Skits, Interludes and Intros: Why They Make Albums Harder to Memorize
Published by Shaaroo Games
Ask someone to list the tracks on a favorite album and you'll usually get the hits, the deep cuts and then a long pause where the short tracks should be. Skits, interludes, intros and outros are the least memorable pieces of an album, and often the most deliberate. They don't have a chorus, they rarely get streamed on their own, and nobody puts them on a playlist. But they're doing real work, and they're the main reason some albums are so difficult to rebuild from memory.
This guide looks at why artists include them, how common they are, and what to do about them if you're trying to learn an album's order.
What counts as a skit or interlude
There are no strict rules, but the usual categories are:
- Intros and outros, short tracks at the beginning or end that frame the album.
- Interludes, instrumental or short vocal tracks that connect two larger songs or mark a change of mood.
- Skits, spoken-word pieces, often comedic or narrative, usually with dialogue.
- Voicemails and phone calls, a hip-hop tradition, used to add personality and story.
Many are labeled right in the title, which makes them easy to spot in a tracklist: "(Skit)," "Interlude," "Intro," "Outro."
How common are they? Some counts
We can answer that from the albums in Order the Album. Here are some examples, counting only tracks that are labeled as skits or interludes in their titles.
- The Slim Shady LP (Eminem, 1999): 5 skits out of 20 tracks.
- The Eminem Show (2002): 5 skits out of 20 tracks.
- The Marshall Mathers LP (2000): 3 skits out of 18 tracks.
- Late Registration (Kanye West, 2005): 4 numbered skits out of 20 tracks.
- The College Dropout (Kanye West, 2004): 3 skits out of 21 tracks, plus an intro.
- Room for Improvement (Drake, 2006): 3 voicemail tracks, an intro and an outro among 23 tracks.
- More Life (Drake, 2017): 2 interludes out of 22 tracks.
- For All the Dogs (Drake, 2023): 2 interludes out of 23 tracks.
On The Slim Shady LP and The Eminem Show, a quarter of the album is skits. That's a lot of tracks that aren't songs, and a lot of positions to keep straight.
Why artists use them
Pacing. A short track works as a palate cleanser between two heavy songs. It lowers the energy for a moment so the next big track can hit harder.
Setting and story. Skits create a world. On Kanye West's The College Dropout, the school-themed skits turn an album into something closer to a school day, with its own characters and scenes. On The Eminem Show, the "Curtains Up" and "Curtains Close" tracks frame the whole record as a stage production.
Humor and personality. Comedy gives listeners a break from heavy subject matter and makes an album feel like a conversation rather than a series of songs.
Structure. Some albums use interludes as a formal device. BTS's Map of the Soul: 7 (2020) opens with "Intro: Persona," includes "Interlude: Shadow" in the middle, and ends with "Outro: Ego." The three titles draw on psychological ideas of the persona, the shadow and the ego, and the placement of each is part of the album's design.
Continuity. Recurring characters and sketches link albums to each other. Eminem's skits include a character called Paul, and the same title, "Paul (Skit)," shows up on The Slim Shady LP, The Marshall Mathers LP, Encore, Relapse and Kamikaze. A track called "Ken Kaniff (Skit)" appears on both The Slim Shady LP and The Marshall Mathers LP, and "Steve Berman (Skit)" turns up on several records as well.
Why they are so hard to memorize
If you're trying to learn an album's order, skits create three particular problems.
They have no melodic hook. Memory for a song is attached to its tune. A spoken skit has nothing to hum, so there's no melody to hold on to.
They are easy to confuse. When a title repeats across albums ("Paul (Skit)" five times over), your brain files them together. Placing the right one on the right album takes real effort.
They often follow similar patterns. A skit usually comes after a big song and before another one, so position clues are weak: it's a track that could appear almost anywhere.
How to handle skits when you're learning an order
A few strategies help.
- Treat each skit as part of the song before it or after it. If you think of a skit as the end of the track it follows, you reduce the number of items you have to remember.
- Use the title as a clue. Numbered skits, such as "Skit #1" through "Skit #4" on Late Registration, tell you their own order. Curtain tracks tell you where the beginning and end are.
- Learn the pattern, not the position. On The Eminem Show, skits appear at the start, end, and at points where a theme changes. Seeing the pattern is easier than memorizing five separate locations.
- Anchor to the song just before. Link each skit to the preceding track with a small mental image.
- Learn the songs first, then slot the skits in. Place the real tracks in order, and then you'll find the gaps are easy to fill.
A skit-heavy album is a different kind of challenge
In Order the Album, albums with lots of skits behave very differently from albums with none. With a 10-track album like Yeezus, every track is a song, and you can lean on melody. With The Slim Shady LP, you also have to remember a handful of short spoken pieces that don't sound like anything else.
If you want to test yourself, try The Eminem Show, where the curtain tracks give you the start and finish, or Late Registration, where the numbered skits give you clues. For a different kind of challenge, try Map of the Soul: 7, where the intro, interlude and outro are part of the album's design.
When you finish, notice which short tracks you remembered and which you didn't. It tells you a lot about how you listen.