Beyoncé released two in one go, Dua Lipa let her fans have three. Taylor Swift? She kept everything under wraps.The Tortured Poets Department dropped last week with no singles released in advance and, next month, Billie Eilish says she’ll be doing the same.For years, commentators have been warning that the album is dead and the single reigns supreme.
That’s partly down to streaming apps like Spotify and Apple Music which let fans pick and choose their favourite tracks from artists and curate personalised playlists.But could two of the world’s biggest stars opting to ditch singles breathe life back into albums?
Announcing Hit Me Hard and Soft, Billie said she wanted her fans to hear the album in one go.And in an interview with Rolling Stone, she explained why.”Every single time an artist I love puts out a single without the context of the album, I’m just already prone to hating on it,” she said.”I really don’t like when things are out of context. This album is like a family: I don’t want one little kid to be in the middle of the room alone.”
Even though he’s responsible for the weekly Official Singles Chart, Martin Talbot, the chief executive of the Official Charts Company, admits he’s more of an album fan himself.”It’s fantastic that Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift are doing what appears to be something designed to push music fans back to the concept of an album,” he tells BBC Newsbeat.”There is a danger that music fans lose sight of what an album is and what an album represents.”The album represents the kind of apex of the creative vision of a particular artist.”And it’s really important for the creative health of music and the cultural environment we preserve that.”
source:bbc
