Why Sidelongs are Better

Why Sidelongs are Better

My three favourite songs are Echoes (Pink Floyd), Close To The Edge (Yes) and Supper’s Ready (Genesis). Now, I can tell people this, and I can almost see the warning bells going off in their head: ‘Watch out, we’re dealing with a prog snob over here! Not a single one of those songs runs less than eighteen minutes!’ Well, that second part is true, as a quick Google search will confirm. However, and this is the point people tend to ignore, so I’ll state it in bold letters here…

I don’t like these songs BECAUSE they’re long. In fact, I would never judge a song based on its length.

Because that makes as little sense as deciding somebody is a nice person just because they’re tall… and let me tell you, I have close friends of all heights and these measurements have no bearing on how great I think they are as people. That being said, I do think there is a correlation between song length and quality above 6 minutes or so, or rather, I think sidelong tracks are more likely to be good songs than their four minute counterparts. Here’s why.

The way I see it, there are two main ways a sidelong can be created. (i) A band sits down and decides to write a song that takes up an entire side of vinyl, or (ii) A band starts to write a song and, in the process, realises that they have enough material to fill a side. I don’t know which of these approaches my favourite songs used and they can probably both be equally effective.

In scenario A, assuming the band is only writing one sidelong (and I can only think of two albums that have more than one) it’s clearly going to be the focus of the album. Therefore, it will have the most amount of time spent on it; it will be modelled to try and turn it into a defining statement. It most likely takes up half the album! The band know that if someone doesn’t like it, they’re unlikely to be a fan of the album as a whole, which is why creating this song is a risk… that risk is only worth taking if the writers really feel like they’re putting everything into this song and making it as good as it possibly can be.

On the other hand, there’s scenario B, which is the song that almost becomes a sidelong by accident. This is a good way of working, too, because there’s no feeling like they absolutely have to fill up those last few minutes of space on the vinyl – it just happens. When a song is conceived to be a standard length but somehow keeps getting longer and longer, there must be a reason for that. The ideas must be flowing easily, nobody forcing them. Despite the band’s best efforts, there are so many musical ideas here that this song just refuses not to be a sidelong. It feels natural and can only become a really great song.

Of course, there are those songs that don’t need to be sidelongs, that are full of mindless jamming that doesn’t go anywhere just to fill space on the record. These don’t count – the arguments above really only apply to sidelongs that are done well. I like to focus on the positive, but I’m acknowledging the other side too here. My three favourite songs, however, are definitely of the careful and well-crafted variety and that is why I think they’re better than they probably would be, had they been conceived as 5-minute songs.

Would it help if I told people that my fourth favourite song was Tomorrow Never Knows?