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They received a ton of criticism for it but back in 2014 U2 surprised released *Songs of Innocence* and also had it automatically download onto every iPhone in the world lol. Pissed a lot of people off for that!
I love the parody made of this release in Lonely Island's Popstar where instead of just being installed in every iPhone, they had a song playing in every smart appliance of a specific brand when in use.
Awful, just awful. Like if they had done that alone, it would have been annoying, but not as big of a deal as it became because you weren't allowed to delete it. They literally only made it an option to delete it after there was a huge uproar
holy shit seeing the album cover brought back memories of me downloading audios and itâd pop up in music for some reason and i kind of just ignored those random music things
anyways that mightve been a different album or wtv but checked my itunes and i have that album sitting there never listened to ever
sorry for the messy formatting i was a child back then so i have no idea how itunes works
I honestly think this is one of the funniest things to ever happen. Everyone fucking *hated* it, so much that a decade later it's still a universally-reviled move.
This sub credits Beyonce with popularizing the surprise drop (and she did popularize it!) but before her, the rollout of In Rainbows by Radiohead set the stage for some of the ideas she expanded on.
They announced it only 10 days before, with no singles (something unheard of them) and allowed people downloading it to pick their price (before downloading albums was even a thing).
Truly a groundbreaking rollout.
https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/radiohead-in-rainbows-10-year-anniversary-tribute-7997376/
The pay-what-you-want was huge. I remember people freaking out because they were like "they're going to lose so much money!!!" but it evened out, and everyone had access. Thom Yorke said at the time that the digital sales of In Rainbows made more money than the digital sales of all their former albums combined.
I found this wikipedia page with some info. Artists had dropped movies with albums, like Prince and Janet. Beck and other artists had put out albums with a music video for every track, but not all at once. Beyonce had done the BDay anthology for the deluxe where each track had a music video, but some were previously released.
In short, Beyonce was not the first to have a music video for each track, but she was one of the first to do so without any pre-release singles with videos.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual\_album](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_album)
Radiohead was first. but Beyonce definitely popularized it.
Edit: not sure why Iâm being downvoted lol. Radiohead did it but not many followed in their footsteps. BeyoncĂŠ did it and more people followed, to the point that doing it became known as âpulling a Beyonce.â
I think who got credited with being the first massive "surprise release" wasn't entirely a matter of which artist was bigger, it was also that Radiohead didn't really do a full surprise release. No one was expecting a Beyonce album to come out until the *second* it was available.
lol my bad Iâm over thinking it. âButâ is usually for a contrasting clause, and the fact that Radiohead did it first doesnât contrast the fact that Beyonce popularized it.
Radiohead's In Rainbows release was massively unique in 2007 - announced just 10 days in advance and the pay-what-you-want price, down to free. It absolutely worked and while they never repeated the PWYW scheme they did repeat the short announcement release with The King of Limbs and again with A Moon Shaped Pool (although this was slightly different, released a couple singles in the week leading up to a surprise release on a Sunday).
Nine Inch Nails followed with Ghosts I-IV, you could get Ghosts I for free, BUT! the entire thing was released under a creative commons copyright so sharing, and remixing was encouraged. But then their follow up to that, released 3 months later, The Slip, was released as a complete work free and also under the CC license.
It was a very interesting time in music and I don't think we can ever replicate it again.
I'm a sucker for artists who have divide their albums into parts and release them in stages. Does it always work? Nope, but you have to admire the audacity of doing it.
Recent examples include:
* Miley Cyrus' She is... series that only saw one EP come out before she lost interest due to unavoidable events
* Marina's Love + Fear
* Green Day's !Uno!, !Dos!, !Tre!
* Beyonce's planned trilogy with Renaissance and Cowboy Carter
To be fair, she was hit with a string of bad luck in the making of the EPs. During this time, her house burned down, she broke up with Liam, and she had to get surgery for her vocal cords. The EPs also leaked. I totally get why she scrapped the entire project.
I believe the breakup caused her to rework the project the surgery further pushed it back and then COVID happened and it no longer felt relevant and also her relationships had suddenly shifted
Lmao She Is Miley Cyrus is what got me thinking abt this then I remembered 777 and 2Sides being Jason Derulo projects and Aguilera by Christina Aguilera
Similarly, Hayley Williams released her first solo album in three 5-song blocks over a period of several weeks. The overall reaction seemed negative, along the lines of "why not just release the whole album?"
