FEATURE:
Back on the Tracks…
PHOTO CREDIT: Fatih Güney/Pexels
Why a New Campaign from National Rail Should Encourage More People to Listen to Albums
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THERE have been so many…
PHOTO CREDIT: Mike Norris/Pexels
fantastic albums released this year. Which has been the best so far? I would say Olivia Rodrigo’s you seem pretty sad for a girl so in love. Perhaps it is not indicative of the wider world, though a new National Rail campaign reacts to some shocking statics regarding how many people have listened to a full album this year. I think that streaming dominates and people are hand-picking tracks rather than listening to albums in full. This NME article highlights a shocking reality regarding the percentage of adults who have actually listened to an album in the pas year:
“National Rail’s Track Reset campaign, which aims to encourage listeners to seek music outside of their comfort zones, shared the results of a survey of 2,000 UK adults which painted a stark picture of the popularity of the album format in an era where streaming dominates.
41 per cent of those surveyed had not listened to a full album (from beginning to end) in the last year, with eight per cent admitting they had never done so. Repetition was also a common factor, with those surveyed listening to their favourite track an average of 343 times a year. Reasons given for going back to the same songs include nostalgia (50 per cent), comfort (50 per cent), and simply “I like what I like” (65 per cent).
To encourage exploration in listeners, National Rail partnered with DJ Adriano Desire and music psychologist Dr Ruth Herbert to create Track Reset, a three minute track designed to “clear the palette” and make the listener more receptive to musical discovery.
National Album Day was launched in 2018 to celebrate “the album as an art form”, with artists chosen as Album Champions each year. The 2026 event will be held on October 17, and in May announced PinkPantheress among the latest Album Champions.
“Music is experienced in ways that are unique to every listener,” the artist said in a statement. “I love revisiting albums that I discovered at different times in my life, while always keeping an ear out for new sounds. This year, I encourage everyone to do the same for National Album Day”.
That is quite a lot to take in. Maybe there is still a generational divide. People who grew up listening to physical albums still do, whilst younger listeners perhaps not listening to albums the whole way through. Neary ten per cent of adults have not listened to an album in full ever! That is quite hard to take in. I would suspect that it is younger adults who have never listened to an album. A sad side-effect of a streaming age. How we have access to so much music, though many just want to hear particular tracks. I have listened to full albums, yet I don’t feel I have listened to as many as I should have. Though it is part of what I do, so I know this is not the case with most people. That idea of provided a three-minute track to reset the listener. I do think that we get caught in a loop and pattern. What we like is what we go for, and the idea of hearing an entire album may seem too much. Kerrang! published a feature as to why listening to albums in full is good for our health:
“Could you imagine a world where catch-ups with friends lasted no longer than 10 minutes? Or what it’d be like to go to the cinema and have the film constantly fast-forwarded to the biggest moments of action? Alarmingly, our relationship with music is becoming like this.
We’re skipping tracks and speeding up songs, trialling them by their first chorus only and then moving on. Even those of us who live and breathe music are impacted by the competitive nature of social media and the culture of quickness that is diminishing our ability to savour art like a rich slab of chocolate or a good shag.
But it’s not you or your mind that is at fault – it’s the society we live in. We were once simple creatures who hunted, gathered and purely survived. Now we pay taxes, work 40-hour weeks and are attached to phones filled with people we haven’t spoken to since sprouting our first leg hair, who are now turning themselves into AI caricatures.
Dr. Julia Jones, a neuroscientist known as Dr. Rock, has dedicated 35 years to championing the benefits of having more music in our lives. She also plays lead guitar in a band called Pretty Crap, and was shown just how powerful music can be in the early ’90s, when she studied the U.S. Navy SEALs as they used music to increase physical endurance, reduce anxiety and boost motivation.
“From an evolutionary point of view, it was normal and beneficial to have a brain that was distracted by things, because that’s how we stayed alive,” she explains while proudly sporting a Pretty Crap band tee. “You needed to be able to see if something was moving [nearby], because it could have been something coming to harm you.
“Fast-forward to the modern era, we introduced an education system that punishes you for having that kind of response. We have to narrow our focus in quite an unnatural way… With the amount of digital usage that we’ve got, the amount of distractions, it’s not surprising we find it difficult to relax.”
Among lots of brilliant work about the benefits of music, Dr. Rock was involved in a 2019 study about the positive impact of albums. Within the report, she shared how listening to albums at night can be one of the most beneficial ways to not only absorb the music, but allow it to slow us down.
