Miniature streams

Honey I shrunk the songs!!

Randomly the other day, I started thinking about the concept of making songs less than one minute long, in the contradictory economy of the music industry. A, we are in the playlisting era where a song’s replay-ability can become its main selling point, as illustrated by the careers of artists such as Pinkpantheress and her plethora of under-two-minute tracks. But, B, the economy of a song itself, i.e., its production, mixing and mastering costs, usually does not change with its length — in short, it costs the same amount of money to mix and master a thirty-second track as an eight-minute one. Or at least as far as I am aware, among the people I have worked with so far (it’s usually more a question of how many layers/channels make up the track). So I wondered out loud, what goes through artists’ minds when making extremely short songs? Is it always strategical, or do some of them just organically happen to end up shorter than others? Are they all specifically-structured introductions or interludes? I made a mental note to go on a deep dive.

Later, on the morning of June 6th, I sat down formally for a second listen of Addison Rae’s self-titled and much-anticipated debut album, having stayed up past midnight to hear it live as it was hitting the streaming platforms. Though I loved the album, I was like many others struck by its length — thirty-three minutes for a twelve-track run — and most particularly, by the two very short songs thrown strategically in between the LP’s chart-topping tunes which incidentally are also the ones that were released  with accompanying music videos : “Lost & Found” nestled between Aquamarine and High Fashion, and “Life’s No Fun Through Clear Waters” finding refuge within a Times Like These and Headphones On sandwich. The aforementioned short tracks are not billed as interludes, but their placement feels strategic, like short breaths between hits.

1. Addison Rae — Lost & Found

I lost myself and found myself again
(Again, and again, and again)
Drugs, drugs
Drugs, drugs

Birthed by Swedish-Angelino producer duo ELVIRA and Luka Kloser (like the entirety of Addison), Lost & Found is a synth-heavy breathy ballad featuring Rae’s distant vocals singing about her emotional wanderings. The track feels almost illicit to listen to, as if it were a scrapped demo test that was never meant to be released as is, unfinished and leaving us frustrated and hungry for what’s to come. The song fades out with Rae humming “drugs, drugs, drugs, drugs”, dozing off in a hallucinogenic daze, in stark contrast with her lyrics on High Fashion, “I don’t want your drugs, I’d rather get high fashion”. But hey, Addison Rae also takes her roots in TikTok fame with a mostly underage or young adult audience, so it makes sense she would go all D.A.R.E. in her radio hits and barely suggest substance abuse fun in a 48-second, too easily overlookable, hidden gem.

2. Paul & Linda McCartney — Ram On

Ram on
Give your heart to somebody soon
Right away
Right away

During the Beatles’ 1960 Scotland tour, when the band members were advised to take on aliases, Paul McCartney promptly chose Paul Ramon before eventually dropping it in favor of his birth name, until it was time for him to reminisce and pen a post-Beatles breakup song echoing the name. On Ram On, released in 1971, he is joined in mourning by his wife Linda as they harmonize poignantly, as if making morning affirmations about moving on. Though it might come off as a lovelorn lyric, “give your heart to somebody soon” reads to me as more of a nod to the music industry and the next chapter in McCartney’s career, saddling up as a solo act and getting ready to put his heart on the table for his own audience to eat. The song doesn’t have a logical or predictable ending. The McCartneys’ voices just appear to be filtered down, an omniscient hand turning down the volume button on a home radio, tuning them out. Paul McCartney’s post-Beatles healing anthem is succinct. By not giving Ram On a proper, polished finish, he sounds almost sheepish — like a cousin being talked into going up on stage at a family function, starting a performance, only to run off mid-song feeling ashamed they ever even thought it would be a good idea. Did no one ever tell Paul it’s okay to cry?