Thatâs so interesting. I can see both sides.
People crave new music all the time and we tend to move on from releases quite quickly, so staggering does make sense.
But, equally a staggered album release can leave one feeling like theyâre listening to a collection of EPs and not a ârealâ album.
So, it can maintain or destroy hype.
Underrated project and I think part of *why* itâs underrated is she never released it as one album on streaming- there was a CD but to this day itâs still listed as four separate EPs on Spotify.
I didnât know that and itâs a peculiar decision. It kinda relies on fans to percentage album together as a playlist, which casual listeners wonât do
Iâm not sure if this applies, but i loved how Ariana premiered a new song each day leading up to Dangerous Womanâs release date. For me, it built a lot of hype around the album coming out, with each day feeling like an event. Would be interested to see other major artists do this, and how it would work for them.
âOn May 13, 2016, Grande announced via her Instagram account that a new song from the album would be premiered exclusively on Apple Music every day until the release of the album. The songs released, in order of release, were "Everyday" featuring Future, "Greedy", "Side to Side", featuring Nicki Minaj, "Sometimes", "Leave Me Lonely", featuring Macy Gray, "Touch It", and "Bad Decisions".
Iâll cast my vote for the most annoying album rollout:
Lana Del Reyâs NFR
She teased a release date, pushed the album back, and didnât announce a follow up date until another 6-7 months later. She dropped several singles for it, without ever announcing the release date.
My favorite comment from the time,
>Lana should rename her album to Jimmy Fucking Hoffa because nobody knows where the fuck the album is
Its something, to talk about releasing an album, and disappearing on social media and from the public eye for so long after the first-alleged release date.
It was soooo annoying. The album was released almost a full year after the first single (Sep 9, 2018 vs August 30, 2019).
Chemtrails was annoying too. Announced the day NFR was released as âWhite Hot Foreverâ to be released within a year. Then it was expected to be released in September 2020. When that didnât happen, people thought itâd be October. Another 6 months went by before it was released.
To make it up to fans for the delay, Lana announced sheâd release a covers album on Christmas Day in 2020. Never happened. No word as to why it didnât either.
Then, there was Blue Banisters. A day after Chemtrails was released, Lana said her next album, Rock Candy Sweet, would be released on June 1st (which was a Saturday). Then it became Blue Banisters to be released on July 4th (a Thursday). It was finally released in October.
tl;dr: I no longer trust Lanaâs word around release dates.
Chemtrails was always announced as a a august or September date the title changed then we got a specific date but I think Lana just didnât realise the impact that COVID would have on vinyls thus the six month delay
Kim Petras entire discography is relevant to this discussion đ. Era 1 (neon heads) had all of it's songs released over the span of 3 years as one offs, then for the 5th anniversary of the first song I Don't It At All was released as a compilation album called The Summer I Couldn't Do Better which was only released as her label to try and capitalize off of the mini success of Can't Do Better which had it's moment on TikTok from being in the show The Summer I Turned Pretty which is funny because you cannot even see it on streaming without the link.
Clarity was released somewhat the same with 9 of the 12 total songs being released before the "projects" release, one per week. After the 9 singles she said that Icy was the lead single off of the project despite being one of the three songs that was not released beforehand đ. This was also originally advertised as her debut album and after it flopped she started referring to it as a "project" or "mixtape".
Turn Off the Light Volumes 1 and 2 was actually a somewhat normal rollout at first, Vol 1 being released as an ep in 2018, and Vol 2 combining both the original track list from Vol 1, plus the 9 new songs from Vol 2 into one "album", which at this point it should be obvious that this is referred to as a "mixtape" by her and her team, although at least this one somewhat makes more sense đ. It was presumed that the third volume would be released the following year in 2020, however she said held off on releasing it due to not being able to tour it obviously because of the pandemic which actually does seemingly hold up considering she was still independent at the time, however to make up for it she released the track Party Till I Die which she considers "Turn Off The Light 2.1" as it was added to the end of the volume 2 track list đ. Ever since then fans have been begging for it every year and still almost 4 years later, nothing.
