US electronic duo Odesza last put an album, 2017’s A Moment Apart, out half a decade ago. Which, in pop terms, is a lifetime and which, in electronic terms, is probably two lifetimes.
Their new single is called ‘The Last Goodbye’. To tease it, Foreign Family Collective/Ninja Tune sent out signed postcards at the end of January/start of February to their top fans – namely those who had bought the most music from the Odesza store or were the most engaged on their social channels.
The postcards had a cryptic message asking, “Is there ever really a last goodbye?” The telltale QR code made it obvious that something was happening and it led to a special landing page where it simply said “welcome to the last goodbye”.
That wording caused some panic among fans, with a Reddit thread all about it being full of speculation that this was going to be the act’s final pieces of music or even a farewell tour.
Ninja Tune told us that there were over 12,000 sign-ups within the first 24 hours and within a month the track had been streamed over 5m times on Spotify alone.
Very soon after the postcards went out and speculation was mounting, Odesza released a teaser video on their social channels with them in the studio hinting at what the storyline of the track was about. A second video, posted almost a week later, was a compilation of home videos following the two members from when they were kids right up to today.
The first video has had over 105k views on Twitter and the second one has had over 234k views.
Ninja Tune says, “More easter eggs were dropped in the source codes of the existing sites which led to a longer version of teaser 1 video, which was picked up by mega fans in Discord. Fans have started to find out that by texting ‘TLG’ to the text signup number, they were sent a dropbox link which included a 33-second reversed audio clip from the teaser 2 video.”
Cryptic teaser clips to set up new tracks or albums are far from uncommon these days, but this example had a bit more edge to it by sowing the seed of this (possibly, possibly not) being the final farewell for the act and causing a hugely emotional reaction from fans.
It is still unclear if the fans’ worst fears will be confirmed later in the campaign, but the shock tactics certainly got their attention.
