base talk HTE vs GUTS, did Billie get the last laugh?

[FightDragonsWithMe]

I thought GUTS would smash out the gate because of SOURS success but GUTS has grown on me and it's really good. Both had underperforming sophomore eras tho so no one really won. 

[wish]

1 hour ago, Love Again said:

I have a feeling both of their third albums might turn it around. Huge debuts are always harder to follow up

I agree, and honestly their album track numbers are totally fine, they just need a better strategy when it comes to singles.

[Credit]

happy ever after suffered from being too long. it could have definitely been a good album if fillers like not my responsibility, overheat, lost cause and man's fantasy were left off but not too much on her now. she can definitely make her next album shorter and bounce back. she will just have to try to be interesting but she can definitely do it

[KOMH]

Certainly did not expect Guts to fizzle out as quickly as it did. Get Him Back and BIR's woeful performances and callouts do not bode well for the future of the era. HTE is the bigger and better album.

[Beyonnaise]

The Olivia stans PROMISED us this era would solidify the Drivers License chanteuse, but her streams have massively collapsed since Sour, especially internationally. The way she's cratered in Europe and Asia feels unprecedented. I'm personally stunned

 

[Mocha]

the borellads kind of ruined Guts for me

[Mocha]

but everything else is 10/10

[Machete]

Yes. Per usual, ATRL was wrong.

[unclefloprry]

49 minutes ago, BuzzCharts said:

@unclefloprry I know you are having a difficult time with Houdini bombing in the USA, but these threads are not going to change anything. 

A song “bombing” in one country is not the drag what you think when we are talking about a full album bombing in the entire world.

 

 

stay on topic 

 

[By the Water]

Olivia stans definitely got carried away when they were laughing at HTE's performance. I mean, at least Billie had the excuse of having one of the worst rollouts I've ever seen. Olivia's team basically tried to recreate SOUR's rollout and she went from 55 weeks in the top 10 to 7

 

[rebeltwat]

2 hours ago, RideOrDie said:

guts is the better album

Please

[Billionaire]

20 minutes ago, Credit said:

happy ever after suffered from being too long. it could have definitely been a good album if fillers like not my responsibility, overheat, lost cause and man's fantasy were left off but not too much on her now. she can definitely make her next album shorter and bounce back. she will just have to try to be interesting but she can definitely do it

bffr male fantasy is a career highlight. 

[Beyonnaise]

Since I know Olivia stans are currently in a wounded place, I'll be fair for once 

 

I do think Guts is on the whole better than Sour. But it's still uneven, the ballads are all filler, and it could've executed more than a few of its ideas better. But I think she has one glaring issue that trumps all the rest: Olivia is not well known as a celebrity by people over 30.

 

Since the Billie comparison was already raised, everybody knows who Billie Eilish is, from boomers who think she's a green-haired satanist to toddlers who bop to Bad Guy. She's dark and wears baggy clothes and has an edge. She's unmistakable. Olivia on the other hand is less easily defined and not as much of a household name. The Drivers License drama was a culturally relevant tabloid moment, but she wasn't able to follow that up this time with anything else buzzy for people to talk about, just the Taylor speculation which nobody outside forums and stan twitter knows the details of. Nobody Olivia has dated is well known. There's not as much to latch onto when the average person talks about her. The marketing for the album kept talking about how much she likes female rock music and it's like... okay, that's nice. Maybe Olivia thinks it's trivial to "play the game" of being a celebrity and doing things for headlines, and that's fine. But pop music, especially in the social media age, is intrinsically linked to personal life drama, and she just isn't delivering on that front.

[Credit]

14 minutes ago, Beyonnaise said:

Since I know Olivia stans are currently in a wounded place, I'll be fair for once 

 

I do think Guts is on the whole better than Sour. But it's still uneven, the ballads are all filler, and it could've executed more than a few of its ideas better. But I think she has one glaring issue that trumps all the rest: Olivia is not well known as a celebrity by people over 30.

 

Since the Billie comparison was already raised, everybody knows who Billie Eilish is, from boomers who think she's a green-haired satanist to toddlers who bop to Bad Guy. She's dark and wears baggy clothes and has an edge. She's unmistakable. Olivia on the other hand is less easily defined and not as much of a household name. The Drivers License drama was a culturally relevant tabloid moment, but she wasn't able to follow that up this time with anything else buzzy for people to talk about, just the Taylor speculation which nobody outside forums and stan twitter knows the details of. Nobody Olivia has dated is well known. There's not as much to latch onto when the average person talks about her. The marketing for the album kept talking about how much she likes female rock music and it's like... okay, that's nice. Maybe Olivia thinks it's trivial to "play the game" of being a celebrity and doing things for headlines, and that's fine. But pop music, especially in the social media age, is intrinsically linked to personal life drama, and she just isn't delivering on that front.

your ability to always be angry about liv but making 0 points should be studied. always yapping about how "olivia stans are this" "olivia stans are that" but i have never once seen a single one actually reply to you. f*cking clown

[naval23]

Commercially - maybe.  

 

But GUTS had a #1 single, multiple top 10s, a 90+ on Metacritic 

[ithinkheknowsoutsold]

40 minutes ago, By the Water said:

she went from 55 weeks in the top 10 to 7

This is basically what happened with Taylor too though, no?

 

Fearless spent 58 weeks in the top ten compared to Speak Now's 15. Both albums had several high debuting singles and promo singles but songs weren't able to set radio alight like the singles from the previous era and overall the album felt like more of an Anglospherian effort than its far-reaching predecessor. 

