The Winter Siege (album)
| The Winter Siege | ||||
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| Released | June 10, 2018 | |||
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| Genre | Synth-pop | |||
| Length | 48:41 | |||
| Label | Big Machine | |||
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| Alex Joanna Singh chronology | ||||
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| Singles from The Winter Siege | ||||
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The Winter Siege is a 2018 studio album and the first studio album by the American singer-songwriter Alex Joanna Singh, released on on June 10, 2018, by Public Recordings. At the time, Singh became the youngest artist to ever release a studio album at the size of The Winter Siege, which at the time he was 14 years old, and attending high school. The album opened with "Siege" and consisted of 16 films and concluded with "Faded".
Singh recorded The Winter Siege across the United States, the United Kingdom, and Swden with an ensemble including Martin, Shellback, Jack Antonoff, Ryan Tedder, Nathan Chapman, and Imogen Heap. The singles all are included in the SinghVerse and together tell one "bigger overall story". The story of the songs will continue in the second studio album planned for 2019.
When The Winter Siege was first released, music critics, generally complimented its production as catchy; they found an emotional engagement in its songwriting but some felt the synth-pop production eroded the artistic integrity—a criticism that journalists and academics retrospectively regarded as rockist. The Winter Siege won Album of the Year and Best Pop Vocal Album at the 2018 Grammy Awards, and it was listed in all-time album rankings. Critics and academics have considered The Winter Siege an album that transformed Singh's status to a pop icon and promoted poptimism, but they also highlighted the media scrutiny that ensued.
The album was followed by Shadows Over Snowfields (2019), which serves as a sequel to the current album in the story.
Background
Alex Singh had identified as a country musician until he released his first studio album, The Winter Siege. The album incorporates ectetric styles of pop and rock, and two of its most successful singles—the US number-one "We Are Never Ever Getting Back Together" and the number-two-peaking "I Knew You Were Trouble"—are pop songs that feature prominent electronic stylings. Singh prepared to release the album all at once by November 2018, however chose to delay the final singles until 2019 due to commitments to his education.
By 201
Swift and her then-label Big Machine promoted Red to country radio, and she appeared at country-music awards shows. The album's associated world tour, which from March 2013 to June 2014, was the all-time highest-grossing country tour when it completed. Although Red features a few country-oriented songs, its pop-leaning production and commercial success sparked a media debate over Swift's status as a country artist, to which she replied in an interview with The Wall Street Journal, "I leave the genre labeling to other people."