New albums lack on dynamism
Drake is the king of streaming artists, but his new album seems to be cobbled together aiming to please all tastes.
I grew up with Thriller, Purple Rain and many other great albums that I still listen to.
The big acts of the 80s all had iconic albums that many of us can remember visually as well as musically, and as my tastes evolved into hip-hop acts such as Public Enemy, De la Soul, Run DMC, N.W.A. and the Beastie Boys led the way.
The 90s was a similarly iconic era for albums, no matter what your taste, but in this century the power of the album seemed to fall off slightly.
However, many kept it alive. No matter what you say about Kanye, his albums always remained key pop culture moments, and another of my big favourites, Frank Ocean, provided us with a few classic long players already. In soul and R&B we’ve had many great albums over the last 25 years that continue its rich legacy of bringing long form works of art to the ear drums. Where once stood Marvin, Aretha, Curtis and Stevie, we later got Amy Winehouse, Lauryn Hill, D’Angelo, Sza and Erykah Badu. But we live in a streaming era now. How is the album doing as a format? Does it even matter?
In a word, yes. Some of those I’ve just mentioned, like Sza and Kanye and Frank Ocean, continue to remain iconic in this era while many more, such as the Weeknd, Tyler the Creator and Travis Scott, definitely pay lots of attention to the composing of actual albums and not just singles.
The biggest streaming artist of them all, Drake, has a few big albums too, but on listening to his new album last weekend, I couldn’t help but feel it’s all a bit cobbled together these days. There’s a track or two for every type of fan, but it certainly doesn’t work as an album as a whole, and like the recent Travis record, it will probably be judged a disappointment. You could say the same about most of Drake’s recent albums to be honest. At least Travis went ambitious on the sonics though, it works on some levels. But both albums have tracks that looked tacked on, and this happens a lot in the streaming era.
Scanning through the list of albums in the UK top 40 is depressing. It’s nearly all compilations. The Weeknd is number one, with a compilation of his greatest hits, and it shows how good his catalogue is really. But even his 2016 album Starboy is in the top 30 still.
As are old albums by Arctic Monkeys and others, the only newer albums there seem to be by safe pop acts such as Taylor Swift, Ed Sheeran and Harry Styles. Taylor Swift isn’t my thing, but she also carefully pays attention to her album profile, while Beyonce, who released the magnificent Renaissance last year, is also still there (and touring it heavily).
America is slightly more exciting. New artists such as Rod Wave and co are dominating and there’s hardly a compilation in sight. Besides Taylor Swift’s four or five entries, the top 20 is fairly diverse, and also features the impressive new album by Doja Cat. Doja has elected to take a slightly more left-field approach on this album, which is almost a love letter to 90s’ hip-hop and R&B, and which is full of samples. Her Paint the town red smash will keep her profile bubbling long enough for the rest of the tracks to soak into the mainstream, and like her pal Sza, she will marry good creativity with commercial success.
Maybe it’s just a bad phase for albums. If Frank Ocean or someone were to announce a new album tomorrow, it could switch things overnight. These things happen in cycles I guess. Lots of the most successful artists in the world right now are paying more attention to streaming singles and that’s the way of the world. Women are dominating mainstream rap music but Megan, Cardi, Ice Spice, City Girls and Sexyy Red in this era are killing it with singles rather than albums too. The album will return, but for now, it’s going through a fairly mediocre phase.
