Just release the damn record! Why the Annoying Album Launch needs to stop

Across the past two weeks, Kanye West has done everything apart from release a new album. He’s donned a nylon face-mask – potentially just a pair of tights – while sharing upcoming songs with fans at Atlanta’s Mercedes-Benz Stadium. And he’s installed 10 beds in the bowels of the venue, where he’s applying the “finishing” touches to his allegedly imminent new record, Donda.

Just this week, at a second playback of Donda at the same venue, he prowled around a mock-up of his childhood bedroom. Surrounding him were fans in the form of a spiralling mosh-pit: an orgy of interpretive dance springing fully-formed from West’s ego. Then – because he’s Kanye West, and why not? – he was strapped into wires and soared high in the air. Cheering in the stands were 60,000 fans, who sustained themselves with $40 hot-dogs, $50 chicken-in-a-basket and $45 platters of brownies and cookies. Online, meanwhile, devotees were invited to splurge $100 on Donda-branded hoodies.

This was all clearly an attempt by West to hype Donda as much as possible (and flog some over-priced chicken). But having blazed past two release dates – July 23 and August 5 – the rapper has merely teased the pop world with another example of the Annoying Album Launch.

It’s a trend in the music industry. Today, you’re nobody unless you’ve wound up your fanbase. Whether you’re Taylor Swift sharing cryptic word-puzzles on Twitter, or Frank Ocean live-streaming footage of a man sweeping the floor, the goal of every self-respecting chart icon is apparently to test the patience of the world at large and their audience in particular.

Why pop stars would be keen to hype their album into a headline-hogging event is no mystery. Thanks to streaming and the accumulation of 50 years of pop history, we’re drowning in music. A fortnight ago, just as West was due to unleash Donda, Prince’s estate was releasing a “new” posthumous collection from the late funk legend. This week, the new-releases slate has been overshadowed by a repackaged 50th-anniversary edition of George Harrison’s All Things Must Pass.

Alas, one artist’s superhuman effort is another’s irritating attempt to get themselves into the limelight. This is the holding pattern in which pop has found itself for the past decade or so: the bigger the act, the more desperate they are to transform their new LP into An Event.

Consider the cautionary case of U2, who in 2014 cooked up the scheme of beaming their underwhelming new opus straight into the iTunes account of 500 million unsuspecting punters. A chunk of these may have been delighted to wake and discover a howling Bono clogging up their hard drive. Many more, however, were less than thrilled.

Bono eventually felt the need to apologise for his “megalomania”. “There’s a lot of noise out there,” he said. “I guess we got a little noisy ourselves to get through it.”

Other standard-bearers for the Annoying Album Launch have included Radiohead, who managed to turn even the straightforward task of putting out new music into an exercise in performative grumpiness. Ahead of what remains their most recent foray, 2016’s A Moon-Shaped Pool, they wiped their social-media accounts, as though this were the 21st-century equivalent of the KLF burning a million quid. And don’t forget Beyoncé, pioneer of the now-widespread art of “dropping” a new record with a few hours’ notice.

Then there was Richard D James, aka the sole Aphex Twin, who in 2014 announced his latest long-player, Syro, with a blimp over London and a press release posted on the Dark Web browser, Tor. James was in his early 40s at the time, despite his convincing impersonation of an edgy 14-year-old who can’t get over how cool the Dark Web is.

One irony is that the latest poster-child for the Annoying Album Launch is Kanye’s on-off foe, Taylor Swift. Gearing up for her re-recorded version of her 2012 smash, Red, she’s been sharing cryptic Instagram clues. Just recently, her social media featured swirling leaves and jumbled letters that spelt words such as “MEBRIDGERSKOE” and “NOTELPATSIEEV”.

On Reddit, fans have invested hundreds of hours in sorting through these breadcrumbs. One theory (since confirmed) is Red (Taylor’s Version) will feature a collaboration with Phoebe Bridgers. The clues are also said to spell the names of previously unreleased tracks that Swift will be debuting with the new re-recording.

In all this, music seems to have reached the sorry point at which television found itself a few years ago, where the drive to create a splash on discussion forums and Twitter caused creators to lose sight of what they were supposed to be doing in the first place. That hit a nadir with HBO’s Westworld – more concerned with whipping Reddit into a frenzy of theories than telling a coherent story.

And yet, there is another way. A star can simply release an album and let it sink or swim on its actual merits. This is the audacious strategy pursued by Billie Eilish, whose new LP looks set to outsell the rest of the Top 10 combined on its way to number one.

Happier Than Ever wasn’t accompanied by word-puzzles, and Eilish didn’t rent out a football stadium or squeeze a pair of tights over her face. She simply made a very good record and put it out. If he ever leaves Atlanta Stadium – and, who knows, he might still be there a year from now – Kanye West could do worse than follow her example.

Are album launches excessive or do they make it worth the wait? Tell us in the comments section below