Saskia McDonogh Mooney: Defending the Side of Full Albums Rather Than Curated Playlists
In a world of endless streaming and instant gratification, the art of listening has been lost. A playlist might curate a certain mood, but as each song is plucked out of an album and placed into a personal playlist, it loses the context it was written within. An album is a work of art, painstakingly pieced together to tell a story, and for the full effect must be listened to in order. There are countless examples of the necessity of this, but below are two recent Irish examples.
Skinty Fia by Fontaines D.C.
When I had once vowed to never listen to Fontaines D.C. because of the amount of people who told me to, this is the album that convinced me to stop being contrarian. Skinty Fia, an arcane Irish curse which means ‘damnation of the deer’, is the first of their albums to explicitly feature Irish. To foreground the language in the title and initial song, “In ar gCroithe go deo”, establishes the connection they aim to draw. “In ar gCrothe go deo” was a phrase at the heart of a media controversy in 2020, when an Irish ex-pat wanted the words carved on her grave, and the Church of England demanded it include an English translation. Sung like a funeral hymn those words and their weight carry the grief of being Irish abroad in England.
An entire story opens up in the first five minutes, and each song adds layers to its personal and cultural significance. It is not a simple longing for a place that has been left, but a violent, confused grappling with the way moving changes you, and the knowledge that your home is a place rife with scandal and secrets and difficult history. The words “I love you” quickly devolve into searing criticism, as that lens of love and knowing can see every part of a place.
By listening to this album in order, letting every song interface with one another in the antechamber of your mind, lifetimes of sound unfold. The ways in which place and history shape relationships with others and the self are told out across “Jackie Down the Line” and “Roman Holiday” just as broader stories are told on “Skinty Fia” and “Bloomsday”. It is a riotous analysis of becoming and decay existing at its best in dialogue with each other, and it is ultimately a disservice to the music to not listen to the songs in this way.
EURO-COUNTRY by CMAT
As with Fontaines D.C., this was CMAT’s first album to also explicitly feature Irish. Each implementation of a language that colonialism attempted to eradicate is political, and as with Skinty Fia, EURO-COUNTRY, tells a story about grappling with the complexities of Irish identity.
The album’s eponymous song criticises the architects of Ireland’s ‘Celtic Tiger’ era, and the way in which capitalist greed consistently generates far-reaching harm in working class communities. “No one says it out loud, but I know it can be better if we hound it,” this line seems to me to capture CMAT’s spirit across the album. Her bold declaration of color and passion, so at odds with the culture of silence, religious trauma, and economic inequality she is concerned with, suggests radical self-hood.
The album is honest and vulnerable on the subject of personal and social issues, and even on songs such as “When A Good Man Cries” and “Ready” where she engages with life’s individual complexities, the country that shaped her is present. This is the eye of an artist, seeing a story as a grand orchestration of personal and social threads together in something seamless. This is in turn the beauty of an album.
A playlist might tell a personal story, might orchestrate a story the listener wants to tell, but an album invites you into the heart of another, and to listen fully is a duty owed by the audience for being given something so inevitably moving.
Mark Moran: Defending the Side of Curated Playlists Rather Than Full Albums
First, a disclaimer. As an avid vinyl enthusiast, I recognise the allure of a well-crafted concept album. Among my favourite Irish records are Hozier’s Unreal Unearth and In The Game by Mick Flannery and Susan O’Neill. These albums are, undeniably, coherent works of art.
However, we must recognise that these masterpieces are exceptions rather than the rule. In the modern era, many records are simply collections of songs. They may be excellent individually, but the average contemporary release does not weave a cohesive narrative. Treating every album as a sacred, untouchable artwork overlooks two fundamental truths about how music is made and heard.
Curation is an expression of active artistry
A common criticism of playlists is that they shift focus away from the artist’s intent and toward the listener’s whim or an algorithm’s cold calculation. However, this line of thinking completely ignores the dedication of music fans in creating bespoke, deeply personal listening experiences.
There are some artists who enchant us across their entire discography; there are others we simply enjoy in moderation. Take Noah Kahan and Lana del Rey. Their distinct musical aesthetics both intrigue me – his autumnal New England dissatisfaction and her glamorous, decadent Americana. Yet, to my ears, sitting through Stick Season or Ultraviolence in full feels repetitive. Selecting an artist’s best tracks allows us to savour their distinctive musical styles without diluting the experience with filler tracks, rehashed tropes, or clunky lyrics.
Conversely, what of the masterpieces left outside of the traditional LP framework? To insist on album-based listening means disregarding Damien Rice and Lisa Hannigan’s “Unplayed Piano”, Bruce Springsteen’s “Streets of Philadelphia”, and Hozier’s “Swan Upon Leda” – a standalone song that seamlessly weaves women’s rights, the occupation of Palestine, and the tragedy of war into a single tour de force.
Furthermore, for artists defined by a signature style across decades – such as Gregory Alan Isakov’s atmospheric folk or Springsteen’s heartland rock – a playlist does not neglect cohesion, but synthesises a career. By uniting peak album cuts with standalone singles, we assume the active responsibility of building a richer listening experience than a single, rigid release allows.
Narrative autonomy transcends arbitrary packaging
Secondly, I must challenge the assumption that all albums possess some sacred, intentional narrative structure. In many cases, individual songs carry the full emotional weight of the story without needing an extensive surrounding framework.
Take jazz and blues. Historically, these genres’ most famous records served primarily as collections of interpretations and standards. Etta James’ “At Last”, Ray Charles’ “Georgia On My Mind”, and Nina Simone’s “Feeling Good” are definitive, transcendent recordings, but none were written by those artists. None were built around those performers’ linear storylines. To impose a grand, concept-driven arc where none was intended misinterprets musical heritage. Simone’s Sinnerman does not need the conceptual structure of an LP to make sense; it carries an expansive narrative in its ten minutes.
Consider, too, those sprawling, archival ‘box set’ albums – Springsteen’s 66-song Tracks or Johnny Cash’s 79-track Unearthed. Should listeners really have to wade through dozens of outtakes and studio experiments just to hear “Sad Eyes” or Cash’s take on “Wichita Lineman”? These are historical documents for completeness and preservation, not curated narrative experiences. They exist precisely so that devotees can rescue the gems for their own playlists.
There will always be a place for the great, immersive concept album. But forcing a linear narrative onto abstract and eclectic releases fails to respect the individual integrity of their songs. Far from disrespecting the art, curation allows us listeners to take full control of our personal musical experience.
