Can somebody please explain to me why ‘live albums’ are a thing?

Seriously. They’re irritating.

It’s one thing if it’s one of those “An Evening With”-type things they do live from the Kennedy Center or whatever — those are broadcast on television and meant to be watched. I’m talking about when artists record live concerts from the Podunk County State Fair and Greased Pig Wrangling Competition and then release them as albums.

If you’re going to do that, at least give us the courtesy of a studio-recorded ‘Greatest Hits’ album. That’s what you’re giving us, but with all kinds of obnoxious stuff included. Obnoxious stuff like:

Crowd noise — Inevitably, at the beginning and end of each song on a live recording, there are several seconds of applause and shouting. This is always exponentially louder than the actual song in between, so you spend an inordinate amount of time jumping out of your seat being startled by the sudden ruckus and adjusting your stereo volume down and then up and then down again. Also, if you compiled all of those seconds of crowd noise and cut them out, you might have room for more than ten songs on the album. We know you sang more than ten songs at the concert. (Right? ‘Cause if you’re doing ten-song concerts for the price of tickets these days, you’re a grade-A douche canoe.) And speaking of grade-A douche canoes, there’s always that guy who decides to let out a whoop of extraordinary volume during the quiet and tense portion of a deep and meaningful song. I fucking hate that guy.

Terrible audio — While we’re on the subject of noise, let’s talk about the quality of recording you get at a large venue. It’s shit. The acoustics are wacky, if the performer turns their head just a little too much you can lose their voice altogether, and you can hear all the ambient noise about as well as you can hear the artist. If the recording was made at an outdoor venue, you get wind and airplane flyovers. If it was indoors, the sound of the crowd is amplified, and it’s more than just their voices; it’s their snacks and their moving around and their inability to be quiet during the music.

All that talking — I want to hear you sing, not yammer on for ten minutes about...I don’t know, pick a topic. Introducing the song and maybe giving a little blurb about why you wrote it or what it means to you is fine, it’s when you start into a monologue about something completely unrelated that it gets silly. I suppose the fault for some of this really falls on the record producers and editors because they allow these recordings to go to production with all that chatter, probably so they can:

Charge a bundle for the recording — “Oooh, it’s a live recording! We can charge double for that!” I can’t believe people fall for this, I really can’t. You get a scant handful of songs with a whole bunch of yammering in between and all of that excess noise, but it costs one-and-a-half times as much as any of the artist’s other albums simply because it was recorded live. It makes no sense.

And the final coffin nail, vocal fatigue — I sometimes wonder at artists managing to keep their fans after hearing some of their live recordings. Autotune and the confines of the recording booth keep their secrets. Being live on stage does not. I’m not slagging off anyone in particular, though I can think of a few people who seem to be heavily reliant on vocal tuning software. Mostly I’m talking about the fact that any vocalist, regardless of their natural abilities, gets tired. You’ve been singing and talking and having a good old time for an hour or so and you still have some songs left in your set, but the quality suffers because your body has had enough, thank you very much. I’ve heard some of the most amazing singers go astoundingly flat at the end of a concert. It’s not their fault, it’s just biology, but it shows them at less than their best and recording that and distributing it to the masses at an inflated cost with all the other crap I’ve already talked about is just dumb. Also, I know how suckful it is to miss your notes, so I feel bad for them, and they’re probably feeling bad about it standing up there with everyone listening, so sure, why not, let’s record it for posterity!

Now, I know that there have been some pretty amazing and unexpected live performances, and when recordings of those are played it’s kind of fun. Like times when some other artist randomly shows up to do a number with the performer whose concert it is? That can be neat. But most of the time, live albums are a complete waste.

...I’m realizing now that I’ve just written something akin to a Jerry Seinfeld stand-up routine.

“So what’s the deal with live albums?”

I’ll show myself out.