The ‘did Orwell at GCSE’ manoeuvre
The best albums are those that tell you what you know already, and that’s what happens when artists suddenly remember studying 1984 in Year 10. And, by the way, did you see the subsequently debunked meme about CCTV that your mum posted on Facebook? Makes u think, right? Did you know social media’s quite addictive? And that President Trump, he doesn’t sound ideal! The “everything’s like Black Mirror!” idea was recently pulled off by Bastille – who did a good job of turning their album concept into a cross-platform marketing extravaganza.
Who’s next Both Chvrches and Years & Years are using opaque dystopian imagery in their album teaser campaigns. Naturally, Muse are 100% back on their bullshit with Thought Contagion.
Pivot to rodeo
Nothing says “I went to Nashville for a fortnight now I think I’m Dolly Parton” quite like a “country”-inspired comeback album. Kylie, Miley Cyrus and Lady Gaga have all used Nashville recently. Soundbites about Nashville’s history provide great source material for promo interviews, despite the fact that recording studios in Nashville are pretty much like recording studios anywhere else in the world: if you give them money, they let you in. Fearne Cotton could miraculously discover her authentic country roots if she chucked enough cash around.
Who’s next If you see Dua Lipa on Skyscanner, grab her laptop and chuck it out of the window.
The bait and switch
None of us want our favourite pop personnel to just keep making the same album for ever (newsflash: actually we kind of do), but some shifts in sonic direction are pop’s equivalent of a handbrake turn. This can be an act who’ve achieved popularity through electronic pop music “going real” (as on Pet Shop Boys’ Release, Goldfrapp’s Seventh Tree, the Harry Styles album or Gaga’s Joanne) but, less testingly, this move can sometimes involve a semi-famous, semi-peripheral artist waking up one morning and thinking, as Nelly Furtado did with Maneater, that it’s time to have a massive No 1 single.
Who’s next On the Maneater front, Janelle Monáe’s just teamed up with the writers behind Justin Bieber’s Sorry and is clearly not messing about.
The greatest latest hits
Streaming means the conventional greatest hits album is dead for artists who don’t shift most of their music via supermarkets, but the streaming world’s constant thirst for one-off single releases can result in a massive backlog of hits that don’t seem to belong to an album. By the time an album does eventually appear, it’s at least 50% smash.
Who’s next It’s almost four years since Clean Bandit released an album. There have been five hits – including two No 1s – since then, but the band’s second album hasn’t yet been announced.
The definitely-not-an-album album
Charli XCX’s last album came out in 2014. Or did it? In the last year she’s actually released two albums, except they’re not albums because they’re mixtapes. The songs aren’t mixed together. The album-length collections are for sale, like albums. XCX recently said that one liberating thing about making a mixtape is that it’s easier to get guest vocalists – labels don’t get their contractual knickers in a twist if they’re not dealing with a “proper” project. It’s a decent marketing angle, too: mixtapes are taken less seriously than albums by most over-35s but they’re greeted more enthusiastically, and are seen as more authentic blasts of creativity by their target audience.
Who’s next Stefflon Don’s about to follow up her 2016 mixtape Real Ting. The new one’s called Real Ting II.
Guys! This is the real me!
Anyone who’s enjoyed a hit album before their 18th birthday will at some point be keen to point out that they’re actually very musical and interesting. The modern queen of “Guys! This is the real me!” has to be Miley Cyrus, who in a six-album career has presented her definitive self no fewer than six times: with 2007’s Hannah Montana 2: Meet Miley Cyrus (which braced a generation for the news that Miley was an actual human), 2008’s Breakout (she was breaking out from Hannah!), 2010’s Can’t Be Tamed (which presented that old favourite – the More Mature Direction), 2013’s Bangerz (no hang on, this was the more mature direction), 2015’s Miley Cyrus & Her Dead Petz (Christ knows what that was), and last year’s “pivot to rodeo” masterpiece Younger Now.
Who’s next Miley Cyrus.
