With horror films, there’s always been a maxim: Hide the monster for as long as possible.
Now movie musicals have a similar wisdom of their own: Hide the music.At least, that was the thinking in the buildup to the release of the soundtrack of “A Star is Born,” which came out day-and-date with the Bradley Cooper-directed, Lady Gaga-starring movie.
The conventional wisdom used to be that you’d put out any kind of soundtrack album in advance of the film, to help juice anticipation for any heavily music-focused film.
But that wisdom has lately been turned on its head.
In the case of “A Star is Born,” early release of the songs would have constituted that most dreaded of things in 21stcentury fandom: spoilers.The decision to withhold the music certainly hasn’t seemed to spoil soundtrack sales.
Numbers won’t be in till later this week,
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