Surprise album

A surprise album or surprise release refers to the release of an album with extremely minimal or no prior announcement, marketing or promotion. The strategy contrasts traditional album releases, which typically feature weeks or months of advertising in the form of singles, music videos, tour announcements and album pre-sales. Often, the release of a surprise album is the formal announcement of its release. This strategy developed in part due to the prevalence of album leaks on the Internet during the 2000s.

History

The English rock band Radiohead's 2007 studio album In Rainbows is often credited as the first surprise album.[1][2][3][4] Shortly after the release, Radiohead's guitarist Colin Greenwood stated the band had several motivations behind the album's release format, including the increased popularity of the internet as a tool for discovering music, frustrations with the traditional release and promotion format, the freedom of not being signed to a record label at the time, a desire to do something special and unique, and an interest in broadcasting their music directly to listeners globally at the same time.[5] It also served as a countermeasure to Internet leaks of albums, which had become prevalent at the time.[2] In Rainbows is also credited for starting the pay-what-you-want model.[4]

After ending a tumultuous relationship with Interscope Records in 2007, Nine Inch Nails independently released Ghosts I–IV and The Slip in 2008. Both were released for free (with the option to purchase higher-quality digital or physical editions) and were released under a Creative Commons license to allow fans the ability to edit and remix the new music as they desired.[6] Nine Inch Nails manager Jim Guerinot said the idea to release the albums without prior announcement was to pre-empt a leak and control the marketing, stating: "Internet searches peak around the leak, not around the single or the album. By the time the album comes out, it's done."[7]

In 2011, American rappers Jay-Z and Kanye West advertised false release dates for their collaborative album Watch the Throne, in part an effort to pre-empt leaks. This strategy inspired the singer Frank Ocean to surprise-release his second album Channel Orange one week earlier than its publicized release date.[8]

Jay-Z and American singer Beyoncé[9] are often credited for popularizing the release strategy through multiple solo and collaborative releases. Beyoncé's 2013 self-titled album Beyoncé became the next most prominent surprise release after In Rainbows. Harley Brown of Vulture wrote, "Ever since Beyoncé's self-titled visual album appeared like a Christmas miracle on the iTunes store at midnight on a Thursday in December of 2013, the rules for how to release a record were rewritten literally overnight."[9] Sam Murphy of The Music Network paraphrased Beyoncé's verse on "Feeling Myself" saying that she "changed the world with that digital drop by releasing her fifth album Beyoncé out of nowhere."[3] The singer would also adapt the release format for her follow-up album Lemonade in 2016. Jay-Z surprise released his 2017 album 4:44, and the following year the couple surprise released the collaborative album Everything Is Love as The Carters.[2]

Some surprise albums created controversy. In 2014, Irish rock band U2 partnered with Apple Inc. to release their thirteenth studio album Songs of Innocence through the iTunes Store at no cost to half a billion people. The album was automatically added to users' music libraries in iTunes, which for those with automatic downloads enabled, resulted in an unprompted download of the album to their electronic devices. Many users did not want the album and several months after the release were frustrated that they could not delete the album from their devices.[2][10] David Sackllah of Consequence of Sound noted that "U2 and Apple deserve credit for thinking ambitiously, but they overestimated the band's relevance with fans, and many felt like the automatic download constituted an invasion of privacy."[4] American R&B singer Frank Ocean surprised released his visual album Endless to complete his contract with Def Jam in 2016 and quickly followed up with Blonde a few days later independently, both as Apple Music exclusives. The act of Frank Ocean leaving Def Jam called into question surprise albums and exclusive digital releases. An anonymous Def Jam employee said to Buzzfeed at the time, "Our view is that giving exclusives to individual streaming platforms for long periods of time is not good for the artist, it's not good for the fans, and it limits the commercial opportunity for everybody involved."[11] By 2019, Vulture and The Music Network published editorial articles questioning if the surprise album release format had peaked in popularity and effectiveness.[3][9]

American singer-songwriter Taylor Swift's 2020 album, Folklore, was surprise released with less than 24 hours notice, to much acclaim.[12] The record was created in isolation during the COVID-19 pandemic, under total secrecy; including Republic Records, Swift's record label, who were let known about the project only few hours before its launch.[13] The release was preceded by Swift posting nine caption-less photos on Instagram that formed an image of the singer standing alone in a forest.[14] Neil Shah of The Wall Street Journal stated that the release "caught fans and the music business off guard".[15] Philip Cosores of Uproxx described, "on Thursday night, that hand-drawn 'T' and 'S' could be seen up and down the timeline. Music fans and critics across genres unveiled hot takes, quoted lyrics like Myspace teens writing on the back of textbooks or crafting the perfect AIM away message, and debated Folklore's place in the unimpeachable Taylor Swift canon".