 

Then Red came and Taylor came back swinging with that, so the same could very well happen with Olivia.

[By the Water]

6 minutes ago, ithinkheknowsoutsold said:

This is basically what happened with Taylor too though, no?

 

Fearless spent 58 weeks in the top ten compared to Speak Now's 15. Both albums had several high debuting singles and promo singles but songs weren't able to set radio alight like the singles from the previous era and overall the album felt like more of an Anglospherian effort than its far-reaching predecessor. 

 

Then Red came and Taylor came back swinging with that, so the same could very well happen with Olivia.

No, Speak Now debuted with 1M copies, nearly double what Fearless did while GUTS only barely outdebuted SOUR because it had vinyls upon release. And 15 weeks is more than double what GUTS managed not even considering that albums tend to stick around more in the streaming era

[liquiddiamonds]

The two girls love each other, support each other and influence each other. This stanbase fighting is embarrassing, because there’s no truth to chew on like Britney vs Christina; Pink vs Christina; Avril vs Britney, iconic feuds, etc

 

And that some of you guys were able to even insert Taylor Swift that is not even from the same generation of these girls. It MUST be boredom

[liquiddiamonds]

At least Olivia vs Sabrina had truth to it and they both put it on record. But don’t worry, they are all early 20s girls. At a certain point someone new will come up lowkey trashing the two of them like Lorde did around Pure Heroine with Taylor and Selena and then y’all will stop having a mid-off every week lol 

 

Edited November 14, 2023 by liquiddiamonds

[ithinkheknowsoutsold]

19 minutes ago, By the Water said:

No, Speak Now debuted with 1M copies, nearly double what Fearless did while GUTS only barely outdebuted SOUR because it had vinyls upon release. And 15 weeks is more than double what GUTS managed not even considering that albums tend to stick around more in the streaming era

Almost half of Speak Now's weeks in the top ten were tallied in the post-Christmas when it didn't even take 30,000 sales. Comparatively the number 10 album requires close to 45,000 copies now, and we're a month away from Christmas! Album longevity tends to show more over the long run in the streaming era. A big album from the sales era would still far outsell a big streaming era album in its first year. Case in point: Mariah Carey's Emancipation sold close to 5 million copies in its first year compared to just over 3 million for Taylor's Lover. By the end of its third full year, Emancipation was selling less than 80,000 copies yearly. Lover, on the other hand, was still selling closing to a million units.

 

My point is not to degrade Taylor's success with Speak Now or to insinuate that Guts is on the same level as it now, but that having a relatively more moderate selling album following a mega seller is not unprecedented.

[UseYourIllusion2002]

3 hours ago, houdini said:

Most music publications agree that Guts is better. It got higher reviews by Pitchfork, Rolling Stone, Independent to name a few. Also stands at a 91 on Metacritic (deservingly so) which is higher than HTE.

 

3 hours ago, Maroonx said:

Quality wise, HTE stomps GUTS... sales wise GUTS stomps HTE  everyone is happy x

 

GUTS run:

1 - 302K

2 - 134K

2 - 88K

3 - 67K

4 - 59K

10 - 49K

10 - 45K

 

Happier Than Ever run:

1 - 238K

1 - 82K

1 - 60K

6 - 49K

7 - ??

7 - 39K

10 - 34K

So Guts is outselling AND out-acclaiming? And everyone here is still debating that HTE "won".

[Cheers]

Both lost and we have to cheer  

[Navyofbadgals]

I mean in Olivia’s defense, she can still try to get the era going again with a new single and performance come the Grammys next year. I don’t think either of them failed with their sophomore eras either, but it certainly wasn’t a triumph for both of them either

 

either way Billie has HTE title track on her side so yes it is the better sophomore album

[Kyoto]

17 minutes ago, UseYourIllusion2002 said:

 

So Guts is outselling AND out-acclaiming? And everyone here is still debating that HTE "won".

Outselling only in the US and UK I guess. GUTS ww performance is tragic.

[By the Water]

23 minutes ago, ithinkheknowsoutsold said:

Almost half of Speak Now's weeks in the top ten were tallied in the post-Christmas when it didn't even take 30,000 sales. Comparatively the number 10 album requires close to 45,000 copies now, and we're a month away from Christmas! Album longevity tends to show more over the long run in the streaming era. A big album from the sales era would still far outsell a big streaming era album in its first year. Case in point: Mariah Carey's Emancipation sold close to 5 million copies in its first year compared to just over 3 million for Taylor's Lover. By the end of its third full year, Emancipation was selling less than 80,000 copies yearly. Lover, on the other hand, was still selling closing to a million units.

 

My point is not to degrade Taylor's success with Speak Now or to insinuate that Guts is on the same level as it now, but that having a relatively more moderate selling album following a mega seller is not unprecedented.

Teenage Dream, Loud, and 4 all spent 10 weeks in the top 10, BTW spent 6, FF 5. 15 weeks in the top 10 back then was impressive for any artist's standards. 12 albums released in the 2010s spent over 40 weeks in the top 10, with 7 of those being released in the later half of the decade (and another 3 being released in 2014, when the SEA+TEA rules were implemented). The 2020s have already had 9 albums reach this milestone and we're not even halfway through the decade. Olivia's 7 weeks doesn't put her among the 50 biggest albums of the 2020s and is only half of what 30 and Renaissance did and also less than Speak Now TV, which makes this comparison even more ridiculous. Furthermore, SN was #9 on the YEC for 2010 and #2 in 2011. Don't think GUTS will come anywhere near this.

 

SOUR -> GUTS is just not comparable to Fearless -> Speak Now