滚石：霉霉《Lover》一定会大获成功

流行唱作天后“霉霉”泰勒·斯威夫特（Taylor Swift）第7张录音室专辑《Lover》于8月23日正式发布。

Taylor Swift's ‘Lover’ Is a Guaranteed Success

Rolling Stone

As Taylor Swift prepares to release Lover on Friday, she is returning to a pop world that has undergone profound changes. “Before it was a push business,” ace songwriter Savan Kotecha (Ariana Grande, Justin Bieber) explained in 2018. “Labels would push an act on a TV show, an award show, get that spot, get radio [play] and [the song] goes. Now it’s more of a pull business… it’s all about throwing out content.” The TV screens and the program directors come later, if they come at all, but those gatekeepers are no longer necessary to create a smash hit.

相关背景

Push-pull strategy：This method defines how products and services leave the business and go to the clients. A client wants to buy a product (the pull), and the business (the push) will satisfy the client's request.

详见：Difference Between Push & Pull Marketing

ace

ace作形容词，表示“一流的，突出的”，英文解释为“someone who is a very skilful pilot, player etc”，如：ace pilot/player/skier 王牌飞行员/顶尖运动员/滑雪高手，an ace marksman 一位神枪手。

ace本身也可以直接作名词，指“一流选手”（If you describe someone such as a sports player as an ace, you mean that they are very good at what they do.）

label

熟词僻义，表示“唱片公司”，英文解释为“a record company”，如：their new release on the Ace Sounds label 由Ace Sounds唱片公司为他们发行的新唱片。

smash hit

熟词僻义，smash/smash hit 作名词，表示“非常成功的新电影/新专辑/新歌曲等”，英文解释为“a new film, song etc which is very successful”，如：a box-office smash (= a film which many people go to see at the cinema) 高票房电影。

smash作为动词时，有“粉碎；打碎；砸碎”（to break into pieces violently or noisily, or to make something do this by dropping, throwing, or hitting it）、“猛撞，猛击，猛掷”（to hit an object or surface violently, or to make something do this）等意思，举个🌰：

The car smashed into the bus.

小汽车猛地撞上了公共汽车。

Kotecha’s theory has been proved emphatically in 2019. Take Billie Eilish, who has the second biggest album of the year so far. She released When We All Fall Asleep, Where Do We Go? in March after spreading 16-ish singles and an EP across roughly 30 months. In the old days, labels would wait for a major radio hit and then unleash an album; in this new world, Eilish did not get her first Number One radio hit until May, close to two months after album release. 

-ish

表示“（数量，数字）大约，大致；...时间左右的，...岁左右的”，英文解释为“-ish is added to words referring to times, dates, or ages to form words which indicate that the time or age mentioned is approximate.”举个🌰：

We’ll expect you eightish (= at about 8 o’clock ).

我们希望你8点左右来。

He’s fortyish (= about 40 years old ).

他40岁左右。

single & EP

表示“单曲唱片；激光唱片；唱片主歌”，英文解释为“A single is a small record which has one song on each side. A single is also a CD which has a few short songs on it. You can also refer to the main song on a record or CD as a single.”

EP盘唱片（extended-play record）迷你专辑（extended play），简称EP，俗称细碟，是一种介于单曲与专辑之间的音乐发行形式。通常意义上，单曲一般包含有1至3首曲，而迷你专辑通常包含了5至8首曲目。（百度百科）

This trajectory is not unique to Eilish. The rapper A Boogie wit da Hoodie had the fifth biggest album of the year at the end of June. Hoodie SZN came out before Christmas; it took the lead single “Look Back at It” almost six months to hit Number One at radio, and the rapper still hasn’t been invited on to any of the three biggest late-night TV shows. His label-mate Lizzo released a string of singles starting back in 2017 that eventually led to April’s Cuz I Love You; “Truth Hurts” became her first Number One on the airwaves at the end of July. 

But as new stars triumph in a “pull business,” Taylor Swift might be the last of the old-school pushers. She is leading into her seventh studio album, Lover, with a carpet-bombing advertising campaign that few can match. 

triumph

表示“战胜，获胜”，英文解释为“to gain a victory or success after a difficult struggle”举个🌰：

In the end, good shall triumph over evil.

正义终将战胜邪恶。

old-school

表示“老派的，守旧的”，英文解释为“old-fashioned, or relating to ideas from the past”举个🌰：

He was one of the last old-school comics.