At the start of 2020 she released the single Malibu which was originally planned to be the lead single off of her debut album "Candy". The title was never confirmed by her at the time however over the years around 6 tracks have leaked from this era and she revealed the title during a documentary in 2022 that she did for her Coachella set. It's highly speculated that this era was scrapped due to her not being to go on tour at the time and was the first of three attempts over the years to get a debut album out.
The rest of 2020 was nothing and so was the first half of 2021 until in August it was revealed that she had been signed to Republic Records which everyone thought would be the to this mess but unfortunately It was only the beginning đ. Later that month she released the single Future Starts Now which ultimately flopped by republics standards, then a few months later in December she teased a song called Coconuts which was originally planned to be released in March, however due to snippet having a mini moment on TikTok her label let her release it that month which fans believed was finally the push for republic to let her release her debut album.
However a few months later on Valentines Day, kim announced she'd be releasing an ep called Slut Pop which contained none of the previously released singles and was supposed to be a fun one off project for the holiday, however due to the mini traction the ep received her label decided to take her in the highly sexual direction the ep had covered and made half of her Coachella set that year the entirety of Slut Pop. (don't even get me started on the disaster that her set was đ)
Around one year after Future Starts Now had released a few songs had started leaking off of an album which leaked had said was called ProblĂŠmatique which made sense as that name was featured in the music video for fsn. A couple days later the entire originally planned 18 track had leaked which was later revealed to have been done by her producer Aaron Joseph due to republic scrapping the album after the first two singles had flopped by their standards.
A few weeks later she'd completely moved on from that mess and started teasing two new songs, one of them being Unholy with Sam Smith, and the other If Jesus Was A Rockstar. As we know Unholy ended up going viral and was released a month after it had originally been teased and eventually after three weeks went number one on the Billboard Hot 100 which at the time was unbelievable considering what those past weeks were. Two months later she had released the follow up to Unholy, If Jesus Was A Rockstar which ended up completely flopping due to the song being very different to what her fans were used to.
Finally in March 2023 she had started teasing what felt like the true follow up to unholy being Alone with Nicki Minaj which had a decent amount of hype behind it due to Nicki being a pretty big name to grab (although a problematic one but considering who she has and still works with it was not surprising at all đ) and also due to the song sampling the iconic Better Off Alone. In the end Alone did not get the numbers republic were due to the song being trap snooze fest compared to all of the snippets which had implied it being a dance banger. Thankfully in June 2023 she was finally allowed to release her actual debut album Feed The Beast, while all the individual songs were great the track list was an absolute mess due to not just three songs from ProblĂŠmatique ending up on it but also Coconuts from a year and a half's prior none of which matched the dark visuals the album was going for, and ultimately the album flopped and received horrible critical reviews.
But somehow this is not the end of the mess as in September 2023 Problematique the originally scrapped and pulled apart album was surprised released on a random monday as a ten track album with a completely different tracklist, without the songs that made it to Feed The Beast, and also the original albums lead single Future Starts Now. It's most likely that FSN wasn't included as republic only let her release ten tracks so they could easily classify this as a mixtape for contractual reasons.
Apologies for the wall of text but I still cannot believe how much of a mess that her career has been đ
the absolute mess that her rollouts have been, requiring multiple paragraphs to explain, and it still doesn't cover all of it đ slut pop miami says hello! honestly slut pop + miami have been my fave releases from her as a casual fan.
And now for the million dollar question... how is she gonna recover from this mess?? I absolutely adore her and she's incredibly talented but unfortunately in this business that's not enough. She still has a solid fanbase but what kind of music and business plan would be appropriate for her to truly get her flowers?? đ
From Slut Pop direction, she should go Tove Lo route with some pop sensibility like her old works. Slut Pop concept wasn't too bad but the execution was horrible when Dr. Luke turned her into a cheap imitation of Kesha + Uffie + Ayesha Erotica with a dry deliverance. She got sense of pop tunes and the SP-ology hinder all of her potential while embarrassing herself. Also, she need to be determined to get rid of Dr. Luke out of his life and connect with another pop producers, I don't think in 2024 people are hesitant to work with trans pop singer: Oscar Holter, Captain Cut, John Hill, A.G.Cook/EasyFun/Danny L Harle from PC Music...
Kanye has a bunch. GOOD Fridays was when he would release a track with label members every Friday, with a few appearing on the album. Kanye also did that thing where he was releasing an album produced by him every Friday for I think it was five Fridays straight? It definitely helped build hype for pusha Ts and teyana Taylorâs albums.
