Do you listen to single tracks or full albums? Options

[mipadi]

When listening to music, do you typically listen to single tracks, or the full (unshuffled album)? I get the feeling that most people listen to a playlist or shuffle their entire library, but I typically listen to a full album at a time. Good albums have cohesion, and I think it's hard -- jarring, even -- to just listen to a track at a time. Take Radiohead, for example: In Rainbows or OK Computer just fits together like a puzzle, and makes more sense when heard together. And I can't imagine listening to a single track from a Dream Theater album.

The flipside is that most mainstream albums consist of one or two good singles and 10-12 crappy songs, and have no cohesion whatsoever.

[batman]

One of my friends in high school was always super anal about listening to an entire album. Something about "you lose the essence of the music" if you only listen to single tracks or "you can only understand what the artist is trying to say" by listening to the whole album.