他是最后一代老派喜剧演员之一。

carpet-bombing

表示“地毯式轰炸”，英文解释为“the act of dropping a lot of bombs all over a particular area so that it will be destroyed”。

This barrage includes, but might not be limited to, 1) her Amazon Prime Day concert, which was streamed live and then repackaged for subsequent viewing by curious Amazon Prime viewers; 2) a Capital One partnership featuring a commercial and a t-shirt-album-bundle for those who have Capital One cards; 3) a deal with Spotify, in which Swift shares audio messages and stories behind her songs on the platform; 4) a deal with YouTube Music that involves a livestream event and a video premiere; 5) a deal with iHeartMedia, much like the one Swift had in place for Reputation, in which the radio conglomerate's Top 40, Adult Contemporary, and “Hot AC” stations, 135 in total, all blast Swift's new music every hour on the hour; 6) a simultaneous promotion with SiriusXM Hits 1, which reaches around the whole country; 7) another Amazon deal where an image of Swift appears on packaging for whatever you happened to order; 8) and a longstanding deal with Target, which promises to carry four — four! Even Target's press release seemed surprised — different deluxe versions of Lover. 

barrage

指代上文的carpet-bombing，表示“连续炮击，火力网”，英文解释为“A barrage is continuous firing on an area with large guns and tanks”，要展开介绍霉霉新专辑发布前的一系列营销推广预热活动（包括但不限于：the Amazon Prime Day concert；a Capital One partnership；a deal with Spotify；a deal with YouTube Music；a deal with iHeartMedia；......）；

barrage也可以指“接二连三的一大堆（质问或指责等）；连珠炮似的批评（问题、投诉等）”（a lot of criticism, questions, complaints etc that are said at the same time, or very quickly one after another），如：a barrage of questions 连珠炮似的问题，举个🌰：

He was faced with a barrage of angry questions from the floor.

他面临着听众一连串的愤怒质问。

conglomerate

表示“企业集团”，英文解释为“A conglomerate is a large business firm consisting of several different companies.”举个🌰：

the world's second-largest media conglomerate

世界第二大传媒集团。

还可以用giant来表示巨头公司”，英文解释为“Giant is often used to refer to any large, successful business organization or country.”举个🌰：

Japanese electronics giant, Sony

日本的电子业巨头——索尼公司

以及behemoth/ˈbiːhɪmɒθ/ 表示“巨头（指规模庞大、实力雄厚的公司或机构）”，英文解释为“a very big and powerful company or organization”。

blast

作动词本义是“炸毁，爆破”，此处表示“大声放（音乐）；（音乐）大声播放； 突然大声按响；突然发出巨响”，英文解释为“If you blast something such as a car horn, or if it blasts, it makes a sudden, loud sound. If something blasts music, or music blasts, the music is very loud.”如：drivers who do not blast their horns 那些没有狂按喇叭的驾驶员。

deluxe

deluxe version 豪华版；deluxe /dɪˈlʌks/ 表示“高级的；豪华的”，英文解释为“of better quality and more expensive than other things of the same type”，如：a deluxe hotel 豪华酒店。

类似的：

luxury：very great comfort and pleasure, such as you get from expensive food, beautiful houses, cars etc 奢华，奢侈

Taken together, that means only a few hermits won’t run into Lover somehow. And this marketing blitzkrieg is not unusual for Swift, the only artist in history to sell over a million album-equivalent units during debut week on four separate occasions (Speak Now, Red, 1989, Reputation). Her fans are of an old model: ready to purchase whatever she's selling at a moment's notice. Only three other artists have managed more than one million-selling opening, and they all did it when the CD market was at its frothiest: Eminem (The Marshall Mathers LP, The Eminem Show), ‘NSync (Celebrity, No Strings Attached) and the Backstreet Boys (Black & Blue, Millennium).

hermit

表示“隐士；隐修者；遁世者”，英文解释为“a person who, usually for religious reasons, lives a very simple life alone and does not meet or talk to other people”举个🌰：

I've spent the past three years living like a hermit.

我过去3年里过着隐士般的生活。

blitzkrieg

blitzkrieg /ˈblɪtsˌkriːɡ/ 源于德语，表示“（体育运动中的）快速猛攻；（政治或广告中的）声势迅猛的活动；铺天盖地的宣传”，英文解释为“Journalists sometimes refer to a rapid and powerful attack or campaign in, for example, sports, politics, or advertising as a blitzkrieg.”如：a blitzkrieg of media hype 媒体铺天盖地的大肆炒作。

at a moment's notice

表示“即刻；随时；一经通知就立即”，at a moment's/two hours'/three weeks', etc. notice，用于强调只有极少时间完成某事，提前一会儿/两个小时/三个星期（等等）通知，英文解释为“used to emphasize how little time someone has to do something or how little warning is given ”举个🌰：

We can't be expected to just drop everything and leave at a moment's notice.

不可要求我们能在接到通知后放下所有的事情立即离开。

Such numbers are nearly incomprehensible now. Eilish and A Boogie wit da Hoodie both topped the chart this year with less than 65,000 album-equivalent units. Though that wasn't during their debut weeks, it's more evidence that the pull-artists are on the rise. But Swift will still push her way to another Number One, the last titan standing in a brand new world. 

titan

表示“巨人，大力士；泰斗，大师”，英文解释为“a very strong or important person”；

类似的：

giant：a very large successful company 巨头，大公司

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