I remember once upon a time when albums were pressed on vinyl and were in the neighborhood of 45 to 50 minutes long. When ten songs was an album instead of 15...

But to be fair, albums which contain extras might be that way simply because there was room after the artist was done making all the music they intended to make. You might be putting the cart before the horse there.

And honestly, I'd rather have a serious piece of work that happened to be shorter than an hour, than to have an album padded with a couple of mediocre filler songs or additional repeats of choruses just to make it 74 minutes long.