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0Culture Forgoing the single life 文化 放弃出单曲
Pop stars are all about albums Contradictory though it may seem in the streaming era.
流行巨星都在做专辑，这在流媒体时代，似乎有些矛盾。
To Billie Eilish, things like cassettes and CDS probably seem charmingly retro. Born in 2001, the musician was six years old when Spotify launched; today she is the fourth-most popular artist on the platform. Ms Eilish has only ever known 21st-century listening habits. And yet she has emerged as an unlikely champion of a time-worn format: the album. She declared that her new record, "Hit Me Hard and Soft", released in May, was a"cohesive" piece of work, "ideally listened to in its entirety from beginning to end". No singles were released in advance as amuse-bouches for famished fans.
对比莉·艾利什来说，像卡带和cd这样的东西似乎是迷人的复古。这位音乐家2001年出生，Spotify成立时他才6岁;如今，她是该平台上人气排名第四的艺人。艾利什女士只知道21世纪的倾听习惯。然而，她却出人意料地成为了一种过时形式的拥护者：专辑。她宣称她5月发行的新唱片《Hit Me Hard and Soft》是一部“有凝聚力”的作品，“从头到尾完整地听是理想的”。没有一首单曲是提前发布的，供饥渴的粉丝们一次听够。
She is not the only hitmaker emphasising the album rather than its component parts. Ariana Grande advertised "Eternal Sunshine", released in March, with just one single, stressing that she wanted listeners to "experience the album in full this time". Dua Lipa's debut album in 2017 was preceded by six singles; she scaled back for her latest record. And Taylor Swift has issued four successive sets of new material with no advance singles. Two of these were "surprise releases", announced just ahead of their arrival, which again emphasises the primacy of the album format.
她并不是唯一一个强调专辑而非其组成部分的热门人物。阿丽亚娜·格兰德为3月份发行的《Eternal Sunshine》做广告，只推出了一首单曲，强调她希望听众“这次能完整体验这张专辑”。杜阿·丽帕在2017年的首张专辑之前有六首单曲；而她的最新专辑则缩减了单曲数量。泰勒·斯威夫特已经连续发行了四张没有提前发行单曲的新专辑。其中两张是在他们将来之际宣布的“惊喜发行”，这再次强调了专辑形式的首要地位。
For decades after the birth of recorded music in the 1920s, the single was the only thing that mattered, mostly because it was the only thing there was: early gramophone records could hold just a few minutes of music on each side. As technology improved, playing times increased, and groups such as the Beatles came to see LPs ("long play") as statements of ambition. From the mid-1960s onwards, albums became something to be appreciated as complete works of art. In 1988 Prince released his "Lovesexy" album on CD as one continuous track, with the explicit goal of making it impossible to cherry-pick songs.
在20世纪20年代唱片音乐诞生后的几十年里，单曲是唯一重要的东西，主要是因为它是唯一的东西：早期的留声机唱片每侧只能容纳几分钟的音乐。随着技术的进步，播放时间的增加，披头士等团体开始将LP（“长时间播放”）视为野心的宣言。从 20 世纪 60 年代中期开始，专辑开始被当作完整的艺术品来欣赏。1988 年，王子将他的《Lovesexy》专辑制成一张连续的 CD 发行，其明确的目标是让人们无法挑选歌曲。
No doubt Ms Eilish and co want to prove their serious musical chops. Pop music is still often regarded as ephemeral, because it relies on catchy tracks that can dominate airwaves and charts. Singles account for around 65% of a hit rock album's total "consumption" (including streaming as well as physical purchases). For a pop album that figure rises to 85%.
毫无疑问，艾利什女士和她的团队想要证明他们的音乐实力。流行音乐通常仍被视为昙花一现，因为它依赖于朗朗上口的曲目，这些曲目可以在广播和排行榜上占据主导地位。在一张热门摇滚专辑的总 "消费"（包括流媒体和实体购买）中，单曲约占 65%。流行专辑的这一比例则高达 85%。
This crop of pop stars has discovered that a deluge can be better than a drip-feed. Stars can encourage fans to buy their record on vinyl and stream the album, too. .As a result, "The artist and their label partner earn twice," says Chris Cooke of CMU, a music-industry website. And, by releasing the songs all at once, artists enjoy the kind of chart dominance that sporadic singles do not provide. Ms Eilish currently has three tracks in the Billboard top 20. After the release of "The Tortured Poets Department", Ms Swift claimed the top 14 spots. Singles are still useful for pop's aspiring princesses, but not the queens.
这批流行明星发现，"大水漫灌 "比 "滴灌 "效果更好。明星们可以鼓励歌迷购买他们的黑胶唱片，也可以用流媒体播放专辑。音乐产业网站 CMU 的克里斯·库克说："这样一来，艺人和他们的唱片公司合作伙伴都能获得双倍收入。而且，通过一次性发行歌曲，艺术家们还能享受到零星单曲所无法提供的排行榜优势。艾莉什女士目前有三首歌曲进入了公告牌前 20 名。在《The Tortured Poets Department》发行后，斯威夫特女士占据了前 14 位。单曲对流行乐的有抱负的公主们仍然有用，但对女王们却没有用。
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