What Makes A Good Album

You can always hear reviews, polls, and news whenever an artist releases a new project or a music album. Comments like 'this was just a one' or 'it's a good six' or 'it's an amazing ten' maybe the way you hear albums are ranked, sometimes albums are compared to the artist's previous endeavors or sometimes to the artists contemporaries, but what is the factor that makes album great. For a casual listener, an album is just a collection of songs the artist piled up, burned to a disc and then distributes. But to music fans, critiques and eagle-eyed observers that is not the case, it is a process that requires tedious observation, multiple listens, knowing the aesthetic of the artist and the story he or she tells and being familiar with the artist's previous efforts.

There is a reason why Rolling Stone magazine puts some albums on the holy pedestal and crowns them paradigm shifting and groundbreaking while at the same time even neglecting high selling albums on the grounds of their sheer mediocracy, there is a reason why certain artists are globally praised while others just come and go, Music is an album is not a random selection of songs an artist made( at least in the case of good albums), lets dive in to what makes an album good.

1. It says something or has a compelling narrative
The songs should tell a compelling story or follow a journey or should have a concurrent, consistent or even evolving theme, the tracklisting should compliment this story or this narrative and should represent the artist being in a theme that is not all over the place but being consistent in its journey, Kendrick Lamar's album Damn was a critically acclaimed masterpiece in which the story is the tracklisting in reverse, this was a theory spread by the fans, which Lamar confirmed later, creative acts like this showing the artists passion to develop something within the record is what makes an album unique.

2. The sonics are evolving and moving
The entire sound and aesthetic of the album is a great factor in determining its consistency because in most cases the producer of the tracks and the artist should ensure that all record are varying and not blatant rip-offs but at the same the sonics, that is the sound design , feel , tempo, instruments, and overall sound should be in smooth transition and shouldn't seem stitched or meshed up, in a way creating a journey of sound that becomes the backbone for the artist to lay his vocals on to convey his thoughts .

3. It shows the evolution of the artist
One of the many prominent reasons why we have a very few elite sound engineers, music producers, vocalists, and lyricists is because very few have a story to tell, that's the reason why many have come and go but some always stay there, because not all have a compelling narrative or a sonic direction they want to move forward in or a gut to go for unorthodox sounds, lyrics, and performances, if the artist stays the same for too long, just like a fresh juicy apple, the artist would become stale over time, hence the journey of growth an artist takes is crucial to fans of their music as well as then only can they hear their favorite artist bring new thoughts to life.