In recent years, “no skips” has been one of the phrases most commonly bandied about in discussions about music. If someone thinks an album is good, they might use “no skips” to express how there aren’t any songs in the tracklist they skip ahead of to avoid listening to. If you skip a song, it is probably because you don’t like it. Therefore, “no skips” works to communicate the overall quality of each individual song and thus the album as a whole.
To me, the use of “no skips” translates to “This album is so good that I want to listen to every song on it.” But I also feel like that is likely so obvious that it doesn’t even need mentioning. I would never say something like “this sandwich is so good, I don’t want to spit any of the bites out.” Would you? I think that if an album is a great piece of work then it’s usually a forgone conclusion that you would want to experience it in its entirety. I’d say that even be the case for most albums we’d consider to be merely good rather than great. If the bar for a great album to clear is that we want to listen to all of its songs, then I feel like that is a low bar to clear. While it is true that some records do have one weak track or an unnecessary track, I find that generally most of my favourite records are ones I prefer to take the full journey with. But perhaps this is not the case for other people.
“No skips” offers a quick utilitarian assessment of the quality of a record. There is a reason it comes up in casual conversation rather than album reviews penned by music journalists. It’s concise, but it doesn’t really tell you anything about the album. And yeah I know, music is difficult to describe. One of its greatest powers lies in how it inspires in us feelings that are hard to put into words. But “no skips” doesn’t even come close to doing it justice. There’s definitely something more interesting to be said.