Life Of A Single

⌈ About a single as an art form, its origins and fate in the 1990s, when it almost disappeared, as well as the fact that it is worth spending some time on. And also about the fact that it is still alive. ⌋

ACONVERSATION I overheard on a bus, traveling from Ruczaj to the Czarnowiejska stop, where Spodek is located, a tiny cafe with inexpensive, great coffee, macerated white tea and good wine - to stay with the obvious - where a vertically hung Pro-Ject turntable is also played around the clock, caught my attention with the words: “single”, ‘singles’, and so on. Not that I was eavesdropping intentionally, after all, I was reading something there at that moment, probably “Tygodnik Powszechny”, but nevertheless this short word momentarily made me pay attention to these two guys.

⸜ The single was meant to be a competitive format for the LP, and it strongly attributed to the growth of the sales for it, especially among young people - helped by bands such as the Rolling Stones; on the photo is the February 21, 1964 single Little by Little, B-side with the song Not Fade Away, Decca Records

Seemingly in their late twenties, perhaps thirties, they began their conversation with enthusiasm, only to drift slowly off into reverie after some time, rather minutes not moments, and after exchanging remarks, interrupted only by the hiss of doors opening and closing, the hum of conversations that usually flows just below the threshold of our perception, and every now and then a loud “Hello!” and “C'mon, holly sh..!” thrown by the people around into their phones, with no regard for anyone around them. Their thoughtfulness resulted, if I understand correctly, from a mismatch between the imagined and narrated world with the real world around them, the world experienced by themselves. A thing in the modern world typical, right?

The thoughtfulness, or perhaps - so I thought - melancholy stemmed from the fact that - if I overheard correctly, though I didn't intend to overhear, the single status they were talking about and commenting on, on the one hand, seemed to them crazily appealing, interesting, mysterious, maybe even dreamlike, but on the other hand, they knew that it's not for everyone, and it doesn't serve everyone. If so - great, but assuming in advance that this type of life is for everyone probably doesn't make much sense. Also the other way around, because being “separate” doesn't always mean “lonely,” because you can also be lonely among people - to invoke post-psychological wisdom, which surprisingly often turns out to be true.

⸜ Polish singles featured a variety of covers - from common type for multiple titles such as - Jazz Jamboree 1962, No. 6 (top), to “generic” ones, like Tonpress' 2+1 Video/Samo życie (left), or with nice typography, like Calcuta by Night/I Want Madness by the same band (right). And only the most polished and revenue-generating artists, like Anna Jantar, featured singles with specially prepared cover artwork

But why am I writing about it at all, also not on a blog of advisory gurus, but in an audiophile magazine, you will ask. Well, it's because I then emerged from the depths of my reading because the guests in question pronounced the magic word “single”. They almost surely had no idea that it once meant something else and that today's use of it has moved from the world of music to the world of sociology. When I asked Google about this in its AI advisor pilot program, it hinted that the word “single” can mean many things, depending on the context. Most commonly, it refers to a person who does not have a life partner, but it can also mean a single playing sports (such as tennis), or - and here we are at home - “a short music release (SP).”

For me, singles are associated with one thing: a small black disc with a diameter of 7" that holds a song promoting a soon-to-be-released album. I also have images in my mind of digital singles, on CDs, but it is the black disc that is the primary image for me. Today, still, from time to time, rather less often than more often, publishers still prepare physical singles. However, they treat them as gadgets or prepare multi-disc boxes, such as The 7” Singles Box Set, a box of Paul McCartney's 80 discs originally released between 1971 and 2022, released in December 2022. For as it seems, the time of singles has passed.

⸜ Czesław Niemen was lucky for his releases to feature nice covers; in 1966, four tracks were released on a 45 rpm disc, making not a single, but an EP or “four”; unlike the latter, the disc spins at the speed classic for singles. In 2014, Polskie Nagrania released a careful replica of this material, but with a new digital remaster.

And once, after all, it all worked so well... The Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World in its first volume, dedicated to media and music, says:

A single is a recording format (or set of them) usually defined by a shorter recording time relative to the longer versions included on a music album. Although longer playback times are available on modern 12” (30 cm) vinyl records or CD singles, thus diluting the term, the term ‘single’ generally refers to the smallest commercially available module containing popular music.

⸜ Entry „Single” in: Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World, Volume 1: Media, Industry, Society, ed. John Shepherd, David Horn, Dave Laing, Paul Oliver, Peter Wicke, New York 2003, p. 779.

It simply refers to an album with a single song or two at most, usually shorter than the version included on the album, which was meant to promote the entire album. For years, this has been the most important marketing tool for publishers and, on the other hand, the cheapest way to enter the music world, usually on the part of youngsters. Sound familiar? - Of course, you can still hear the word on the radio when the presenter announces the arrival of a new recording. The music press also reaches for the term, although in both cases it no longer has anything to do with the physical medium, but simply speaks of a track announcing an album. Usually identical to the one that will appear on the album.

