The Problem With Dangerous Woman’s Rollout
I’m pumped for Dangerous Woman, the upcoming third album from pint-sized pop superstar Ariana Grande. It’s going to be an incredible album, and will probably soundtrack my summer. How do I know this? Because she’s pretty much released the whole damn thing prematurely!
As part of the rollout for Dangerous Woman, Ariana announced that she will be releasing a new song from the album each day until it drops on May 20th. This is great, isn’t it? We should all be enjoying this, right?
I’d rather be honest. It’s a terrible idea. I know it means we get all the new songs sooner. But once release day is here, people will not be checking for the album because they will have already heard it all. Plus, it will make Ariana look like a singles artist, which is apparently looked down upon in the stan world. But most importantly, it takes away from the meaning of an album.
When you release every song before the album is due, there’s nothing to look forward to on release day. I guess her team is just trying to get people hyped for the album, and theoretically what better way to do that than by simply letting people hear it “before they’re supposed to”? But they’re essentially leaking it (or, if you’re Madonna, it’s “artistic rape”). None of the singles from Dangerous Woman have really caught on like “Problem” did, so is this her team’s way of trying to land another hit? Chuck everything out and hope for the best? If that’s the only way you can get people interested in your album, then you’re doing something wrong. As Beyoncé has shown us twice now, the GP craves albums like the old days. They want to consume an album as a package, in its entirety.
By all means, find a creative and exciting way to release and hype an album. But do it in a way that still keeps your album exactly as that, an album. A body of work. Not a collection of singles.