3. The White Stripes — Passive Manipulation

Women, listen to your mothers
Don't just succumb to the wishes of your brothers
Take a step back, take a look at one another
You need to know the difference between a father and a lover

The White Stripes’ 2005 album Get Behind Me Satan features the song Passive Manipulation, in all its thirty-five-second glory. Meg White’s voice is clear with a prophetic tinge, dealing out warning to women — presumably, young ones still looking for advice from their mothers — as they navigate their relationships with the men in their lives, be it brothers, fathers or lovers. A clear departure from the rock sound of the song that comes right before it on the album, Instinct Blues, which bears Jack White’s voice only moaning about sex by way of animal kingdom-themed metaphors, Meg’s Passive Manipulation is a remarkably placed answer to Jack’s solo moment, and thus raises a few questions. Is the song targeted at him, in response to his rhyming about sex? Is it alluding to her reflecting on her own romantic relationship after hearing her lover’s worldview? And why is her song thirty-five seconds when his is four minutes and sixteen seconds long? Why does she get so little tape time? Right after it, we go back to Jack singing about having sex with celebrities, namely American 1940s movie star Rita Hayworth, on the track Take, Take, Take. Meg’s interlude is tinged with resilient irony. Although that one is not fit for the under-one-minute-track drawer, Passive Manipulation reminded me of a similar warning within the closing lyrics of Nick Cave’s The Kindness of Strangers, released in 1996 on the album Murder Ballads. Today is not the day I stop talking about this album, by the way.

So mothers keep your girls at home
Don't let them journey all alone
Tell them this world is full of danger
And to shun the company of strangers

4. Steve Vai — Next Stop Earth

Three-time Grammy award winner and former Frank Zappa and King Crimson band member, American guitarist Steve Vai released his first solo album Flex-Able in 1984, featuring not one but two songs shorter than a minute. Bill’s Private Parts (sixteen seconds) and Next Stop Earth (thirty-four seconds) are the penultimate tracks on Flex-Able, and both electric-guitar-centric instrumentals, as is the last piece on the album titled There’s Something Dead In Here, into which the two short tracks blend so seamlessly you even wonder why they needed to be standalones. Vai composed all the songs on the album while touring in the years prior for his own bands The Classified and 777, though they were part of a vault of unreleased tracks originally never meant to be put out officially. This knowledge gives us a new perspective on the tracks and especially the shorter ones where Steve Vai’s experimental guitar riffs last as long as seven minutes, appearing, rather than fully-constructed and strategized marketable songs, as sonic scraps and memories of tour he felt moved to share with an audience — like little fragments of past lives.

5. Tierra Whack — Bugs Life

Released in 2018, Whack World is American rapper Tierra Whack’s debut mixtape, just a few seconds shy in length from being a 15-minute 15-track project. Upon releasing the tape, Whack also published a 15-minute clip standing as a joint music video for all the songs on the tracklist, thus earning it the title of ‘visual album’ and furthering the critical acclaim it received for its innovative flair. As indicated by the tape’s length, all the tracks on it are either a minute or 58 seconds long, but rather than coming off as unfinished drafts, the project through its entire short run showcases both Whack’s versatility and sense of humour as illustrated in her lyricism.

Probably would’ve blew overnight if I was white
Rap with a mic and wore really baggy tights
It's aight, yeah, queen, yeah

On the song Bugs Life, Tierra Whacks raps about wanting her family safe and happy, her own struggle with the heavy racism experienced throughout her life and in the music industry alike, and her dreams of success. Over fifty-eight seconds, she manages a flawless fourteen-bar drop without it feeling as rushed as if she were running after the beat. The track stands out from the other ones mentioned in the previous paragraphs because it is the first one to sound like a fully-sculpted song with an intro, verse and outro, rather than a repetitive lullaby testing out chorus or sound design bits and pieces.

6. clipping. — Wytchboard (Interlude)

Wytchboard is the first mention in this essay of an actual, self-proclaimed interlude. From the brilliant 2020 album Visions of Bodies Being Burned, it was brought to us by American experimental hip hop band clipping., the reunion of vocalist and rapper Daveed Diggs, and producers Jonathan Snipes and William Hutson. The thirty-second sound piece pops up pretty early in the track listing at number three, only one track removed from the album’s Intro.