Once upon a time, however, a single determined the musical horizons of millions of people. It was a gadget, a beloved souvenir, a snippet of something great - if the whole record was interesting, too. Its history can be traced back to the early 20th century, when shellacs, 10” (25 cm) 78 rpm discs holding about four minutes of recording on a single side, reigned supreme. Collected in one “album,” they gave a full musical recording, usually of classical music. However, they were also sold separately and were then called, as you might guess, “singles.”

⸜ Sometimes singles are included with regular albums; in Poland, the first such release was Czesław Niemen's 1978 double album Idée fixe; a reissue with a single on 33.3 r.p.m. was released in 2020. On the right there is Peter Gabriel's New Blood album from 2011, which came with a picture disc single A Quite Moment/Solsbury Hill.

What we know by that name, however, came only when the RCA label decided to compete for the market with Columbia Records and, in response to its 12“ Long Play small-play disc, in February 1949 offered a small 7” (18 cm) disc spun at 45 rpm. Quite a few complete albums came out this way, for example, Frank Sinatra's 1955 In The Wee Small Hours, with four singles in two separate fold-out 7” covers (LC 6702).

At the same time, Extended Play albums appeared on the market, consisting of two 7” discs with songs selected from the entire album. An example would be, since we're on Sinatra, Songs For Young Lovers, EBF-488, from 1954. In Poland, we had their „poor-man” counterpart in the form of “fours,” that is, records with a 7” diameter, but with a playback speed of 33.1 rpm, the same as LPs. They held four tracks, which was cool, but the sound quality was inferior to classic singles - lower speed = higher distortion.

The idea of singles in the form of albums was modeled on an earlier, “shellac” one, but life changed those plans. Quite quickly, the singles format became popular among young people and, along with the explosion of rock, changed the face of music. As the aforementioned encyclopedia writes, it was a measure of the popularity of music programs like “Top 40.” Singles found their way into jukeboxes, were use at the house parties and were even listened to in cars. They became ubiquitous.

⸜ Nowadays, singles are not a promotional item, but a souvenir - on the photo is Oscar Peterson's On A Clear Day distributed to friends on the occasion of the release of the Exclusively For My Friends box set by the MPS record label; its analog remaster was prepared by Dirk Sommer (1970/2014)

So much so that Mike Evans titled a subsection devoted to this medium: The Cult of 45s. He wrote:

The importance of seven-inch 45 records and four-track EPs, linked to the parallel birth of rock'n'roll, cannot be overstated. The music of Elvis, Little Richard. Buddy Holly and other pioneers catering to the youth market, who for the first time had pocket money to spend, but in most cases not enough to afford to buy an expensive long-play record.

⸜ MIKE EVANS, Vinyl. The Art of Making Records. The Grooves, The Labels, The Designs, Sterling Publishing, New York 2015, p. 54.

An important role of the single was to “compress” the waiting time. Many albums were released almost overnight to sustain interest in a band or to arouse that interest. In Poland, the role of such a “relay” was played by the Tonpress publishing house (Krajowa Agencja Wydawnicza Tonpress), founded in the 1970s. Malgorzata Przedpelska-Bieniek wrote that it was famous for its mass release of singles and fours and that “once a week the studio was occupied by a young, promising, rock band.” Records and cassettes, she added, “were being released at lightning speed” (more → HERE). In turn, Filip Lobodzinski, writing about Chuck Berry's Maybelene, evokes the following image:

Half asleep, you play something on the guitar, record it, fall asleep unaware of what happened. In the morning you wake up and hear that before you started snoring, something interesting was hatched. Your buddy adds the lyrics, you record a working version in the studio, you go on tour, and your manager releases this unprocessed track on a single. The rest is history.

⸜ FILIP ŁOBODZIŃSKI, Alchemia symbolu, „Tygodnik Powszechny”, 21-27 May 2025, no. 21, p. 94.

In the mid-1980s, the popularity of other media of this type, such as 12” maxisingles, CD singles and cassette singles, the so-called ‘cassingles,’ challenged this supremacy of the ”forty-five.” The name began to increasingly separate from its physical designator, and became the entity independent of any format that it is today.

And that's a shame. After all, discs with two tracks, the main one on side A and an additional one on side B, served the role of an important transmitter, not only of music, but also of tastes, style and trends. They were a kind of commercial with a long shelf life. In the sense that although they were meant to herald an album and after its release this function lost its importance, they still remained an important part of musical life. Especially since the B-sides usually brought songs that didn't fit on the album or other versions of the basic track.

⸜ The Japanese version of Depeche Mode group's Violator album brought the Enjoy The Silence maxisingle along; due to an error at the pressing plant, owners were later sent a replacement disc with the single, which can also be purchased separately today (1990); on the back, one of the group's six boxed singles

It was with Shake the Disease, a single by Depeche Mode, released on April 29, 1985, that my journey with the band began. It promoted the compilation The Singles 81→85 (in the U.S. released under the title Catching Up with Depeche Mode), on which it was featured, but was never part of the band's regular album. A similar story to Shake the Disease is associated with the Polish band Vader, which in 1995 recorded its version of the song I Feel You, subtitled I.F.Y.. Released on a two-track single in a gray cover, it was reissued only once, as a bonus track remaster of the regular album, in 2003.