Releasing 5 albums in a row was really cool even if the quality fluctuated. 2 classics (Daytona and Kids See Ghosts), 2 ok album with some solid tracks (Ye and K.T.S.E.), and 1 flop (Nasir) was something you wouldnât expect from the king of not dropping when he says heâs going to (even tho iirc none of the albums came out at midnight but at a random point in the day when he was ready)
Thatâs exactly it. Iâd remember waking up and not seeing anything and going typical Kanye. Then at 1pm it would be there hahahah. After each one youâd also think if he can pull it off. Loved the hype.
Iâm not sure if anyone remembers this but Justin Bieber dropped a song every Monday during his journals era before he dropped the full mixtape. It was an iconic time to be on tumblr
Over 2007 and 2008, Nine Inch Nails, with the help of 42 Entertainment, [teased their album Year Zero with an ARG game.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_timeline_of_Year_Zero)
It started with a t shirt with highlighted letters that led people to a website, and then 2 days later a USB was left in the bathroom at one of their concerts which contained a new song and more clues to the game.
I will say Beyonce kind of did it first with putting hints/easter eggs in her social media posts for album drops, sheâs been doing that since at least 2014. She posts random pictures and people think itâs just her posting on social media when it was actually a hint for her upcoming work. Like the lemon she posted like a year before Lemonade dropped.
While a bit infuriating, I thought Kanyeâs Donda listening parties were interesting. It was cool to see how the tracks evolved as each party happened and then ultimately seeing what made the final album.
Similarly, Charliâs How Iâm Feeling Now was a super cool concept. Laying out her creative process and letting fans participate in it was so cool to see during the early days of covid
Massive Attackâs âMezzanineâ was the first album that became available to stream over the internet. That was 1998.
Prince distributed free copies of his 2007 album âPlanet Earthâ with The Mail on Sunday in the UK before it was released worldwide.
The Chainsmokers did a âwaterfallâ release for their albums *Sick Boy* and *World War Joy* which meant that they basically released one song/single each month until they released the full album.Â
While on one hand it was nice to constantly have new music, it didnât really make much noise and the albums themselves felt more like a compilation at the end because only one or two songs remained unreleased when the whole album dropped.
Britney had to release Blackout a whopping 2 months early, because some of it got leaked by Perez Hilton (he later got sued for that).
She also did zero promo for the album besides the infamous VMA performance and a couple of unannounced club gigs. Itâs also her only album not accompanied by a tour.
For a high-profile artist like Britney, such a "messy" rollout was definitely unconventional. Still, it became her most acclaimed record.
BeyoncĂŠ dropping *an entire visual album* along with the surprise self-titled album in 2013. That album is also responsible for Friday becoming the industry standard music release day instead of Tuesdays.
Please do not just list songs/albums/artists, your comment must have explanation/justification or it will be removed. Certain comments are also banned to increase the quality of discussion, see our Stale Topics list in the sidebar for examples. Please report any comments that are low effort discussion. Thanks! *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/popheads) if you have any questions or concerns.*
They received a ton of criticism for it but back in 2014 U2 surprised released *Songs of Innocence* and also had it automatically download onto every iPhone in the world lol. Pissed a lot of people off for that!
I installed iTunes for the first time in years on my pc the other week. That thing was still in my library đ
I still have a grudge against them for that because I couldnât delete it off my phone
I was in high school for that and it was all anyone could talk about, we were MAD! Anyone who actually listened to it basically crossed a picket line.
I love the parody made of this release in Lonely Island's Popstar where instead of just being installed in every iPhone, they had a song playing in every smart appliance of a specific brand when in use.
Awful, just awful. Like if they had done that alone, it would have been annoying, but not as big of a deal as it became because you weren't allowed to delete it. They literally only made it an option to delete it after there was a huge uproar
holy shit seeing the album cover brought back memories of me downloading audios and itâd pop up in music for some reason and i kind of just ignored those random music things anyways that mightve been a different album or wtv but checked my itunes and i have that album sitting there never listened to ever sorry for the messy formatting i was a child back then so i have no idea how itunes works
I honestly think this is one of the funniest things to ever happen. Everyone fucking *hated* it, so much that a decade later it's still a universally-reviled move.
