Vinyl out of time

The LP record format, designed 70 years ago to accommodate classical music, is no longer relevant

Columbia’s first 85 LPs were all classical.

When Columbia Records demonstrated the first 12-inch, 331/3 rpm long-player at the Waldorf Astoria in 1948, the symphony had been evolving in a perfectly organic fashion for more than 200 years. The first symphonies were short and sprightly, reflecting their origins in the operatic overture, and some of the later examples were multi-hued aural marathons. But the romantic composers of the 19th century more or less fixed things at four movements across approximately 45 minutes, and that’s what the white coats at CBS Laboratories had in mind when they cooked up the LP. Columbia’s first 85 LPs were all classical, most of them symphonies. Format followed form, as it should.

But the natural order was reversed and form was obliged to follow format when the popular musicians of the early 1960s embraced the album. Like children trying on their parents’ clothes, they grabbed songs wherever they could find them until they had enough to fill the available space. The results were lumpy and uneven, but the stocking-stuffer approach held until the likes of Bob Dylan and the Beatles began recording their own songs. Even then it was a while before anyone issued a coherent collection across 45 minutes or so. The 1970s brought a rush of dodgy concept albums, double albums that should have been single albums and triple albums that should never have been in the first place. Which is not to say there haven’t been hundreds of classic albums, only that filler was and is the rule. Very few artists today can deliver 45 minutes of varied music that sounds entirely in sympathy itself. Wilco can. Beck can. Radiohead can. Not many others.

The album is in the poop. In the age of streaming and stunted attention spans, a format designed 70 years ago to accommodate music from another age stops making sense.