The pop star’s ninth studio album, due at midnight Friday, is her second surprise release of 2020
For Taylor Swift followers, Christmas day gift is coming too soon: Ms. Swift on Thursday had announced her ninth studio album, “Evermore,” which is the second unexpected release of the year for one of music’s most notoriously meticulous pop stars.
Released just five months after her intimate Grammy-nominated blockbuster “Folklore,” the new album, which Ms. Swift describes as “folklore’s sister record,” features many of the same collaborators, including The National’s Aaron Dessner, Jack Antonoff and Bon Iver. That continuity suggests a collection of “Folklore” leftovers and more songs written in a same hushed and folksy indie-rock vein.
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“I’ve never done this before,” Ms. Swift said on social media. “In the past I’ve always treated albums as one-off eras and moved onto planning the next one after an album was released. There was something different with folklore.”
“I loved the escapism I found in these imaginary/not imaginary tales,” she continued. “So I just kept writing them.”
The quick arrival of “Evermore” reflects a reality of today’s streaming-music economy: More is more. Like fellow pop star Ariana Grande, Ms. Swift has pivoted from carefully plotted-out releases to more spontaneous and less precious ones—borrowing from the footsteps of hip-hop & R&B stars.
Ms. Grande, for example, discussed publicly about wanting to drop music like rappers. Artists like YoungBoy Never Broke Again and Sada Baby, following the lead of rap elder statesmen Gucci Mane and Lil Wayne, are known to drop multiple projects in a year. Indie rockers Big Thief also recently released back-to-back “companion” albums. In Ms. Swift’s case, “Folklore” itself came quickly after “Lover,” which was released in August 2019. Before that, Ms. Swift tended to put two or more years between albums. The pandemic, which has kept musicians from touring, has also prompted artists like Ms. Swift to increase their releases.
Releasing more music makes sense for Ms. Swift’s business: Under her recent Universal Music Group record deal, she owns her new master recordings, which incentivizes more prodigious output. The more her new songs are streamed, the more they generate streaming royalties that fill her coffers. So far, “Folklore,” which Ms. Swift owns, has racked up 1.95 million in overall sales in the U.S., including copies of the full album and on-demand audio and video streams, according to MRC Data/Nielsen Music.
It’s a different story with her first six albums, which Los Angeles-based investment firm Shamrock Capital Advisors LLC recently bought from her rival, the celebrity talent manager Scooter Braun, in a deal valued at more than $300 million. Ms. Swift has said she is rerecording her prior work, which would encourage fans to listen to the new versions she owns instead of the older ones she doesn’t.
Record labels, for their part, are hungry for new releases in the streaming age and welcome more content. Over the past five years or so, the U.S. record business has been revitalized by revenue from music streaming on services such as Spotify and Apple Music. Much of what’s popular on streaming is music from the 21st century, not tunes from the 1960s and 1970s. Yet having a gusher of nonstop content can also create challenges when it comes to policing quality levels, music-industry observers say.
Ms. Swift’s announcement of “Evermore,” which also features the female rock trio Haim, arrives on the first night of Hanukkah and three days before her 31st birthday. “This time I thought I would give you something!” she said on social media. A music video for the album’s leadoff track, “Willow,” will drop Friday morning.
Pre-Order and Listen to Taylor Swift's Evermore Here:
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