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.

[superstitious]

Both. It really depends on my mood and what I am doing at the time. At work, I'm typically a shuffler. There are some albums that I absolutely have to listen to in its entirety. Any Decemberists album, for example. They have stand out songs for sure, but the listening experience is richer when the songs are listened to as part of an album and not a stand alone. Many Radiohead albums are the same way for me, including the ones that Michael pointed out in the first post. I can't imagine listening to one song on Ok Computer. It would feel so odd to do so.