Reception

Rachel Finn of DIY said that while surprise albums were becoming too common to be truly surprising, "it gives artists breathing space to really make an impact and retain control over the way their music is released, pre-empting album leaks and taking their album out of the pre-album press cycle to let the music speak for itself."[2] Entrepreneur and freelance writer Cortney Harding wrote in a Medium article that while surprise albums give artists more flexibility, the strategy can usually only pay off for well-known musicians and can be problematic when the album is exclusive to a specific streaming service.[16] David Sackllah of Consequence of Sound noted that while many major artists had attempted a surprise release, few had matched or surpassed the level of excitement of In Rainbows.[4] Writing for The Ringer, Lindsay Zoladz expressed criticism toward overuse of the term that began to dilute its meaning as music journalists were using "surprise album" to describe albums that were previously announced. Zoladz stated:

"'Surprise album' has become such a ubiquitous term that its meaning becomes more vague with each passing tweet. (Last month the Chicago Tribune even used it to describe Drake's Views, an album that not only had a previously announced release date, but which Drake himself had been teasing for the better part of two years.) But even when the phrase is used more precisely, it's becoming a bit hollow; we're living through a deluge of albums — even something as long promised as Rihanna's Anti — that lay claim to that trendy term 'surprise,' but have, like Lemonade, given us a lot of hints that they were coming."[17]

Prominent surprise albums

The following is a non-exhaustive list of surprise albums in chronological order.

References
  1. Butler, Ben (May 20, 2016). "The 10 greatest surprise album drops ever - ranked". Gigwise. Retrieved July 28, 2020.
  2. Finn, Rachel (March 25, 2019). "Out Of The Blue: A Brief History Of The Surprise Album". DIY. Retrieved July 28, 2020.
  3. Murphy, Sam (September 29, 2019). "Why the surprise album drop is falling in popularity". The Music Network. Retrieved July 28, 2020.
  4. Sackllah, David (May 5, 2016). "Why Radiohead Is the Only Rock Band to Perfect the Surprise Album Release". Consequence of Sound. Retrieved July 28, 2020.
  5. Greenwood, Colin (September 13, 2010). "Radiohead's Colin Greenwood: Set yourself free". Index on Censorship. Retrieved July 28, 2020.
  6. Leeds, Jeff (May 6, 2008). "Nine Inch Nails Album Is Free Online". The New York Times. The New York Times Company. Retrieved August 13, 2020.
  7. Serpick, Evan (May 29, 2008). "Nine Inch Nails Release Free Album Online". Rolling Stone. Wenner Media. Retrieved August 13, 2020.
  8. Smith, Da'Shan (June 2, 2019). "Surprise Albums: 17 Drops That Shocked The Music World". uDiscoverMusic. Retrieved July 28, 2020.
  9. Brown, Harley (January 2, 2019). "Does the Surprise Album Release Still Work?". Vulture. New York. Retrieved July 28, 2020.
  10. Bean, Daniel (February 23, 2015). "From My Inbox: People Are Still Trying to Get U2's Free Album off Their iPhones". Yahoo! Finance. Verizon Media. Retrieved July 28, 2020.
  11. Ugwu, Reggie (August 24, 2016). "Frank Ocean's Apple Deal Was A Wake-Up Call For The Music Industry". BuzzFeed. Retrieved July 28, 2020.
  12. Rowley, Glenn (July 23, 2020). "Swifties Flip Over Taylor Swift's Surprise Album Announcement: 'There Are Still Good Things in 2020'". Billboard. MRC. Retrieved July 28, 2020.
  13. Sodomsky, Sam. "The National's Aaron Dessner Talks Taylor Swift's New Album folklore". Pitchfork. Retrieved 2020-07-29.
  14. "Taylor Swift announces surprise album, recorded "in isolation"". CBS news. Retrieved 2020-07-29.
  15. Shah, Neil (2020-07-23). "Taylor Swift's New Album 'Folklore' Is Making a Surprise Debut". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2020-07-29.
  16. Harding, Courtney (August 5, 2016). "Surprise Album Releases are Terrible". Medium. Retrieved July 28, 2020.
  17. Zoladz, Lindsay (June 1, 2016). "Save the Term 'Surprise' for Albums That Are Actually Surprising". The Ringer. Spotify. Retrieved July 28, 2020.
  18. Ramirez, Erika; Hampp, Andrew (February 12, 2015). "Drake Releases Surprise Album 'If You're Reading This It's Too Late'". Billboard. MRC. Retrieved August 2, 2020.
  19. McSpadden, Kevin (February 13, 2015). "Drake Just Dropped a New Album Called If You're Reading This It's Too Late". Time. Retrieved August 2, 2020.
  20. Shifferaw, Abel; Skelton, Eric (August 31, 2018). "A Roundup of Rappers Eminem Name-Drops and Takes Shots at on Kamikaze". Complex.
  21. Thompson, Desire (August 31, 2018). "Joe Budden and 16 Other People Eminem Dissed on Kamikaze Album". Vibe.
  22. Purdom, Clayton (September 6, 2018). "Eminem's Bad New Album Has Created a Vortex of Bad Rap Beefs". The A.V. Club.
  23. Kreps, Daniel (March 15, 2020). "Donald Glover Surprise Releases Collection of New Music". Rolling Stone. Wenner Media. Retrieved July 28, 2020.
  24. Elassar, Alaa (March 15, 2020). "Donald Glover just dropped a surprise album featuring Ariana Grande and SZA". CNN. Retrieved July 28, 2020.
  25. "Taylor Swift's Surprise New 'Folklore' Album: What a Great (And Overdue) Idea!". Billboard. 2020-07-23. Retrieved 2020-07-29.
  26. Canal, Alexandra; Guzman, Zack (July 24, 2020). "Taylor Swift drops surprise album 'Folklore' as fans rejoice". Yahoo! Finance. Verizon Media. Retrieved July 28, 2020.
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