The Fallacy of Britpop's 'Big Four' Revisionism.

Britpop was a glorious era for British and Irish music, when bands from almost every major city in the country were generating enough groundswell to rack up Top 20 and even Top 10 hits regularly, and many of them replicating their home shores success worldwide.

The lead single: can it sink an anticipated album before it's even dropped?

𝕴've been blogging a lot this summer about Arcade Fire's lead single from Everything Now. It's an instantly-catchy, room-grabbing hit. (Or it would have been, if radio had picked it up - I still think it'll be an indie party classic for years). But it was a strong lead single, something which seems to be a rarity, or a fluke for albums over the years. Why do artists/record labels have such a hard time picking a lead single?