Is The Long Pop Album Rollout A Dying Trend?
Dec 23, 2020 21:22:35 GMT -5
Post by taylor on Dec 23, 2020 21:22:35 GMT -5
www.vulture.com/2020/12/taylor-swift-evermore-folklore-surprise-explained.html
A couple excerpts I found particularly interesting:
This article raises a very good question: Is it possible that we're beginning to see the end of the fancy, weeks-to-months-long album rollout in the music industry? It seems to have its pros and cons.
A couple excerpts I found particularly interesting:
Albums became the dominant format for pop music in the mid-1960s, with cohesive projects like the Beatles’ Rubber Soul and the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds, but the modern album rollout as we know it may be more indebted to the 1980s, when stars like Madonna or Michael Jackson could drum up support for an album with a music video for a lead single on MTV. Over time, there became an unspoken (and, eventually, baked into the budget) checklist to releasing a major-label pop album: an upbeat lead single, a grabby music video, some press, a tour announcement, new merch, and the album itself. Even in the so-called post-album era of the 2010s, when listeners didn’t have to purchase an album to hear it, the industry still hadn’t moved on from albums, in large part because those extraneous elements of the rollout — the merch, the tour, the attention — still make record labels and other middlemen money. “Artists have preemptively shifted their vocabulary, with eras representing something solid while traditional albums become ever more nebulous,” noted a 2017 Guardian column on “the rise of the ‘era.’” That sort of distinct aesthetic period conceptualizing an album only strengthens the tour, merch, and the like — and artists have long used their rollouts to establish those eras, like when Swift leaned into nostalgia for 1989 or turned reputation into a treatise on the media. Swift didn’t abandon her beloved eras on folklore and evermore, though; she instead took it a step further by proving that one could just as easily be built in a day, as she inspired her army of fans to pivot to cottagecore on a dime.
Beyoncé recognized the flaws in the whole machine back in 2013 and nearly put a stop to it. She wasn’t the first musician to ever pull a surprise release, but by doing so as a pop star of the highest echelon, she boldly disrupted a formula everyone thought worked and swore was the only way — then later decided it was such a success that she did it again with Lemonade in 2016. (And it was: Beyoncé was, at that point, the best-selling album in the iTunes Store’s history.) Rollouts were supposed to turn big pop albums into events that drive momentum over weeks and months, sometimes more than a year; Beyoncé showed that the Zeitgeist could be captured and held in just one night, zero to 100.
Beyoncé recognized the flaws in the whole machine back in 2013 and nearly put a stop to it. She wasn’t the first musician to ever pull a surprise release, but by doing so as a pop star of the highest echelon, she boldly disrupted a formula everyone thought worked and swore was the only way — then later decided it was such a success that she did it again with Lemonade in 2016. (And it was: Beyoncé was, at that point, the best-selling album in the iTunes Store’s history.) Rollouts were supposed to turn big pop albums into events that drive momentum over weeks and months, sometimes more than a year; Beyoncé showed that the Zeitgeist could be captured and held in just one night, zero to 100.
Ditching the album rollout has also given Swift and Grande a staying power on the charts that their peers simply have not been able to match all year. Swift spent her first ten weeks in the top ten with folklore, seven of them nonconsecutively at No. 1; Grande’s Positions spent six weeks in the top five. Meanwhile, some of the year’s biggest proper pop rollouts — from stars like Dua Lipa, Lady Gaga, and Katy Perry — haven’t even landed at the top spot. Gaga, the only No. 1 of the group, spent just one week atop the charts with Chromatica, falling out of the top ten after four weeks; that was ultimately after the album had already been delayed seven weeks due to COVID-19, thwarting Gaga’s vision to go big for its release. (“I had so many fun things planned for us to celebrate together,” she wrote to fans when she announced the delay.) The album that knocked Chromatica off No. 1 was Lil Baby’s My Turn, returning to the top spot after its March debut. Lil Baby spent 13 weeks shifting between No. 2 through No. 6 before returning to No. 1; Gaga released Chromatica 13 weeks after lead single “Stupid Love.” (Still unconvinced of the rollout’s waning relevancy? Lil Baby only announced the release date for My Turn a month before it came out.) It perfectly illustrates the question facing nearly every major pop artist today: Is the album the beginning or the end of the release process?
This article raises a very good question: Is it possible that we're beginning to see the end of the fancy, weeks-to-months-long album rollout in the music industry? It seems to have its pros and cons.
