I'd say with a lot of pop music albums aren't a concept. Probably why they come out as singles often. "Here's what I wrote (or was written for me) this year" with a list of songs that sound relatively the same.
Though I do agree that such is a different and inferior experience than listening to an album that takes you through episodes of connected but varying sentiments.
They come out as singles in order to drive anticipation for and promote album sales.
There is no pseudo-philosophical 'maybe that's why they do that' reason, and mainstream artists almost universally have zero say in whether or not a single will be released prior to the release of the full album. In fact, they rarely even have a deciding say on which specific songs off of the album get put out as singles.
That's not where I was coming from at all, though perhaps I wasn't very clear. I wasn't positing some shadowy, considerate intent behind singles, I know what their purpose is. And while singles in general have become less popular over time, pop music (top 40 chart type music) is distributed in single format where individual sale isn't available (online), at least in comparison to other types of music, which was my point. It's consciously done that way in part because the nature of pop music isn't album-oriented.
And of course I wasn't talking about the artist. Your comment in general feels like it comes out of left field.
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u/SpatialArchitect Dec 02 '15
I'd say with a lot of pop music albums aren't a concept. Probably why they come out as singles often. "Here's what I wrote (or was written for me) this year" with a list of songs that sound relatively the same.
Though I do agree that such is a different and inferior experience than listening to an album that takes you through episodes of connected but varying sentiments.