There’s been a lot of buzz this week surrounding Omar Rodriguez-Lópezsince he announced he’ll be releasing a series of solo albums bi-weekly over the coming months.
According to his announcement, the At The Drive-In and Mars Volta member has put together a bunch of material to release 12 full-length studio albums across 24 weeks.
That must have been a hard slog in the studio, right? Well, sort of. Rodriguez-Lópezis actually putting out a bunch of previously unreleased albums that he wrote between 2008 and 2013 – which in itself, is admittedly quite prolific, just not quite on the scale of actually producing 12 records in 24 weeks.
But it got us thinking: is prolificacy in music really a good thing? The usual sage advice for artists is to wait atleast a few years after a release before even returning to the studio. Take The Avalanches, or Sade, who made fans wait ten years between drinks. But if the artist or band is churning out quality material regardless of quantity, who cares?
Inspired by Rodriguez-López,here’s our collection of some of the most prolific artists in music history – and coincidentally, they happen to be some of the most successful on the charts.
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The Beatles
Probably the first example that comes to anyone’s mind; the Fab Four released 12 albums between 1963 and 1970. That’s almost two albums per year. No wonder they got fed up with each other and called it quits.
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Natalie Cole
She may have her father’s genes, but that can’t be all that’s behind the 22 full-length albums she penned.
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James Brown
Since his musical inception in 1959, Brown released 71 studio albums, earning him the rep of the hardest-working musician in the industry.
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Johnny Cash
His number stands just shy of the big 100. Counting all his studio, Christmas, gospel, compilation, and other albums you get a healthy 96 for the Man in Black. Not bad.
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Donna Summer
There’s a lot of male prolificacy going on, but Donna Summer has made women proud, releasing 18 full-length albums across her storied career.
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Sun Ra
The jazz pioneer enters this list with a mammoth 159 full-length releases, including live albums. It’s fair to say the man was a musical genius.
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Aphex Twin
Who, funnily enough, released an album last week, taking him to 23. That number includes his releases under his alias AFX.
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Ty Segall
The 29-year-old American has plenty of aliases and wrote with different bands; even at a young age, his number of albums stands at 17.
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Nina Simone
Her iconic voice, style and talent landed her more than 40 albums, a majority of them written between 1958 and 1974.
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King Gizzard And The Lizard Wizard
Australia’s own prolific psych rockers have only been around since 2011, but are already at eight albums and show no signs of slowing down. Who knows what number they will be at in 20 years’ time? They’ve already announced plans to release four new LPs in 2017. Although, it’s worth pointing out that theyarea supergroup with a rotating lineup.
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Frank Zappa
Here’s one for the history books. The legendary Zappa had 62albums’ worth of material to play from – all completed within 27 years, and that’s not counting his posthumous work, which takes him to over 100 records. With those factored in, you can look at it as pretty much three albums a year, for 27 years, and that’s why he was the most prolific of them all.
Did we miss out any artists on our list? Does quantity get in the way of quality? Let us know in the comments below.
