Comment by hnlmorg
3 days ago
I can’t speak for where you’re based, but in the UK the music videos for the singles were aired when the singles were charting and before the albums commercial release.
There is no way the anime and the movie wasn’t part of the original albums concept and neither the part you quoted nor the link I shared disagrees with that point.
I agree the album is an album of singles. But that was never in dispute.
I also deliberately avoided discussing the themes of the songs and plot of the movie but musicians are frequently reinventing meanings to songs. And if the history of operatic movies has anything to go by, it’s that musicians seldom have a coherent plot for these things (regardless of whether you’re Philip Glass or The Who) so it’s usually better to just enjoy the randomness of these movies for what it is. But that doesn’t mean that the anime wasn’t still part of the original album concept.
One More Time was seemingly released in October 2000 and is the only single that was released before the record (not taking in account the leaks).
The earliest copies of music videos being sent to stations are dated from around February 2001.
Discovery was released in March 2001.
The first single bundled with a music video was the fourth one and was released in October 2001.
The earliest broadcast of the four initial videos seems to be August 2001.
So no, music videos and single releases were not really bundled together.
If I understand your dates correctly, Aug 2001 to Oct 2001, that’s only 3 months. Which is far short of the time you’d expect an artist to need to start a movie project entire from scratch if it weren’t already part of the concept of the album.
Those dates could more easily be explained as delays in the animation process.
I’m feeling unwell though, so apologies in advance if I have completely misread and misunderstood your post.