After months of drought, with no clearly defined “song of the summer”, the music industry has delivered a downpour. Thank heavens for Big Album Autumn: the past six weeks have seen splashy releases from Taylor Swift, Florence + The Machine, Lily Allen, Rosalía, FKA twigs and Dave.
On the surface, that’s business as usual. The final months of the year have always been busy with new releases ahead of the holiday season and spring performance tours. But the sheer abundance of new music offerings following a historically quiet summer suggests longer-term changes may be afoot.
Experts say the cultural climate has grown increasingly erratic as artists struggle to keep up with attention spans ruined by TikTok, and even the biggest stars have started looking for unconventional ways to promote their work – including leaning into the element of surprise.
“What feels particularly notable this autumn are the major pop albums using more dynamic, less traditional rollout strategies,” says Emma Snook, director of marketing at Partisan Records, which represents artists such as Beth Orton and PJ Harvey.
“A conventional campaign might run for three months, with multiple singles leading into the album. By contrast, Lily Allen announced her album on a Monday and released it that Friday with no advance singles. Rosalía took a similarly condensed approach, releasing just one single the week before her album arrived.”
Inspired by the lives of female mystics, and sung in 13 languages, Rosalía’s sweeping LUX was announced just three weeks before it was released on streaming platforms. Its only advance single, Berghain – a thunderous, operatic love song in German – was released with a music video in which Rosalía, dressed in a nun’s habit, does household chores while accompanied by a full, live orchestra. The unexpected tilt to classical from the pop star was well-placed to generate interest for an album that was, in fact, much more similar to her previous work.
Just days before the release of West End Girl, Allen’s fifth studio album and first release in five years, the singer sent the album to music influencer Sam Morris on Instagram, where he teased it to his 223,000 followers. “You can’t buy a viral trend, and labels know that, but tapping into the most authentic avenues to spread the word about an artist’s new music is definitely where we’re at now,” Morris says. “People can see through the bullshit and when something is clearly real, they will usually respond positively about it.”
Sudden drops were pioneered as a way to pre-empt internet leaks and reach a fan base more directly than traditional studio marketing. Beyoncé is credited as the first big pop artist to release an album without prior announcement, when she launched her self-titled record on iTunes in 2013 – a move she repeated to great fanfare with 2016’s Lemonade. Data released by music industry forecaster Luminate suggests that sudden drops may have kept these albums at the top of the charts for longer.
As long as artists seek to capitalise on the element of surprise, when it rains pop music, it will pour.
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