You’re doing it!
No, you are, stop it!
Shh!
H-E-I-S-H-E-R-E
He is here?
What does that m—

Wytchboard is a short clip of a dialogue between two female voices, presumably using an Ouija board and spelling its message out loud, before being interrupted by something, or someone, we can neither see nor hear. The listener can only imagine what happens next. I consider this LP to be a remarkable concept album, revolving around the themes of horror movies, slashers and tropes like the final girl, and billed as belonging to the horrorcore and experimental hip hop genres. The band was reportedly very dissatisfied with the majority of lazily-strung-together concept albums they’d encountered throughout their career, and came to being known for always resorting to making their own sound effects and field recording soundscapes, thus avoiding the hassle of sample-clearing and managing to craft a unique sound. Wytchboard feels like a necessary part of the narrative built throughout Visions of Bodies Being Burned, acting like a chapter divider, and a brief sequence tying together the final editing of the album, just as if it were a movie. Listening to the full album in order enhances the sonic experience even further, as Wytchboard blends perfectly into the following track titled ‘96 Neve Campbell (after the Scream leading lady), with the former ending with the previously mentioned woman speaking being cut off in surprise while the other exhales loudly, and the latter beginning with loud knocks on a door and a distorted male voice saying, Don’t know what you thought this was.

7. alslyn — The Sound of Light

The opener on American musician alslyn’s debut album The Sigilist, The Sound of Light is a lyric-less ambient piece with a kind of doomsday feel to it, reminding me of Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross’s soundtrack design work for movies such as The Social Network (2010) or Gone Girl (2014) (both dir. David Fincher) — the dark ambient, electronica kind. The full 8-track album is barely fourteen minutes long, with only a few tracks including vocals, and alslyn’s sound is almost Crystal Castles- or early Grimes-adjacent. The Sigilist’s atmosphere is almost unsettling. Not much is written about the project even on alslyn’s website so all of this is just speculation, but every track on it feels like a specific chapter of an unspoken story, as if she had meant to soundtrack some kind of folk fairytale; and it being built with both an intro and outro despite being so short makes a lot of sense if you consider it be a narrative album. The Sound of Light starts almost inquisitively, before progressively blossoming into a powerful bass-based and tension-inducing soundscape, just like an actual techno or tribal riser would.

8. Bladee, Whitearmor - I DON’T LIKE PEOPLE (WHITEARMOR INTERLUDE)

I don’t like people
I don’t like people
I don’t like people, I really don’t like people

Bladee and Whitearmor’s I DON’T LIKE PEOPLE INTERLUDE is pretty fascinating in its concept, as it appears on the former’s 2024 album Cold Visions right before the similarly-titled song I DON’T LIKE PEOPLE, this one featuring Yung Lean. The interlude’s thirty-eight seconds feel like an unwritten demo of the following two-minute-forty-second track, its only lyrics being the chorus of the full track as a chant, over and over again. Here, the interlude is really a mid-album intro for a specific track, rather than an introduction to the project as a whole, like a simply-dressed salad between cheese and dessert within a thirty-course meal. The full-length Yung Lean feature is produced by Mechatok, F1LTHY and Rok, while the WHITEARMOR INTERLUDE version comes from the mind of, well, Whitearmor. I am left wondering — did Bladee ask a bunch of different producers to produce a beat for the same song, and did Whitearmor’s submission not make the cut during finals, but still felt interesting enough to include as a little teaser bite? Or did Bladee always envision his message on the track as needing two song’s worth of space? Does he really, despite having a team of five producers and writers on a singular song, not like people that much? Interestingly, it is not the least streamed song out of the thirty, having received better streaming numbers than most of the second half of the mixtape. This “I don’t like people” part feels like a separate story within the story, and I am almost surprised it doesn’t come with an outro as well. The album does have more than one of these though, CANT END ON A LOSS (OUTRO) & COLD VISIONS (OUTRO 2). Maybe what Bladee really doesn’t like, is saying goodbye.

