averyfineline

It’s hard to use my homemade ALI metric on an album that’s essentially a musical. Most of the songs matter in relation to the larger narrative so it’s difficult to say which one’s I’d go back and listen to since that number changes depending if I’m just dipping into the album or listening to it sequentially.

And this brings up a related problem: how do you market an album like this whose experimental quality gives it several many different entry points for different types of listeners but no easy way of fitting in to traditional marketing mechanisms? I guess with some creative editing you could peel a few of the songs toward the end off for radio singles, but without the narrative context and a lot of explanation, buyers might feel duped if they rushed out to buy Fields of Love expecting a conventional album. It makes sense as a church musical, but it’s not seasonally themed and few churches have drama programs sophisticated enough to pull this off for its own sake. Could you make money staging the thing as a bonafide musical production that works a tour of dates just Lion King and The Producers? I honestly don’t know.

Email this Post