Beyoncé released two at once, Dua Lipa left three for her fans. Taylor Swift? She kept everything a secret.
The Tortured Poets Department dropped out last week with no singles released in advance, and next month, Billie Eilish says she will do the same thing.
For years, commentators have been warning that the album is dead and the single reigns supreme.
This is partly due to streaming apps like Spotify and Apple Music that allow fans to choose their favorite tracks from artists and create personalized playlists.
But could two of the world’s biggest stars choosing to abandon singles bring albums back to life?
Announcing Hit Me Hard and Soft, Billie said she wanted her fans to hear the album in one go.
And in an interview with Rolling Stone, she explained why.
“Whenever an artist I like releases a single without the context of the album, I already tend to hate it,” she said.
“I really don’t like when things are out of context. This album is like a family: I don’t want a little kid to be alone in the middle of the room.”
Although he is responsible for the official weekly singles chart, Martin Talbot, the chief executive of the Official Charts Company, admits that he is more of an album fan himself.
“It’s fantastic that Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift are doing what seems like something designed to bring music fans back to the album concept,” he told BBC Newsbeat.
“There is a risk that music fans will lose sight of what an album is and what it represents.
“The album represents something of a pinnacle of a particular artist’s creative vision.
“And it’s really important for the creative health of the music and the cultural environment that we preserve that.”
The fans take control
Over the 70-year history of the charts, Martin says the compilation of top 40 singles has changed dramatically.
It started by calling a few record stores every week to ask them which singles – specially selected and released by musicians – were their best-sellers.
Now, thanks to streaming platforms, everything can become one – and everything can enter the rankings.
“The great thing about the digital environment is that it puts the control in the hands of the consumer, in the hands of the music fans,” Martin told Newsbeat.
“Billie Eilish and Taylor Swift may just be releasing albums, but each of the tracks that make up those albums are available to stream in isolation,” he says.
“And if those tracks get enough plays, they will enter the singles chart, whether the artist considers them to be singles or not.”
That move might be a thing of the past for artists as big as Taylor and Billie, even though Taylor released a music video for one song – Fortnight – on the day of her album release.
This went straight to number one, but other tracks which were not officially promoted, including Down Bad and the self-titled The Tortured Poets Department, also debuted in the top five.
But for emerging talents like Beth McCarthy, singles are more important than ever.
“Singles play a major role in starting a career,” the singer told Newsbeat.
“It creates a way to release music without the pressure of creating a whole body of work and finding a whole sound.
“It lets people get to know you, but in brief, in little bits rather than having to do the whole big thing.”
Beth, from London, will perform at Radio 1’s Big Weekend in May on the introductory stage and hopes to release her debut album soon.
“I do singles and EPs because it’s a shorter way to create something that doesn’t fully end up in an album,” she says.
“And for me, in creating an album, I want it to be done correctly and in a way that really works together and feels like art.”
Besides refining an artist’s sound, another benefit of releasing singles is how they can get fans excited for a new album.
“The single remains one of the most powerful promotional tools for an album,” says Martin.
He gives as an example Texas Hold ‘Em, one of two singles Beyoncé released from Cowboy Carter that he says “directly contributed to the success of her album” – which debuted at number one.
But Martin says that for most artists, singles have an important role to play in keeping album sales high.
“Part of the job of releasing the singles is keeping the album in the public eye and continuing to make sure people remember it existed,” he says.
“It’s very easy to go unnoticed.”
Fading from the spotlight may not be a worry for Taylor, who, five days after the release of The Tortured Poets Department, broke Spotify records with over a billion streams.
She also broke records in the UK charts, with the album reaching number one and topping the rest of the top 10 combined.
Could this be the start of a comeback for the album?
Billie’s brother and collaborator Finneas suggested a return to listening to the albums in their entirety was due to a comeback.
“We’re not even at ‘song’ anymore,” he told the magazine, saying music is increasingly being consumed in trending soundbites on TikTok.
But “everything is a countermovement to the movement,” he added.
“I think it’ll bring you back to immersing yourself in an album. It really does.”
Taylor and Billie aren’t the first artists to eschew singles, but Martin says it’s an interesting coincidence to see two megastars taking this approach at the same time.
“It won’t be the last time they do it,” he said.
“And it also doesn’t mean that the old model is going to die and people aren’t going to start putting out singles anymore.”
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