Why are Beyonce and Taylor Swift's albums so long?

• Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poets Department has 31 tracks, while Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter has 27 songs 
• Read more: Look what you made me do! Taylor Swift famously uses her mega-hits to settle scores and take brutal digs at her exes, so why DO they stay silent?

Michael Jackson’s Thriller, released in 1982 and still the biggest selling album of all time, has just nine tracks on it. Pink Floyd’s The Dark Side of the Moon, just behind Thriller in terms of global sales, features ten.

Music fans snapping up their favourite artist’s new album in 2024 might feel like they’d been shortchanged if they found just ten tracks to dive into. Global pop icons Taylor Swift and Beyonce have served up a whopping 31 and 27 songs respectively on their new albums.

Dropped last week, and teeming with barbed lyrics about her lost loves, Swift’s The Tortured Poet Department appeared initially to have a still substantial 16 tracks…but the 34-year-old singer had a curveball for delighted fans.

Taylor Swift’s The Tortured Poet Department (TTPD) is her biggest album ever, with 31 tracks; the pop star, 34, dropped the ‘secret’ double album on Thursday much to the delight of fans

Just hours after it was unleashed, she told Swifties: ‘It’s a 2am surprise: The Tortured Poet Department is a secret DOUBLE album. I’d written so much tortured poetry in the past 2 years and wanted to share it all with you, so here’s the second installment of TTPD: The Anthology. 15 extra songs. And now the story isn’t mine anymore… it’s all yours.

Meanwhile Beyonce, after teasing two tracks at the Superbowl in February from Act II: Cowboy Carter, her new country-laced album, dropped the rest of it at the end of March…making her eighth album her longest to date with a whopping 27 tracks.

The album has made music history since its release March 29, with the singer and songwriter, 42, becoming the first black woman to have a number one country album. The first single Texas Hold ‘Em made number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and also topped the Hot Country Songs chart.

It isn’t just in the arena of music that artists are offering up seemingly insatiable fans more substantial content.

At the cinema, films have been getting longer and longer; last summer’s Oscar-winning Oppenheimer asked movie-goers for three hours of their time.

This year’s biggest release so far Dune: Part 2, starring Timothée Chalamet and Rebecca Ferguson, comes in at 2 hours 48 minutes. Director Denis Villeneuve’s sequel is ten minutes longer than the first installment of Dune, released in 2021.

Lay your cards down: Beyonce’s Cowboy Carter, including current hit single Texas Hold’em, is also the singer’s biggest album, with 27 tracks

Act II: Cowboy Carter has made music history since its release on March 29th, with Beyonce becoming the first black woman to have a number one country album

While medical experts say our attention spans have been battered by life online, filmmakers are releasing movies that are longer than ever; Dune: Part 2 arrived earlier this year and lasts for 2 hours and 47 minutes, ten minutes longer than the 2021 first film in the series

And Oppenheimer, about America’s quest to create the atomic bomb, starring Cillian Murphy, was a wriggle-inducing 3 hours long – but claimed the biggest prize at the Oscars this year

And yet experts tell us our attention spans have never been shorter, thanks to content that is sliced and diced into just minutes or seconds on platforms such as TikTok, Instagram and YouTube.

In 2011, a researcher at the University of Washington coined the phrase ‘popcorn brain’, referring to how the digital world is killing our attention span, with our concentration levels waning because there’s always a shiny, new notification/TikTok/shopping offer distracting us.

So, while many of us may now have the shortest attention span of our lives, why are music and film makers serving up content that will take us so much longer to consume?

Media commentator Hayley Knight, co-founder and Comms Director at Be Yellow, says mega albums and mega movies are likely to continue being released.

‘We are definitely seeing an increase of artists releasing long content. With our shorter attention spans, you’d think artists might favour going in the opposite direction when it comes to content length. However, the sprawling track lists are doing more good than harm. It all comes down to gaining as many streams as possible.’

Knight says the huge sales both Beyonce and Taylor Swift have ratcheted up since releasing their albums proves fans will happily consume longer formats.

She says: ‘You don’t need this amount of tracks to get onto the Billboard Top 100, but there is a reason this is being done. And it all comes down to gaining as many streams as possible.

‘When streaming first came on the scene, artists were careful, and sceptical. They would put songs out in small clusters of 3-4 songs, instead of albums and singles. TV streaming services such as Netflix would do the same, commissioning short form content and series, over series with multiple episodes.

‘But today, streaming dominates both industries and means fans can stream unlimited amounts of content for a fixed price. Artists and film and TV producers know they can add content  because longer albums, films and series can lead to more streams, equalling more money.

She adds: ‘And let’s be honest, when we listen, and watch, we aren’t always paying attention, so we keep going back and forth, meaning even more streams.

‘Platforms such as Netflix know we will keep coming back to the same shows, and movies so they create more episodes, and longer series and movies to keep us watching.

So more is more content for users, and more money for the makers? ‘It’s all designed to keep us subscribed to the platform for as long as possible. It’s a numbers game, and the record companies and streaming platforms are in the millions!’

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