Visual album

• Comment: This page is well sourced although it should be cleaned up a bit to sound less essay-like. Will move into mainspace once the redirect has been deleted. BuySomeApples (talk) 03:08, 24 January 2023 (UTC)

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A visual album is a type of concept album accompanied by a feature-length film or individual music videos for every song on the album. Usually, the film or "visuals" emphasize the album's overall theme and serve as a "visual vehicle" that enhances the experience. Though music films and videos accompanying albums are not new in pop culture, the term did not come into modern usage until Beyonce used it to describe her 2013 self-titled album, noting the music and the videos were "designed to be consumed as a comprehensive audio/visual piece". Similarly, the band Animal Collective had earlier described their experimental 2010 album ODDSAC as a "visual record".

Definitions

The definition of what constitutes a visual album remains a subject of debate. Being a largely experimental medium, its execution varies from artist to artist. According to Screen Rant's Megan Summers, "visual albums are linked music videos or films released in conjunction with a record". In one of the first articles written about the artform, Landon Palmer of Film School Rejects notes that "visual albums stage, sometimes with interruptions, the majority of a musician or band’s LP...proclaiming albums to be cohesive works of musical artistry rather than conveniently divisible bits of audio information". According to Judy Berman of Pitchfork, visual albums result from the "synergistic connection between music and cinema that dates back to the latter art form’s birth". While films like Purple Rain and A Hard Day's Night are classics that combine music and longform visuals, Kylie Lynne of AllMusic argues that such films "had the corresponding album as a soundtrack with the majority of focus on the storyline and dialogue when the music was not playing", separating them from visual albums in which the music is the primary audio component.

History and development

The pre-MTV era

The synergy between music and cinema has existed since cinema's early history, with the first talkie in 1927, The Jazz Singer, being a musical. When it became clear that talkies were to become the dominant form of cinema, there was a significant rise in musicians making use of the visual medium to bring their music to new audiences. Artists like Bessie Smith and Fred Astaire took advantage of this and appeared on television performing their songs. Soon enough, the music film as a concept would become a cultural phenomenon in 1964, at the height of Beatlemania, when the Beatles released A Hard Day's Night. The first album in the rock era to be accompanied by videos for every song is Blondie's Eat to the Beat, released in 1979.

MTV and the longform film

The rise of MTV and the popularity of Michael Jackson in the 80s cemented the status of music videos as integral to the music industry. Jackson would eventually stretch his cinematic ambitions to feature-film length with 1988's Moonwalker, just as Prince had done four years earlier with Purple Rain. While these were important in the eventual development of the visual album, none of these would fit into the modern definition of the term. Decades later, Blondie's pioneering move would be replicated by Beyonce in 2007, with her B'Day Anthology Video Album which featured videos for all songs on the accompanying album.

Streaming era

The beginning of the streaming era offered artists several options of making their musical projects easily accessible to fans. Artists like Beyonce, Frank Ocean, Kanye West, Solange, Halsey, and Sia have all released projects described as visual albums to different streaming services. Though the films often accompany the albums, artists like Taylor Swift sometimes opt to release the visuals at a later date, perhaps to lengthen the album's lifespan in public consciousness.