In Defense of Side B
The second side was where artists hid their strangest, most honest work. We stopped turning the record over.
The album was built as a two-act structure, and the interval — the physical act of standing, crossing the room, and turning the record over — was part of the composition. Side B was not an afterthought. It was the second half of a conversation.
Streaming flattened that architecture into an unbroken scroll. We no longer arrive at Side B; we simply continue. And in continuing, we lose the deliberate pause the artists built for us.