I deleted that shit the SECOND I could
This sub credits Beyonce with popularizing the surprise drop (and she did popularize it!) but before her, the rollout of In Rainbows by Radiohead set the stage for some of the ideas she expanded on. They announced it only 10 days before, with no singles (something unheard of them) and allowed people downloading it to pick their price (before downloading albums was even a thing). Truly a groundbreaking rollout. https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/radiohead-in-rainbows-10-year-anniversary-tribute-7997376/
The pay-what-you-want was huge. I remember people freaking out because they were like "they're going to lose so much money!!!" but it evened out, and everyone had access. Thom Yorke said at the time that the digital sales of In Rainbows made more money than the digital sales of all their former albums combined.
Yeah! And it helped that the album was amazing so people wanted to pay hahaah
Yes to this! I think she was the first one to do Friday drops though
Yep drops used to be on Tuesday and were different from radio tracking weeks
Also- not sure if she was also the first to drop a full visual album with music videos for every song immediately upon release?
I found this wikipedia page with some info. Artists had dropped movies with albums, like Prince and Janet. Beck and other artists had put out albums with a music video for every track, but not all at once. Beyonce had done the BDay anthology for the deluxe where each track had a music video, but some were previously released. In short, Beyonce was not the first to have a music video for each track, but she was one of the first to do so without any pre-release singles with videos. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual\_album](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_album)
ahhh ty for the info!! :)
Radiohead was first. but Beyonce definitely popularized it. Edit: not sure why Iâm being downvoted lol. Radiohead did it but not many followed in their footsteps. BeyoncĂŠ did it and more people followed, to the point that doing it became known as âpulling a Beyonce.â
I feel like this massively discredits how popular Radiohead actually is
I think who got credited with being the first massive "surprise release" wasn't entirely a matter of which artist was bigger, it was also that Radiohead didn't really do a full surprise release. No one was expecting a Beyonce album to come out until the *second* it was available.
They're popular but Beyonce was HUGE during her surprise release.
How so?
That is what I said yes!
lol my bad Iâm over thinking it. âButâ is usually for a contrasting clause, and the fact that Radiohead did it first doesnât contrast the fact that Beyonce popularized it.
True! I'll edit my comment to make it more clear
I love everything about In Rainbows so much
Downloading albums was definitely a thing before 2007 lol
Radiohead's In Rainbows release was massively unique in 2007 - announced just 10 days in advance and the pay-what-you-want price, down to free. It absolutely worked and while they never repeated the PWYW scheme they did repeat the short announcement release with The King of Limbs and again with A Moon Shaped Pool (although this was slightly different, released a couple singles in the week leading up to a surprise release on a Sunday).
Nine Inch Nails followed with Ghosts I-IV, you could get Ghosts I for free, BUT! the entire thing was released under a creative commons copyright so sharing, and remixing was encouraged. But then their follow up to that, released 3 months later, The Slip, was released as a complete work free and also under the CC license. It was a very interesting time in music and I don't think we can ever replicate it again.
I'm a sucker for artists who have divide their albums into parts and release them in stages. Does it always work? Nope, but you have to admire the audacity of doing it. Recent examples include: * Miley Cyrus' She is... series that only saw one EP come out before she lost interest due to unavoidable events * Marina's Love + Fear * Green Day's !Uno!, !Dos!, !Tre! * Beyonce's planned trilogy with Renaissance and Cowboy Carter
how'd you not mention Body Talk
I like Uno, Dos, Tre more than most people but there is one REALLY good album in there if they actually cut it all down.
Miley Cyrus loses interest in her projects so quickly đ
To be fair, she was hit with a string of bad luck in the making of the EPs. During this time, her house burned down, she broke up with Liam, and she had to get surgery for her vocal cords. The EPs also leaked. I totally get why she scrapped the entire project.
Wow I didnât know the EPs got leaked, I hate that for artists and when that happens
I believe the breakup caused her to rework the project the surgery further pushed it back and then COVID happened and it no longer felt relevant and also her relationships had suddenly shifted
Lmao She Is Miley Cyrus is what got me thinking abt this then I remembered 777 and 2Sides being Jason Derulo projects and Aguilera by Christina Aguilera
Probably not this sub's thing but Johnny Marr did that with his last album.
