What’s Up With The Song Order On TVOTR’s Dear Science?
I’m really enjoying the new TVOTR just like almost the entire rest of the music media. I’m seeing these perfect scores everywhere, but every time I listen to the album I am thrown off by the jarring difference between some songs that come right after one another. There seems to be no flow and the song order is keeping me from praising this album on the same level. And maybe this was their intent, but I think it makes it a worse album to listen to all the way through. A lot of comments have been made about this album being more cohesive than Return to Cookie Mtn, which has completely baffled me.
The album starts off great with “Halfway Home” (I think one of their best songs), then flows nicely into “Crying” and then bam “It’s a what, it’s a what, it’s a newspaper man!..”. It’s a jarring transition between these two songs. It doesn’t just stop there, they go into “Stork & Owl” which seems really slow and dragging in comparison, like it should be at the end of the album. They could have easily flowed into one of the 5 other dance/funk-infused tunes on the album before settling it down (like “Golden Age” or “Red Dress”) and put “Stork & Owl” next to “Family Tree” or “DLZ”. These are just some examples, but to me when I listen to the album as is, it completely takes me out of the atmosphere they are trying to create.
I understand that you have to mix things up to keep people interested over the course of the album, throw in some fast songs with the slow ones, but this just seems like they picked the song order out of a hat. Or.. Ok we get it, this is different than what you usually do and its an album of singles, that doesn’t mean there shouldn’t be flow. I have an entire other post on the untapped creativity in album structure, but I will save that for later.
On a sidenote: The way “Shout Me Out” is sang in some parts sounds just like Tom Petty’s “Running Down a Dream”. I’m talking about the part of the song where he sings “so I can feel it in another way”. There are also other moments during the course of the album where i feel like some of the vocal melodies perfectly mimic some other songs.
I wouldn’t be writing this post without a solution in mind, and this might turn into an ongoing segment, with other albums (how would it be to rearrange Dark Side of The Moon or Ok Computer?) I am going to offer up and alternative playlist order for Dear Science. I’ve gone through the album many times moving songs around in a seperate playlist, and what I have come up with is just one way, a traditional Side-A/Side B kind of album structure. But there are many other ways this can be done.
1. Shout Me Out
2. Crying
3. DLZ
4. Love Dog
5. Family Tree
6. Golden Age
7. Dancing Choose
8. Red Dress
9. Stork & Owl
10. Lover’s Day
11. Halfway Home
“Halfway Home” works great as an opener on the original song order, but it is also one of the best songs on the album, it’s like throwing all your cards out there right away. It needs a little build up, but I would prefer to give it an entire albums worth of build-up and put it as the epic ending. “Shout Me Out” provides a start to this buildup. It also serves as a good opener because it begins minimal and then explodes in the end, and an explosion is a good entrance. There is some silence at the end too, so it doesn’t feel strange going into “Crying” I think the album’s dancier tunes work best in the second half. And to give a little tease of this “Crying” is a good second song with it’s prince-like guitar riff. Side A end with the great “Family Tree” and Side B starts with “Dancing Choose”. If this is really the album where they “have a dance party for the apocalypse” then it has to go out with a bang. “Red Dress” to “Stork & Owl” is a bit jarring still, but really any song next to “Red Dress” seems weird, that song just stands out.
I’m not doing this to discredit TVOTR, I’m sure they have their reasons, but those reasons don’t seem very transparent and are lost on the listener.
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