Surround Sound: The Art of Long Songs

While songs with track lengths exceeding six minutes are getting rarer, their ability to captivate listeners has not been lost. They might be tough to create, but long songs can provide some of the greatest musical experiences in many different varieties.

Written by Adithya Srinivas

Photo courtesy of The Museum of Modern Art

Long songs, when executed well, can provide some amazing listening experiences. The longer runtimes give artists the space to explore larger and more ambitious soundscapes, tell grander stories, and envelop the listener in the world of the song. However, they’re also a big challenge to create. Composing a song with a good hook, a catchy melody, captivating lyrics, and an appealing structure is already hard enough when the track length is in the three to five minute range. But the difficulty only increases when the length is pushed beyond six and seven minutes, as the compositions need to avoid getting stale, repetitive, and boring. Couple this challenge with the current music streaming environment which emphasizes shorter songs for profitability, and it seems that longer form songs are somewhat of a dying breed in today’s popular music.

But this doesn’t mean they’re completely dead. There are still a ton of songs out there that utilize the world-building abilities of long songs to great effect from both eras past and recent releases. As a sort of celebration, I’ve put together a playlist of 20 songs, with the only rule being that the individual track lengths must be at least six minutes long. This isn’t an end-all be-all top 20, but it’s still a collection of great songs that are easy to lose yourself in. To discuss a few of them a little further, I’ve split them into three (kind of arbitrary) approaches.

The Soundscapes

These songs are grand explorations of sounds, emotions, and aesthetics. A good example of this is “Let it Happen,” the lead track on Tame Impala’s Currents. The swimming and melancholy vocals, ethereal synths, grungy guitar refrains, marching snares, and jovial melody create a microcosm of the entire album’s sound and mood. The mix perfectly fades these elements in and out of each other to build a pillowy sound that listeners are enveloped by. Another track to highlight is Air’s “La Femme d’Argent.” The French duo have built their discography on long form soundscapes, but “La Femme d’Argent” is by far their most famous. The track itself is a very simple bassline layered under quiet percussion and quick electronic accents, joined later by soft and spacy synths, coming together create a serene atmosphere. I’ve yet to find any song that is as calming as this one to the ears. In addition to these two, some other tracks on the playlist in this category are Daft Punk’s “Giorgio by Moroder,” Lifelike’s “Night Patrol,” and Japanese Breakfast’s “Driving Woman.”

The Storytellers

This category is broad — most songs with lyrics tell some type of story — but these tracks center storytelling as their core purpose. David Bowie’s self-eulogizing “Blackstar” is a perfect example, as it reflects on Bowie’s emotional struggle with the fact that someone else will replace him in popular culture as his fame and glory days fade away. The 10-minute runtime gives Bowie the space to feel and convey the myriad of emotions his imminent death brings, from the haunting opening passage to the cinematic catharsis. Some of the other tracks in this category are Father John Misty’s “Pure Comedy,” a fun, witty, but cynical lamentation of humanity’s societal problems; Kendrick Lamar’s “FEAR.,” which follows Lamar as he lays bare his biggest insecurities; and Portugal. The Man’s dreamy but depressed “Sleep Forever.”

The Epics

Build-up. Layering. Crescendo. Payoff. These are the core features of the tracks described as epics. Nothing embodies this better than Led Zeppelin’s evergreen classic “Stairway to Heaven,” a song that really needs no introduction. While much can be said of its quiet and pastoral beginning and its air-guitar-inducing climax, the magic really occurs in the carefully crafted pathway between those two points. Jon Bonham’s drums don’t even feature until well after the four-minute mark, a testament to the slow burn of the track. A more modern interpretation of the epic comes in the form of “Khéops,” an electronic composition from production upstarts Sabrina and Samantha. The track is named after one of the many monikers of the Egyptian pharaoh Khufu, who is attributed with commissioning the Great Pyramid of Giza. Sabrina and Samantha (who are two middle-aged French dudes, unlike what their stage names might suggest) attempt to build a world around Khéops’ grandeur, using sounds clearly inspired by traditional middle eastern/Arabian music, which they heavily synthesize and layer over driving kick drums and a no-nonsense bassline. Twinkling accents and staccato backing synth melodies layer relentlessly, raising intensity and danceability right until the very end. Other tracks in this category are LCD Soundsystem’s “All My Friends” and YACHT’s “Miles and Miles,” both of which provide the almost never-ending quality to their music (in a good way).

There are a few notable exceptions from the list that can’t be categorized, such as Frank Ocean’s “Futura Free,” Kanye West’s “Runaway,” and Sufjan Stevens’ 25-minute behemoth “Impossible Soul,” but this only serves to show that there isn’t a shortage of these longer tracks. Artists continue to push the boundaries of their work, and song length is one of the important ways they can experiment with their sound. That being said, it’s undeniable that songs are getting shorter in mainstream releases. It’s important to appreciate the songs that do break that trend. Without further ado, at an average track length of 7 minutes and 36 seconds, here is the long song playlist:

Afterglow ATXDecember 3, 2019