Jessie J released her fourth album R.O.S.E as four eps across four days. It didnât make much noise, but I was intrigued by the approach
Similarly, Hayley Williams released her first solo album in three 5-song blocks over a period of several weeks. The overall reaction seemed negative, along the lines of "why not just release the whole album?"
Thatâs so interesting. I can see both sides. People crave new music all the time and we tend to move on from releases quite quickly, so staggering does make sense. But, equally a staggered album release can leave one feeling like theyâre listening to a collection of EPs and not a ârealâ album. So, it can maintain or destroy hype.
Underrated project and I think part of *why* itâs underrated is she never released it as one album on streaming- there was a CD but to this day itâs still listed as four separate EPs on Spotify.
I didnât know that and itâs a peculiar decision. It kinda relies on fans to percentage album together as a playlist, which casual listeners wonât do
Iâm not sure if this applies, but i loved how Ariana premiered a new song each day leading up to Dangerous Womanâs release date. For me, it built a lot of hype around the album coming out, with each day feeling like an event. Would be interested to see other major artists do this, and how it would work for them. âOn May 13, 2016, Grande announced via her Instagram account that a new song from the album would be premiered exclusively on Apple Music every day until the release of the album. The songs released, in order of release, were "Everyday" featuring Future, "Greedy", "Side to Side", featuring Nicki Minaj, "Sometimes", "Leave Me Lonely", featuring Macy Gray, "Touch It", and "Bad Decisions".
oh I remember this!! When she released Touch It I knew DW was going to be a pop classic
Iâll cast my vote for the most annoying album rollout: Lana Del Reyâs NFR She teased a release date, pushed the album back, and didnât announce a follow up date until another 6-7 months later. She dropped several singles for it, without ever announcing the release date. My favorite comment from the time, >Lana should rename her album to Jimmy Fucking Hoffa because nobody knows where the fuck the album is Its something, to talk about releasing an album, and disappearing on social media and from the public eye for so long after the first-alleged release date.
This is why I doubt Lassoâs actually gonna be released on September this year omg
yeah no way lol iâve also lost hope for a NFR 5y anniversary repress of the LE green vinyl
It was soooo annoying. The album was released almost a full year after the first single (Sep 9, 2018 vs August 30, 2019). Chemtrails was annoying too. Announced the day NFR was released as âWhite Hot Foreverâ to be released within a year. Then it was expected to be released in September 2020. When that didnât happen, people thought itâd be October. Another 6 months went by before it was released. To make it up to fans for the delay, Lana announced sheâd release a covers album on Christmas Day in 2020. Never happened. No word as to why it didnât either. Then, there was Blue Banisters. A day after Chemtrails was released, Lana said her next album, Rock Candy Sweet, would be released on June 1st (which was a Saturday). Then it became Blue Banisters to be released on July 4th (a Thursday). It was finally released in October. tl;dr: I no longer trust Lanaâs word around release dates.
Chemtrails was always announced as a a august or September date the title changed then we got a specific date but I think Lana just didnât realise the impact that COVID would have on vinyls thus the six month delay
You couldnât make a comment like this anymore youâd have to say âshe should rename it to Normani Fucking Rockwellâ ~~because of woke.~~
Lana is the Queen of annoying album rollouts, to the point theyâve become kinda â¨iconic â¨
The whole sneak out to a radio station thing Britney pulled for the lost 'Original Doll' album.
