to learn about all the weird ways industry has shaped art like that. One that caught my interest years ago was Barely Sociable on youtube made a 80 minute one about payolla.
Unfortunately I’ve learned about it in snippets of Wikipedia articles snatched here and there. So can’t point you to any particular doc as the source of truth.
With Youtube, what worked great for me is looking through the recommendations on any good video, and saving promising ones in a ‘watch later’ playlist — or rather a dozen of such playlists per topic. I now have a year or two worth of videos saved this way.
Fair enough. Please send me one though if you come across any that that are notable again!