After months of a truly bewildering rollout, Sturgill Simpson/Johnny Blue Skies‘ new album, Mutiny After Midnight, is available now. Without releasing a single, doing an interview, or even playing a concert, the man born John Sturgill Simpson says his second album under the name Johnny Blue Skies had the biggest “first week” of any album in his career.
In a post to his recently launched Instagram, Simpson explained his guerrilla marketing strategy. For the most part, the campaign consisted of memes from classic movies like Jaws with slapdash edits referencing the coming album. That changed two weeks before the album’s official March 13th release, when Simpson shared 30 seconds of Mutiny After Midnight track, “Situation”. Naturally, this was set to a loop from the He-Man cartoon show.
Considering Simpson touted Mutiny After Midnight as a physical-only release, getting 30 seconds of it on Instagram took on added significance. Then, a couple days later, he leaked his own album to YouTube, only to yank it back down before the record hit shelves.
So, why?
Sturgill Simpson/Johnny Blue Skies explained in a statement shared as an Instagram story,
Thank you very much to everyone for joining in on all the fun and being such good sports over the past few weeks. We made this record with a sense of immediacy and in the moment expression with the pure intention of simply having fun and making people forget about everything else, even if for only 44 minutes. Thank you to everyone that “gets it” and to all the writers for the kind words and love.
We had originally planned a physical only release for at least the first 4-6 weeks to support and show solidarity with independent record shops and to promote an increasingly bygone physical and tangible connection between music and music fans… the almost mystical bond that stems from holding a new piece of artistic expression in your hands while hearing it for the first time… there were some hiccups (and some opportunists) thus some in the moment adjustments that only led to more fun and chaos.
Personally, I’m just here for the chaos.
Plus I’ve always really wanted to leak my own record…
I can assure you, if nothing else, there are meetings taking place right now throughout the music industry amongst those who pray to formula currently discussing and analyzing the fact that without interviews, tv performances, singles, music videos, or an ounce of “marketing” outside a steady steam of stupid ass memes, we have already had what those that follow charts refer to as the biggest “first week” of any album in my entire career… and “first week” technically just started today.
We’ll probably put it on iTunes at some point.
We’ll probably stream it (with bonus tracks) at some point.
But the album is out in stores today.
Go buy a physical copy… or don’t Stream it illegally… or don’t.
But as your attorney, I advise you to put the phone down, get out of the house, and go grab a copy and find a place to crank it with some friends or even strangers… you might even get laid.
It’s all the same fucking day man… so don’t let the bastards get ya down.
The same day that story went up on Friday, there was another surprise. On the official Johnny Blue Skies YouTube channel, Simpson shared a music video for “Situation”. A collage of archival dancing footage from around the world—including shots of Tyler Childers, Napoleon Dynamite, and lots of public access TV—the “Situation” music video is six minutes of unified chaos. The video, the unorthodox marketing campaign, and Mutiny After Midnight are the latest combustions of an unpredictable artist who was defined by reinvention long before he changed his name.
Now all we need is a tour.
Johnny Blue Skies & The Dark Clouds — “Situation” [Official Video]