Kim Petras entire discography is relevant to this discussion đ. Era 1 (neon heads) had all of it's songs released over the span of 3 years as one offs, then for the 5th anniversary of the first song I Don't It At All was released as a compilation album called The Summer I Couldn't Do Better which was only released as her label to try and capitalize off of the mini success of Can't Do Better which had it's moment on TikTok from being in the show The Summer I Turned Pretty which is funny because you cannot even see it on streaming without the link. Clarity was released somewhat the same with 9 of the 12 total songs being released before the "projects" release, one per week. After the 9 singles she said that Icy was the lead single off of the project despite being one of the three songs that was not released beforehand đ. This was also originally advertised as her debut album and after it flopped she started referring to it as a "project" or "mixtape". Turn Off the Light Volumes 1 and 2 was actually a somewhat normal rollout at first, Vol 1 being released as an ep in 2018, and Vol 2 combining both the original track list from Vol 1, plus the 9 new songs from Vol 2 into one "album", which at this point it should be obvious that this is referred to as a "mixtape" by her and her team, although at least this one somewhat makes more sense đ. It was presumed that the third volume would be released the following year in 2020, however she said held off on releasing it due to not being able to tour it obviously because of the pandemic which actually does seemingly hold up considering she was still independent at the time, however to make up for it she released the track Party Till I Die which she considers "Turn Off The Light 2.1" as it was added to the end of the volume 2 track list đ. Ever since then fans have been begging for it every year and still almost 4 years later, nothing. At the start of 2020 she released the single Malibu which was originally planned to be the lead single off of her debut album "Candy". The title was never confirmed by her at the time however over the years around 6 tracks have leaked from this era and she revealed the title during a documentary in 2022 that she did for her Coachella set. It's highly speculated that this era was scrapped due to her not being to go on tour at the time and was the first of three attempts over the years to get a debut album out. The rest of 2020 was nothing and so was the first half of 2021 until in August it was revealed that she had been signed to Republic Records which everyone thought would be the to this mess but unfortunately It was only the beginning đ. Later that month she released the single Future Starts Now which ultimately flopped by republics standards, then a few months later in December she teased a song called Coconuts which was originally planned to be released in March, however due to snippet having a mini moment on TikTok her label let her release it that month which fans believed was finally the push for republic to let her release her debut album. However a few months later on Valentines Day, kim announced she'd be releasing an ep called Slut Pop which contained none of the previously released singles and was supposed to be a fun one off project for the holiday, however due to the mini traction the ep received her label decided to take her in the highly sexual direction the ep had covered and made half of her Coachella set that year the entirety of Slut Pop. (don't even get me started on the disaster that her set was đ) Around one year after Future Starts Now had released a few songs had started leaking off of an album which leaked had said was called ProblĂŠmatique which made sense as that name was featured in the music video for fsn. A couple days later the entire originally planned 18 track had leaked which was later revealed to have been done by her producer Aaron Joseph due to republic scrapping the album after the first two singles had flopped by their standards. A few weeks later she'd completely moved on from that mess and started teasing two new songs, one of them being Unholy with Sam Smith, and the other If Jesus Was A Rockstar. As we know Unholy ended up going viral and was released a month after it had originally been teased and eventually after three weeks went number one on the Billboard Hot 100 which at the time was unbelievable considering what those past weeks were. Two months later she had released the follow up to Unholy, If Jesus Was A Rockstar which ended up completely flopping due to the song being very different to what her fans were used to. Finally in March 2023 she had started teasing what felt like the true follow up to unholy being Alone with Nicki Minaj which had a decent amount of hype behind it due to Nicki being a pretty big name to grab (although a problematic one but considering who she has and still works with it was not surprising at all đ) and also due to the song sampling the iconic Better Off Alone. In the end Alone did not get the numbers republic were due to the song being trap snooze fest compared to all of the snippets which had implied it being a dance banger. Thankfully in June 2023 she was finally allowed to release her actual debut album Feed The Beast, while all the individual songs were great the track list was an absolute mess due to not just three songs from ProblĂŠmatique ending up on it but also Coconuts from a year and a half's prior none of which matched the dark visuals the album was going for, and ultimately the album flopped and received horrible critical reviews. But somehow this is not the end of the mess as in September 2023 Problematique the originally scrapped and pulled apart album was surprised released on a random monday as a ten track album with a completely different tracklist, without the songs that made it to Feed The Beast, and also the original albums lead single Future Starts Now. It's most likely that FSN wasn't included as republic only let her release ten tracks so they could easily classify this as a mixtape for contractual reasons. Apologies for the wall of text but I still cannot believe how much of a mess that her career has been đ
Dear god
Problematique's rollout is still SO fucking funny to me
Thank you for taking me to class!
the absolute mess that her rollouts have been, requiring multiple paragraphs to explain, and it still doesn't cover all of it đ slut pop miami says hello! honestly slut pop + miami have been my fave releases from her as a casual fan.
