Quote:
Originally Posted by Routine Builder
Question: How many songs does it take to drop for an album to stop being itself and become something else?
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That's a good philosophical question that has been posed throughout history in various forms. How much of a thing can you change or replace until it is no longer the original thing? From inanimate objects to living beings.
Quote:
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"In the metaphysics of identity, the ship of Theseus — or Theseus's paradox — is a thought experiment that raises the question of whether a ship—standing for an object in general—that has had all of its components replaced remains fundamentally the same object."
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus
Famously featured on Only Fools and Horses as 'Trigger's Broom'
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BUl6PooveJE
(I feel like I've posted all this before here or elsewhere, maybe I could have copied that post and just changed parts of it...
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In one sense you don't even need to change anything at all, simply re-releasing it in a different time period makes it different by its context.
-Or you could argue that remastering it without changing the track listing makes it something else - I mean if it were no different, why even bother, right?
-Or you could argue changing one song makes it something else because the album is a delicate balance of tones, tempos, lyrical content, and the interplay of each song with all the others is part of what make it what it was.
-Or you could argue for it being until it's a majority of the album (so 7 tracks) or a majority of its duration regardless of track numbers.
-Or you could argue that as long as anything remains from the original album it still somehow contains the spirit of it in part.