“When you’re in a safe environment, [like] your bedroom, your brain associates it with safety and sleep,” she says. “It’s dark so you haven’t got the input channel of the eyes distracting you. It’s only your thoughts that are remaining at that point, so there’s less competition for the music.”
If you struggle to focus on music alone, then listening while doing a simple task can make for a great starting point. Dr. Rock suggests listening while driving a familiar route as an example. Some may refer to this as being in a flow state or on ‘autopilot’.
“That is the genius aspect of the brain called neuroplasticity; it changes and evolves and there’s a process called long-term potentiation, which is how we form habits,” she says. “As you repeat a thing over and over, the prefrontal cortex has to be less involved because all of the brain cells that were involved in that action have been connected together to such an extent that it then can just run on its own.”
Another expert who believes in the healing power of albums is Professor Abigail Gardner of the University of Gloucestershire. Some have already dismissed the idea of ‘going analogue’ and disconnecting from the online world as a passing trend, but we need to make a shift, and Professor Gardner thinks physical media could be the key.
Not everyone can afford to buy CDs or vinyl, but if possible, they can not only help our connection to music grow much deeper, but the format can combat the unbearable onslaught of distractions we face when listening digitally.
“If you’ve got a hard copy album, you are witness to the band’s broader life: the visuals, the lyrics, who’s been involved,” she begins. “You can see the life of the album a bit more. If you’re playing vinyl, the technology dictates how you listen to it, because you can switch the needle through, but it’s not particularly easy.”
You might be under the impression it’s purely younger people who’ve grown up with TikTok who struggle to take in longer forms of music, but actually, we are all affected by the platforms we use to consume it.
“It’s what we call technological determinism or platform determinism,” Professor Gardner explains. “The platform dictates how you consume. I know that if I’m on Spotify or [Apple Music], I won’t [always] listen to the whole single. The clickability is built into that. I know of academics who did a study of the Top 100 Billboard songs over the last decades, and they noticed that the hook was coming in earlier into a song.”
Not only are there huge benefits to listening to albums, but it’s also a much stronger way to support your favourite artists and the work that goes into their craft. Hot Milk’s Jim Shaw was referred to by bandmate Han Mee as the most stressed-out man in Salford back in our 2025 Kerrang! Cover Story, and he certainly knows of the sheer dedication that goes into recording music.
He was heavily involved with the production work on Hot Milk’s latest record, Corporation P.O.P, and says there is a lot of thought that goes into the minutiae of every sound. There are elements that are easy to miss when we listen to songs out of order.
“Two songs together might share relative keys, a bpm change, or some sort of mesh between the two,” Jim begins. “Stuff like that I’ve always found really cool. It’s that journey, and if you’re listening to one amongst other songs, you lose all that.
“Interlude tracks are kind of missed on people. If you listen to it in isolation, it doesn’t make any sense, but if you listen to it in the whole album it could be a breath from four absolute stonker tracks just smashing the shit out of you, and you have this reset moving into the next phase.”
Despite the obvious downsides to streaming, there are some benefits. One of the most significant is how much music discovery has grown. We can find our new favourite bands through suggested playlists and simple online searches. Social media virality also has a part to play in this aspect, but a new study found that for the artists themselves, going viral rarely has a long-term effect financially.
“You can find your next favourite band so quickly, but it also means that you can just skip through things, not really thinking about what you’re listening to. It’s that throwaway culture,” says Jim. “I wonder about bands like Tool: how would they [start out] in a world like today with these huge 10-minute songs?”.
I do hope that things change. On 17th October, it is National Album Day. This year’s theme is celebrating music icons contemporary and historic. It is a shame that people are still gravitating more to tracks or picking this and that rather than spending time immersed in an album. It is a bad habit I am guilty of, though I know how vital the album is. We have the ability to listen to albums through streaming, so the cost aspect should not hold people back. An artist wants the audience to listen to the album in full, rather than select a few tracks. The large percentage of us who have not heard a full album this past year is being tackled and addressed by National Rail and their Track Reset campaign. Their reset track is a good start, but it is incumbent on all of us to do more and ensure that we appreciate albums! There are those health benefits. How many of us are stressed and overworked. Albums are beneficial and can help when it comes to our anxieties and stresses. I do feel that letting an album run and listening from start to finish is restorative. Jumping between tracks can be a bit distracting and you can never really focus. I can understand and appreciate why people want nostalgia and go for their favourite tracks. But we cannot forget the album and why it is so important. There is so much to experience and enjoy. You get this complete story and so many different ideas and themes! I find it sad that fewer people are enjoying albums and instead go for something faster and more familiar. The beautiful and historical album is a…
WONDERFUL listening experience.