this post was submitted on 21 Jul 2026
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The most popular seem to be lighthearted clever little truths, hidden in daily life.
Here are some examples to inspire your own showerthoughts:
- Both “200” and “160” are 2 minutes in microwave math
- When you’re a kid, you don’t realize you’re also watching your mom and dad grow up.
- More dreams have been destroyed by alarm clocks than anything else
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- The entire showerthought must be in the title
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- If your topic is in a grey area, please phrase it to emphasize the fascinating aspects, not the dramatic aspects. You can do this by avoiding overly politicized terms such as "capitalism" and "communism". If you must make comparisons, you can say something is different without saying something is better/worse.
- A good place for politics is c/politicaldiscussion
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If you made it this far, showerthoughts is accepting new mods. This community is generally tame so its not a lot of work, but having a few more mods would help reports get addressed a little sooner.
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For many, absolutely! That's how they were intended, and they deserve it.
Others, it's just ten songs randomly arranged.
Pretty good litmus test on whether they're good musicians or just corporate karaoke.
Is a book of short stories or poems not art, just because it is not a monolithic novel.
An Album with 10 independent songs can still be a fully artistic package. Maybe each song is ment to be experience on it's own. Maybe the art form is to deliver a succinct and complete piece in 3-5 minutes?
Agreed. There’s so much pointless elitism and snobbishness in this thread; very disappointing from so-called music fans.
Disappointing, but not surprising.
If someone took a photograph of the Mona Lisa, do they deserve all the accolades of Da Vinci?
Of course not. Feel free to say thank you for showing this to me, but that's about all the credit they deserve.
Sorry if you're a member of Maroon 5, or some other band that purchases random songs and performs them as your own, but to me, that's the same as taking photos of OTHER people's paintings and putting them in a coffee table book.
A non-sequitur reply that says a completely different thing than what was discussed in the thread.
I thought it made sense in context, but maybe not since so many people seem to not understand what I'm trying to say.
Plenty of very talented people write individual songs instead of conceptual albums, and songs on a record often sound cohesively only because they were written in approximately the same period. I don't know where you got the notion that it's either whole albums or songs written by others, nothing in between.
For example, Velvet Underground operated pretty much in pop industry's recording mode despite their experimental approach to the sound and themes. 'The Velvet Underground & Nico' straight up opens with one of the poppiest songs they have, and the tracks aren't thematically linked aside from being generally about people at The Factory. Songs about drugs and BDSM are interspersed with heartfelt songs about Edie Sedgwick, Warhol, and a poor girl who wants to party. They also recorded a bunch of great songs that went unreleased for fifteen years, until the compilation 'VU'.
I don't know where anyone got that notion, because that's definitely not what I was trying to say.
I mean, that's how your comments read.
🤷🏻♂️ makes perfect sense to me.
Write your own album > play a series of songs that you paid other people to write for you.
You can disagree with that, or maybe you're offended because you're in a band that can't write songs. That's fine, but it doesn't change my opinion on the matter.
You seem to hold two ideas in your head that are fighting for the share of the brain time: that conceptual albums are better than semi-random collections of tracks, and that artists writing their own songs are better than those getting songs written for them. Somehow you can't distinguish the two, or at least write as if you do.
Meanwhile, e.g. Nico's ‘Chelsea Girl’ has only one song co-written by Nico, but is a great album with two songs that are regularly featured in media decades later: ‘These Days’ and ‘The Fairest of the Seasons’, and also the splendid ‘Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams’.
Also btw, you might be surprised at how many popular songs are covers. This was particularly widespread in the sixties, when the same song could've been sold to several different performers in a few weeks.
After all, songwriting and singing or playing music are skills that aren't inherently related. Have you heard many poets sing their poems in a town square while playing a guitar or some shit like that? Many popular bands have someone like the drummer be the primary songwriter. Even the lyrics and the music are often written by two different people. Plenty of great labels have producers, songwriters, and house bands that are separate from singing artists that they publish — this was prevalent in the seventies with labels such as Stax (with Booker T. and the M.G.'s as the house producer and the band). It's changed somewhat in the recent times, with labels playing a smaller role both with the ascent of streaming and the preference for singer-songwriters.
Lastly, recall that e.g. Mozart was a great composer, but could perform perhaps just a few of his own pieces, as he was neither an orchestra, nor a conductor or an operatic singer, for whom he wrote.
Nobody here brought up cover songs though...?
Did you not know that record labels buy pre-written songs for bands to play as their own?
9 times out of 10, I prefer full cohesive albums.
That said, this is an absurd statement. Musical talent has nothing to do with it.
I'm not saying that the musicians in corporate karaoke bands aren't talented, but I'll give more credit to a composer than a talented cover band any day.
You're free to feel differently.
Hahaha, I'll be stealing that!
Yeah that's what I think too, an album if approached as a whole piece of art is great compared to random singles