Photo: Courtesy of Columbia Records. Leave it to Beyoncé to completely change the game. According to reports out of SXSW, another superstar artist is in the midst of structuring a deal for a major iTunes exclusive, following in the footsteps of Queen Bey and her wildly successful, out-of-nowhere iTunes album launch late last year.
While no specifics of who will be releasing the album have been available, sources say it's definitely someone we've all heard of. The album will be available exclusively on iTunes, which means Spotify users will be out of luck, and it will come with some accompanying videos as well.
The question now becomes, who has the kind of clout to execute a Beyoncé-level cultural event? Very few artists can release an album out of the blue and break the Internet the way Beyoncé did. The biggest male artists in the world, Jay Z, Kanye West, Drake, Justin Timberlake, and Bruno Mars, have all recently released albums, so that rules them out. As for the ladies, Katy Perry, Lady Gaga, Miley Cyrus, Lorde, and Taylor Swift are also just coming off records, so it likely won't be any of them. Madonna seems like a possible candidate to pull off a stunt of this magnitude, as does Rihanna, whose last album was released all the way back in 2012.
But, there's one artist in particular who's so beloved, so talented, and who's been away for so long that the surprise release of her album might just trump Beyoncé's. Her name is Adele.
Oh, who are we kidding? Nothing will ever eclipse what Beyoncé did, but a brand-new Adele album would come pretty darn close. (Oh No They Didn't!)