Marina And The Diamonds' new album Froot was released today and has shot straight to the top of the UK's iTunes charts.
It's an interesting development for both the artist, real name Marina Diamandis, and the pop industry as a whole - because its release has not relied at all on any attention from mainstream radio stations.
In fact, according to airplay tracker Compare My Radio, the only one of her songs that's been played at all on British airwaves over the last 30 days is a three-year-old song from her previous record.
Instead of plugging a big launch single that would likely flop without any big exposure, she put a different new song on iTunes (and an accompanying mid-budget video on YouTube) every month from October right up to the release of the whole album, with only the acclaim of bloggers and her fans keeping the momentum going.
Despite brief high peaks on iTunes' in-house rankings, none of these 'teaser tracks' impacted the official UK singles chart, and yet here we are: Froot is No1 on iTunes over here, and also riding high globally.
Now is as good a time as any for someone like Marina to show how Number Ones are possible when you don't necessarily play the game by its usual rules.
In fact, according to airplay tracker Compare My Radio, the only one of her songs that's been played at all on British airwaves over the last 30 days is a three-year-old song from her previous record.
What? that means she's probably going to suffer a huge drop in the 2nd week since the GP isn't aware of this alberm.
I'm so happy Marina's getting all this praise. She deserves it!
Also, Marina said she originally wanted "Froot of the Month" to actually be two songs each month, so we'd have all 12 tracks just before the album release, but iTunes said no. That would have been so interesting, but I also like the fact Marina took it upon herself in the end to just showcase the tracklist one day at a time on Youtube, leading up to the album release.
It is. It's such a fresh sound. It reminds me of the first time I heard 'I Look To You' by Miami Horror featuring Kimbra, and I just thought "this is cool and fresh...it doesn't sound like anything anyone else is doing right now, yet it still sounds so 'now'."
that means she's probably going to suffer a huge drop in the 2nd week since the GP isn't aware of this alberm.
Shut up. Seethe quietly