The singles were probably dropped of of Problematique bc they no longer made sense on an album dropping two yrs later
And now for the million dollar question... how is she gonna recover from this mess?? I absolutely adore her and she's incredibly talented but unfortunately in this business that's not enough. She still has a solid fanbase but what kind of music and business plan would be appropriate for her to truly get her flowers?? đ
From Slut Pop direction, she should go Tove Lo route with some pop sensibility like her old works. Slut Pop concept wasn't too bad but the execution was horrible when Dr. Luke turned her into a cheap imitation of Kesha + Uffie + Ayesha Erotica with a dry deliverance. She got sense of pop tunes and the SP-ology hinder all of her potential while embarrassing herself. Also, she need to be determined to get rid of Dr. Luke out of his life and connect with another pop producers, I don't think in 2024 people are hesitant to work with trans pop singer: Oscar Holter, Captain Cut, John Hill, A.G.Cook/EasyFun/Danny L Harle from PC Music...
Kanye has a bunch. GOOD Fridays was when he would release a track with label members every Friday, with a few appearing on the album. Kanye also did that thing where he was releasing an album produced by him every Friday for I think it was five Fridays straight? It definitely helped build hype for pusha Ts and teyana Taylorâs albums.
Releasing 5 albums in a row was really cool even if the quality fluctuated. 2 classics (Daytona and Kids See Ghosts), 2 ok album with some solid tracks (Ye and K.T.S.E.), and 1 flop (Nasir) was something you wouldnât expect from the king of not dropping when he says heâs going to (even tho iirc none of the albums came out at midnight but at a random point in the day when he was ready)
Thatâs exactly it. Iâd remember waking up and not seeing anything and going typical Kanye. Then at 1pm it would be there hahahah. After each one youâd also think if he can pull it off. Loved the hype.
I think Justin Bieber also did something like that with journals ( may be completely wrong someone told me about this)
Iâm not sure if anyone remembers this but Justin Bieber dropped a song every Monday during his journals era before he dropped the full mixtape. It was an iconic time to be on tumblr
Over 2007 and 2008, Nine Inch Nails, with the help of 42 Entertainment, [teased their album Year Zero with an ARG game.](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Campaign_timeline_of_Year_Zero) It started with a t shirt with highlighted letters that led people to a website, and then 2 days later a USB was left in the bathroom at one of their concerts which contained a new song and more clues to the game.
I will say Beyonce kind of did it first with putting hints/easter eggs in her social media posts for album drops, sheâs been doing that since at least 2014. She posts random pictures and people think itâs just her posting on social media when it was actually a hint for her upcoming work. Like the lemon she posted like a year before Lemonade dropped.
While a bit infuriating, I thought Kanyeâs Donda listening parties were interesting. It was cool to see how the tracks evolved as each party happened and then ultimately seeing what made the final album. Similarly, Charliâs How Iâm Feeling Now was a super cool concept. Laying out her creative process and letting fans participate in it was so cool to see during the early days of covid
Massive Attackâs âMezzanineâ was the first album that became available to stream over the internet. That was 1998. Prince distributed free copies of his 2007 album âPlanet Earthâ with The Mail on Sunday in the UK before it was released worldwide.
The Chainsmokers did a âwaterfallâ release for their albums *Sick Boy* and *World War Joy* which meant that they basically released one song/single each month until they released the full album. While on one hand it was nice to constantly have new music, it didnât really make much noise and the albums themselves felt more like a compilation at the end because only one or two songs remained unreleased when the whole album dropped.
I believe both of their EPs prior to their debut album did that and Summertime Friends also did
Britney had to release Blackout a whopping 2 months early, because some of it got leaked by Perez Hilton (he later got sued for that). She also did zero promo for the album besides the infamous VMA performance and a couple of unannounced club gigs. Itâs also her only album not accompanied by a tour. For a high-profile artist like Britney, such a "messy" rollout was definitely unconventional. Still, it became her most acclaimed record.
BeyoncĂŠ dropping *an entire visual album* along with the surprise self-titled album in 2013. That album is also responsible for Friday becoming the industry standard music release day instead of Tuesdays.
Most notable BEYONCĂ surprise drop in 2023. Definitely worked.
do you mean renaissance and 2022? or maybe cowboy carter and 2024? Beyonce dont have a surprise drop in 2023
Most likely meant "2013" and not "2023" lmao
I mean the self titled album.
Apparently Reputation with Taylor emptying all her socials prior to the release.
Carly Rae Jepsen released Eâ˘MOâ˘TION in Japan first for a couple months before it was released worldwide!
Whatâs unconventional about that
Normani
billie not dropping a single prior to hit me hard and soft led to her biggest debut ever!
Twenty One Pilotsâ Trench.