< 10 years later, the 'Beyoncé' surprise drop still offers lessons about control

JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:

Ten years ago today, there were a lot of sleepy music fans. That's because Beyonce dropped a surprise album at midnight. The news spread fast, and thousands of her fans and music critics all stayed up until the wee hours to take it all in - but only if they were willing to pay $15.99 to download the entire album.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "DRUNK IN LOVE")

BEYONCE: (Singing) Drunk in love...

SUMMERS: The album, which was simply titled "Beyonce," veered away from pop industry norms. There were no singles, no promotions, no marketing, and it went straight to the top of the charts.

(SOUNDBITE OF BEYONCE SONG, "DRUNK IN LOVE")

SUMMERS: But did it change the industry? NPR culture correspondent Anastasia Tsioulcas is here to talk about that. Hey there.

ANASTASIA TSIOULCAS, BYLINE: Hey there.

SUMMERS: All right, Anastasia, take us back to 2013. What did this album drop look like? How was it different than everything else that was going on in pop music then?

TSIOULCAS: So Juana, when this Beyonce album arrived, the pop industry had drifted away from this idea from the '60s and '70s that you would sit and listen to a whole album all the way through. And then, with the birth of downloading and then streaming, pop music had largely reverted to this very regressive 1950s kind of thing in which singles were the only thing that mattered both artistically and economically. And Beyonce actually talked about this after the album was released.

(SOUNDBITE OF ARCHIVED RECORDING)

BEYONCE: Now people only listen to a few seconds of a song on their iPods. They don't really invest in a whole album. It's all about the single and the hype. There's so much that gets between the music and the artist and the fans.

SUMMERS: Now, of course, Beyonce's die-hard fans did not need traditional media to find out about this surprise album.

TSIOULCAS: No, for sure not. And because of the way that Beyonce released this album as this one whole concept, she really left it to her fans to decide what was important, what tracks they liked best, because her record label couldn't, essentially, tell the public in advance what the bangers were going to be, right?

Every time a record label releases a single from an artist or a band before a whole record drops, they're pretty much putting a neon arrow on certain songs and saying, hey, this is what you want to listen to. And here, instead, Beyonce was telling her fans, you listen, and then you decide. Certain songs, like "XO," for example, emerged as fan favorites, but they weren't preordained.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "XO")

BEYONCE: (Singing) Your heart is glowing, and I'm crashing into you...

SUMMERS: Have any other artists out there managed to replicate or even just follow Beyonce's success?

TSIOULCAS: Taylor Swift.

SUMMERS: I mean, these days, isn't the answer kind of always Taylor Swift?

TSIOULCAS: I think so. And in 2020, Swift released two full surprise albums, "Folklore" and then "Evermore," and both of those went straight to No. 1.

SUMMERS: OK, OK, but not everyone is Taylor or Beyonce. Is this a path that other artists can follow now?

TSIOULCAS: Well, in the wake of Beyonce, there were a lot of acts who have done similar things. I'm thinking of U2, Frank Ocean, Rihanna. But look, if nobody already knows who you are and you drop a surprise album, honestly, who's going to care so much?

In this case, though, Beyonce got around the music industry. She got her fans - her Beyhive - to do the promotional labor for free instead of paying an army of industry insiders to do all that legwork.

SUMMERS: And then let's keep in mind that Beyonce did something similar again in 2016 with the release of "Lemonade."

TSIOULCAS: Yeah, absolutely. It was almost as if she was saying, you know, the success of "Beyonce" was no fluke. I'm just going to do it again. And that time, she took it one step farther. She released it on a platform that she co-owned, Tidal Music. Beyonce really has always been about both art and commerce and very savvy about both.

SUMMERS: That's NPR's Anastasia Tsioulcas. Thank you. Anastasia.

TSIOULCAS: Thanks for having me.

(SOUNDBITE OF SONG, "FORMATION")

BEYONCE: (Rapping) I twirl on them haters, albino alligators. El Camino with the seat low, sipping Cuervo with no chaser. Sometimes I go off. I go off. I go hard. I go hard, get what's mine, take what's mine. I'm a star. I'm a star. 'Cause I slay, slay. I slay, hey. I slay, OK. I slay, OK, all day, OK. I slay, OK. I slay, OK. I slay, OK. We going to slay, slay, going to slay, OK. We slay, OK. I slay, OK. I slay, OK, OK, OK. I slay, OK, OK, OK, OK, OK. OK, OK, ladies, now let's get in formation 'cause I slay, OK...

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