Besides, it was Depeche Mode that released on B-sides songs that for other bands would have been the pinnacle of their career, but which didn't fit on their lengthy albums. Let me remind you of the beautiful Dangerous from the single Personal Jesus, which was released on August 29, 1989, or Surrender, included on the second side of the 7” Only When I Lose Myself from September 7, 1998. Add that to the fact that maxisingle albums included remixed versions, extended versions, altered versions, live versions, and over time even more additional tracks.

⸜ In the 1990s and 2000s, a lot of CD singles not intended for sale were released in Poland; from Czesław Niemen's Spodchmurykapelusza album, as many as two were released - there is only one truck on the title single, but as many as three on Jagodach szaleju, including an instrumental version (2002).

And it was precisely this redundancy, richness one might say, that made singles a kind of disseminators of meaning. They promoted, but also created. They also supplemented musical knowledge, often stretching it in directions we wouldn't otherwise see. Today's single has lost this function and remains only what it was originally intended to be - a promotion, a form of advertising. There are no more versions of a song other than the one on the album - it's almost always just a song that will be on the album, only that it was made available earlier. A cool exception, then, are the projects of Polskie Nagrania and Warner, who release digital singles, but with separate cover art, separate story, etc. An example would be Mieczyslaw Kosz's Signals from the album Signals. Trio '68.

When the music world became dominated by streaming services, the physical single as a music medium became a burden for publishers. Anyway - not for the first time. Steve Knopper, in his book Appetite for Self-Destruction: the Spectacular Crash of the Record Industry in the Digital Age, writes about eight “cardinal sins” committed by record labels that led to the collapse of the entire industry. Among them, at number four was “Killing the Single” (Soft Skull Press, 2009, p. 105).

⸜ In the 1980s, 3” CD singles were also released, falling within the definition of the Compact Disc format. They were especially popular in Japan; pictured here is one of the few (perhaps the only) 3” singles with Polish music - Dziewczyna szamana by Justyna Steczkowska, with an additional track not released anywhere else (1995)

In response to a question he posed about why the record business got rid of CD singles from the market, he cites the opinion of Jim Caparro, president of Def Jam Records in the 1990s: “Too small a margin.” Singles, he says, were too expensive to produce and no longer sold as well as before. Previously, they were given away for free to radio DJs, at concerts and sent to magazines. It was the cheapest promotional gadget imaginable.

As time went on, however, label bosses came to the conclusion that sales of singles “cannibalized” sales of entire albums. Especially since there was usually one good song on them, and the whole album was mediocre at best. And that, after all, was not what they wanted. The point was to sell even more CDs in an increasing number of major record stores. And in this, the singles only got in the way. As Knopper concludes this chapter, “there was a fatal flaw in this strategy.”

Today, real singles no longer exist. Indeed, it's hard to talk in this way about album announcement tracks made available on streaming. While it would be a return to the roots, because that's what singles were when the 7” album market exploded, at the same time it would be cutting off everything that this format has become over time and what it eventually became - one of the most important elements of the music industry, rich in meaning and content.

⸜ Once again Steczkowska, and next to it a promotional single by the band Yes and a promotional CD by Bajm with the song America. The latter has the diameter of a classic CD, but only the area of the 3” single has been printed, leaving the rest transparent.

Today the single serves as a gadget. As the author of the entry in the Continuum Encyclopedia of Popular Music of the World notes, with the disappearance of its importance began its second life. It is fetishized for its physicality, artistic value, and through commercial marginalization has gained - paradoxically - importance. Perhaps that is why there are performers and publishers who continue this story. David Quantick titled his article from last year appropriately enough: Pet Shop Boys and the art of the CD single. It reads:

And, brilliantly, with ‘New London Boy’, they’re also using the world of the physical format to release, not an indie-faced seven inch single, but an actual proper double CD single. Those of us who lived through the 1990s – a decade of new wave revival bands in Union Jack hoodies reeking of CK1 – remember the double CD single fondly. They were controversial things, because they were seen (rightly) as attempts to boost sales and chart positions by including different, sexy tracks across both compact discs: but for that same reason they were also brilliant.

⸜ DAVID QUANTICK, Pet Shop Boys and the art of the CD single. 11 Dec. 2024, → SUPERDELUXEEDITION.com, accessed: 23.05.2025.

The same is true of vinyl singles. They are still being released, mostly to celebrate Record Store Day, and are also sometimes added to albums, but they serve not to advertise the album, but to connect us to the music. Because physical formats do this much better than streaming. The same is true for reading as well. Studies show that content comprehension is six to eight times higher when reading paper books than on digital devices Let me repeat - it's the same with music.

⸜ Collecting the singles on a CD is one way to promote them again. It's not just the greatest hits, as we also get B-sides; on the photo: Culture Club and Japanese Singles Collection on SHM-CD (2022)

That's why we should buy singles, in my case it's CD singles. This is because they have something in them that we don't get in any other form. They are an energy pill without side effects. This will keep the format alive. ●

WOJCIECH PACUŁA
Chief editor