When it released on Sept. 18, I made sure to listen to Orville Peck’s newest album, “Mule.” I’m a big fan of his work, and I enjoyed “Mule” more than most of his recent output. However, despite how much I loved the latter half of the album, my biggest takeaway overall was how short three of the songs ended up, namely “Big Ol’ House,” “Ring the Bell” and “Blue Skies.” All three of these songs sit at around two minutes and 30 seconds long and left me disappointed as a result. My initial reaction echoed a sentiment shared by many others bemoaning the future of the music industry: that songs are getting shorter along with our attention spans.
All a song needs to be successful in the present day is a single, small section of it to blow up on Instagram or TikTok. The deluxe album rerelease has become standard to keep people coming back to the same songs and pumping up view numbers on streaming platforms.
The 2026 Brit Award winner for Best Producer, PinkPantheress, said in an interview with ABC, “We don’t need a repeat verse. We don’t need a bridge… We don’t need a long outro.”
With all of this change in the last decade of music, it’s easy to feel upset. Past generations had a similar hesitancy to songs with electronic instruments, more explicit topics and new genres. I’m one person in a generational cycle of thinking music was just better, somehow, when I was growing up.
But, of course, this gut reaction is misguided. Short songs have always existed, and long songs are still being made. Music has always changed in response to modern technological advances, just as any artistic medium has. This doesn’t indicate a decline in the artform of music, just a new direction.
According to Vice, songs made before the invention of the seven-inch single in 1949 were limited in length to about three minutes by the physical size of shellac phonograph records. After the seven-inch vinyl record became ubiquitous, the five-minute song became more common.
Genre can also influence length. Dance music, for example, tends to be longer on average than a typical pop song. This serves its audience of clubs and parties by allowing people to dance to a consistent beat for longer periods, while pop music focuses on catchy, easy-to-sing tunes and delivering a concise but memorable experience.
My issue with the shorter songs on “Mule,” therefore, does not come down to being different from what I’m used to. Instead, “Mule” failed to adapt to a shorter length. Some of my favorite songs are similarly short but utilize their length very well in comparison to the songs on “Mule.”
One avenue is modifying speed and emotion. Punk music tends to be shorter and faster than other genres, emphasizing anger and unrest. Jeff Rosenstock’s “HEAD” is only one minute and 30 seconds long but balances this very short length with a blazing fast tempo of 234 BPM. The song also justifies its length with Rosenstock’s energetic vocals and anti-authoritarian lyrics, evoking a very high level of emotion.
The structure of two-minute songs can also be quite different from songs that sit around four to five minutes. The standard structure seen in a typical pop or rock song is Intro — Verse — Chorus — Verse — Chorus — Bridge — Chorus. This allows the artist to iterate on a single idea while still providing variety with a bridge.
Sabrina Carpenter’s “When Did You Get Hot?” at two minutes and 25 seconds, displays many of the structural trends we see in modern music. Overall, “When Did You Get Hot?” is built almost entirely around the chorus. The intro is only four seconds long, and the following pre-verse, verse, and pre-chorus flow into each other as one long buildup to a prominent drop into the chorus itself. This is followed by another buildup and chorus combo, ending with a simple outro. Every section of the song differs from one another, providing the variety that a bridge would have otherwise provided.
With all of this in mind, the reason I had such a negative reaction to the shorter songs in“Mule” was mainly because it failed to effectively capitalize on their shorter lengths. They’re all as slow as Peck’s previous country-rock albums, with “Blue Skies” being particularly slow at around 80 BPM. The verses and choruses in “Big Ol’ House” sound almost exactly the same, without the runtime to add a bridge for variety. “Ring the Bell” uses the standard pop formula I previously outlined, but shortens each section to fit within two minutes and 21 seconds, preventing me from enjoying each section as they each ended prematurely.
If “Mule” used any of the techniques I outlined, I probably would have liked them more, because short songs are not inherently worse.