Double album

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A double album is a music album that consists of two records or two audio CDs .

Concept and content

As a rule, the reasons for an artist or a music publisher to publish a double album are artistic or strategic in nature. Either the music material intended for publication is too extensive, so that the capacity of a single sound carrier is insufficient, or the artists have a recognizable content or musical concept and produce a concept album of this length. In the field of pop , rock and jazz music , concert recordings are also published on a double album. In addition, for marketing reasons, “Greatest Hits” and “Best of” compilations and anthologies are often usedreleased as double albums by individual artists. In the field of classical music , several musically similar works (by one or more composers) can be found repeatedly together on a double album edition.

In addition to such issues with related content, albums that were or are purely economically motivated have increasingly been brought onto the market in the course of time. Well-known examples of this are the diverse pop music collections with current hits from a wide variety of artists within a year or editions with a reminiscence character with well-known titles from a certain decade or with evergreens . Such productions are available both as single and double albums.

Early editions

The world's first double album was in the field of jazz and was released on November 13, 1950; Columbia Records did not release a newly recorded work, but The Famous Carnegie Hall Concert 1938 by Benny Goodman .

The first double albums in pop music are Blonde on Blonde by Bob Dylan and Freak Out! by Frank Zappa , both from 1966. As a result, productions of this kind were not uncommon. The most famous of the early double albums are among others

The first hip-hop double album All Eyez on Me by 2Pac was released in 1996. The commercially most successful double album is The Wall by Pink Floyd (1979), which sold around 23 million times in the USA alone.

special cases

On rare occasions, such as the 1969 Chicago Transit Authority of Chicago , a double album is released as a debut album .

The Who's Next album by The Who (1971) is an interesting case . Originally conceived as a double album with the name Lifehouse , the musicians deleted all tracks that they thought were not good enough for a release until the rest of the album Material found space on a single record.

The capacity of a CD is considerably larger than that of a vinyl record. As a result of the re-releases of old recordings, many of the albums originally released on two records can now be accommodated on just one CD. Hence, it is a matter of opinion whether such an edition is viewed as a double album or a regular single album. Examples of such cases are

In some cases, special editions of albums are published with a sound carrier in the standard edition and an additional version in the occasional bonus edition . For example the AC / DC live album Live at River Plate .

A work by the Austrian jazz avant-gardist Werner Pirchner , who published a regular album in 1973 with the title Half a Double Album , shows that the term double album can also be used jokingly .

Other multiple media

In addition to double albums, the popular music sector occasionally also contains more extensive editions. Examples of such recordings are the triple albums

as well as the fourfold albums

  • Chicago at Carnegie Hall of Chicago (1972)
  • Boxed by Mike Oldfield (strictly speaking not a quadruple album, but a collection of four previously released single albums, 1976)

In the field of classical music, such more extensive editions are to be found more often due to a different publication concept (total editions of different types). Examples are about

In addition, double and other multiple albums can be found in the classical music recordings of operas .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Recording Industry Association of America : RIAA - Gold & Platinum , accessed November 2, 2009