In fact, some long and musically diverse albums such as Drake’s Certified Lover Boy almost seem to hand the job of sequencing to listeners, tacitly acknowledging they will cherry pick their own favourites on to a leaner playlist. The reason Spotify enables listeners to shuffle songs in the first place is that people like to do it, and understanding listener habits has encouraged artists and labels to sequence albums differently.
The truth is, though, that Adele is fighting a losing battle. (It’s also a record with a very unusual sequence: its two hit singles are both on side two, to shore up a side that has to contend with Vicar in a Tutu and Some Girls Are Bigger Than Others). The positioning of the big, emotional tracks – first and third on side one, fourth on side two – gives the whole thing an emotional heft it shouldn’t really possess. Take The Queen Is Dead by the Smiths, an album that should, really, be horribly unbalanced, divided between overpowering epics and throwaways. Great sequencing can cover up weaknesses. Unusually for a greatest hits, the compilers weren’t afraid to let deeper cuts – that four-track run of Now I’m Here to Flash on side two – do plenty of work, which gave it (insofar as was possible) a sense of discovery, especially for younger listeners.
Think instead of Queen’s Greatest Hits, which isn’t the UK’s bestselling album ever solely because lots of people love Queen, but also because it’s a perfectly sequenced album that begins and ends in triumph – Bohemian Rhapsody and We Are the Champions – and which never lets its momentum sag, but without ever turning into a boring churn. The obvious thing to do with hits is to sequence them chronologically, which suits the trainspotter, but rarely makes for the most rounded album. Paradoxically, the true genius of sequencing is often clearest when the artist isn’t trying to tell a story through the music, and the sequencing itself has to do that heavy lifting, which is usually on a greatest hits compilation. Unmediated excellence …Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.
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