It is the height of the year for album releases. As some acts, like Spoon, release their first album in several years, and others, like Drake, release a new one after only a year, now is the time to reflect on how album production and release affect the artists in question.

Ezra Koenig of Vampire Weekend has given some details on the band’s follow-up to 2013’s “Modern Vampires of the City,” explaining that they have begun production after taking a mental health year, as putting out and subsequently touring albums in 2008, 2010 and 2013 was taxing. A lot of the time, we don’t consider the amount of work and effort that goes into successfully putting out a single album, let alone forming an entire career out of it.

We have seen examples like this in the past, but have hardly taken the time to reflect on their significance. The Beatles, one of the most successful bands to ever grace this earth, put out albums yearly, sometimes even putting out multiple in the same year. Notoriously, this created a lot of tension within the band, causing each member to temporarily quit at various points in the band’s history before their tragic, but inevitable, breakup in 1970. It probably would have even happened sooner if they hadn’t stopped touring in 1966.

On a similar note, the Beach Boys’ Brian Wilson famously led a life filled with drugs to keep his mental illness at bay before eventually becoming a recluse.

“I was run down mentally and emotionally because I was running around, jumping on jets from one city to another on one-night stands, also producing, writing, arranging, singing, planning, teaching — to the point where I had no peace of mind and no chance to actually sit down and think or even rest,” Wilson said in a 1971 interview with Rolling Stone.

Superstars like Syd Barrett of Pink Floyd, Kurt Cobain of Nirvana and singer-songwriter Amy Winehouse have had similarly unfortunate fates. The latter two both joined the 27 Club after horrific deaths.

It is easy to see this happen when looking back at entire career spans, but we neglect the fact that the burden on the superstars of today is just as heavy. That is what makes artists like Drake, who has released five albums in the last six years, so incredible. The amount of content he puts out and its success is what makes him and as productive artists the best in the industry. It is impressive to create and release a single successful album, let alone five in a career that is continuing to grow.

Artists like Kendrick Lamar and Beyoncé take this a step further, as they produce albums with almost the same frequency, but back their successful music with an important and relevant cultural narrative behind it. There is no doubt that Lamar’s 2015 album “To Pimp a Butterfly” will be looked back on in the future the same way we look back on the music of the Vietnam War era. While successful music is one thing, successful and historically relevant music is another. Music is how we decorate time, and these artists take that concept as seriously as they should.

As we witness this onslaught of springtime record releases, it is important not to pressure our own favorite artists to join the party. They are dedicating their whole lives to putting an album together and they probably deserve a break anyway. This age tends to be defined by a trend of remakes and remastering, so these artists creating original work deserve all the credit we can give them.

Jenny Bourque is a freshman English and textual studies major. Her column appears weekly in Pulp. You can email her at jabourqu@syr.edu.

Published on April 4, 2017 at 10:57 pm