9. Oklou - (;´༎ຶٹ༎ຶ`)

From Oklou’s latest released projet (first or second depending on whether or not you factor galore in) choke enough, (;´༎ຶٹ༎ຶ`) is an untypable, unpronounceable mid-album interlude, maybe the only one without a legible title because it is the only one without lyrics. The fort-eight-second piece comes in right after the title track which ends on the following sentences:

If I choke up now
Then I’ll just come back home to say
How the moon’s hanging up
I think my dad would appreciate

As mentioned in these lyrics, the title of the project and of the song refers to choking up, as in, becoming unable to speak and reaching the verge of tears on account of intense emotions. Oklou placing her instrumental, field-recording-y interlude right after mentioning being unable to get words out is no coincidence. Maybe this is reaching. But to me, (;´༎ຶٹ༎ຶ`) is a direct answer to choke enough (the song) as it can be understood as symbolizing dealing with so many intense feelings she is at a loss for words and sinking into her environment, the nature around her and the faint echo of the idea of a melody she has yet to finish and add lyrics too. Is this organic ambient soundscape her way of telling us “how the moon is hanging up”? Or is it a silent dialogue between her and her dad, maybe sitting next to each other in the garden and letting the world unfold around them and speak for itself?
(;´༎ຶٹ༎ຶ`) feels like the memory of a moment that has not yet passed, but that the singer already has nostalgia for, like watching children play and knowing them to be growing older with every happy shriek — the transient innocence of childhood disintegrating right as it unfolds for it exists only as a wistful concept. The track, just like what it symbolizes, is fleeting. It would not carry the same power to have it be three minutes long, and Oklou’s dexterous poetry is truly represented through this almost easily, though mistakenly, skippable part of choke enough (the album) — she knows to say more, with less.

10. Addison Rae - Life’s No Fun Through Clear Waters

And so, we drift back to where we started, less than ten minutes ago, with Addison Rae’s debut album and the track Life’s No Fun Through Clear Waters.

Life’s no fun through clear waters
Life’s no fun through clear waters
Life’s no fun through clear waters
Life’s no fun through clear waters
Clear waters
Clear waters

The track is an orchestral instrumental adaption of the song that directly follows it and that featured it before the release of the full album in the beginning of its music video, Headphones On.

Much like Bladee’s interlude, the lyrics of the short track echo the longer one’s bridge:

I know the lows are what makes the highs higher
So I tell myself this is a reminder
Life's no fun through clear waters

On Addison, the singer has a lot to say about bodies of water and liquids, actually. “Jealousy’s a rip tide” and “soaking up the rain” in Headphones On; “honey dive into me” and the oyster/pearl references in Aquamarine ; “so I cry only in the rain” on In The Rain ; “naked at the beach” indirectly referencing the sea in Summer Forever ; “sippin Diet Pepsi” on Addison’s megahit Diet Pepsi ; and her being on a boat and then soaking wet in the Times Like These music video. None of these waters are clear, and there’s no denying how fun the starlet’s life is made out to sound. A lot of Addison Rae’s tracks stand out as different types of mantras not unlike the kind she’d be writing on Post-it notes and sticking on her mirror to read every morning, and the interlude is no exception. Additionally, inserting a short laid-back piece of music between two flamboyant pop hits, the former melancholic and the latter hopeful, gives them space to breathe and both have their moment without giving the listener a feeling of over saturation, and making a potential track in-between them feel weaker. In a way, an interlude before the closing track enables the singer to end on an apex, getting us hungry for pop again right as her album is about to end on a satiating encore. While Addison Rae’s songs and creative direction are mostly playful, the structure of her debut album has an intellectual flair. While she’s getting her high fashion clothes and shoes, isn’t she, in the process, making high music as well?