base talk Why did it take so long for Ariana to reach MPG status?

[StonedSoulPicnic]

Pop stans always change the requirements. For some people, she was on the same tier as Meghan Trainor. 

[Tm4074]

Ariana has been a MPG since 2014. If she isn't considered a MPG with My Everything than Dua Lipa isn't a MPG either (Dua doesn't even have a #1 album while Ariana had 2 by this point). My Everything was a #1 album and had 4 top 10 singles that were huge hits despite not reaching #1 on the Hot 100. Problem is in the top 10 biggest digital sales weeks of all time with over 400k sales debut week. It was a massive hit, it just missed the #1 by a tiny ass margin.

 

Yours Truly, although didn't reach the success of My Everything, was a #1 album that debuted with 138k when Ariana was just a Nickelodeon actress to those who knew her and was pretty much unknown to the GP. Yours Truly was also the first debut album to debut #1 on the chart since Kesha's Animal (I think only 15 albums achieved this stat at the time). The Way also debuted top 10 as well and sold over 200k digital sales debut week. Olivia Rodrigo is the only artist to have her debut album enter the chart at #1 since Ariana with Yours Truly, goes to show how rare it is. Anyone doubting her MPG status until 2018 is simply Stan Twitter/ATRL echo chamber nonsense. 

 

[brenda-walsh]

lol so much revisionism in this thread.

 

the real answer is that she didn't have a #1 hit or platinum selling album (in pure sales). it wasn't until like 2017ish when people started taking streaming seriously and even then pure sales were still considered a sort of barometer for separating the faceless girls from the mpg

 

it was clear by the time sweetener dropped that she was an mpg because the whole world was talking about her and she had hit after hit. TUN finally cemented that

[byzantium]

56 minutes ago, Broken said:

This. 

 

According to stans, one hit/era wonders like Chappelle, Tayla and the JJ Abrams' daughter are the new MPG. 

I don't think any group of reasonable magnitude is calling Tayla or Gracie a MPG.  Both are on people's radar though and Gracie does seem to be having a breakthrough recently. 
 

Chappell is a unique case given the magnitude of her very rapid success.  In two years if she continues to maintain her level people are going to look back and say she was a MPG like how people in this thread are looking back and saying Ariana was a MPG in 2014.  But she is definitely performing at the level of MPGs this year.  

[KahnumDash]

1 hour ago, Ayanaa said:

It didnt. Ariana was an MPG after she released Problem in 2014. 

this, how is 1 year long?

[byzantium]

37 minutes ago, StonedSoulPicnic said:

For some people, she was on the same tier as Meghan Trainor. 

In 2015 / 2016 she was though.  It seems weird to think about now but Meghan had the bigger single and album at the time and their follow ups were performing relatively similarly (pre side to side in late 2016). 
 

after fall of 2016 their trajectories diverged substantially.  

[Robyn.]

Because her album sales were weaker than the other girls. 

 

Back when pure sales were a stronger factor, the MPGs were having multi-platinum albums based on pure sales alone.

 

 

 

 

And then Ariana: 

 

 

Artpop which was considered an underperformance was on par with My Everything's pure sales...

 

Edited 5 hours ago by Robyn.

[swissman]

She was a MPG, confirmed as of Thank U, Next in late 2018. Which was only five years after her debut.

I'd say as of Dangerous Woman though, three years after her debut, she was indeed a main pop girl.

 

Is this really "so long?" It's not as if she was flopping in that time, she was pretty, largely successful. It just took her some time to come into her own point of view and present herself as a pop entity unto herself, not in relation to others (like how at the start she was likened to Mariah).

 

 

Edited 5 hours ago by swissman

[єѕℓαм]

Cos the MPGs at that time raise the bar significantly high like iconically HIGH but she caught up eventually 

[Feanor]

The standards were higher.

[Dialamba]

She was a MPG since ME, it's just she didn't have a #1 in the US and she was much more younger than Gaga, Taylor, Beyoncé, Katy that had a bigger peak etc so people didn't want to acknowledge her success. 

[Bey_Rihstan]

7 minutes ago, Robyn. said:

Because her album sales were weaker than the other girls. 

 

Back when pure sales were a stronger factor, the MPGs were having multi-platinum albums based on pure sales alone.

 

 

 

 

And then Ariana: 

 

 

Artpop which was considered an underperformance was on par with My Everything's pure sales...

 

I mean… no shade, Rihanna's albums were only selling… what, 300-500k more in pure than Ariana's were. We'd never not consider her a MPG back then tbh 

[Robyn.]

1 minute ago, Bey_Rihstan said:

I mean… no shade, Rihanna's albums were only selling… what, 300-500k more in pure than Ariana's were. We'd never not consider her a MPG back then tbh 

This is a terrible comparison because by 2014, Rihanna was on her 7th album.

 

My Everything was literally Ariana's breakthrough era in the way GGGB was for Rihanna?  And we don't want to compare those albums' sales.

[Bey_Rihstan]

7 minutes ago, Robyn. said:

This is a terrible comparison because by 2014, Rihanna was on her 7th album.

 

My Everything was literally Ariana's breakthrough era in the way GGGB was for Rihanna?  And we don't want to compare those albums' sales.

This is also a terrible comparison because GGGB/ME were released in 2 completely different eras? They performed similarly for their respective eras. ME was a year end top 20 album like GGGB bxbxjxkxoxox it wasn't some random flop people are making it out to be. Like… AGLM, Rated R & MOTS weren't Rih's 7th albums. Hddjjdkdid it was the norm for sis to sell around 1M pure units in the states 
 

Anyway, my point was using pure sales as the signifier for MPG for a girl that debuted in a worse sales climate… while Rih, as massive as she was, was only selling a few hundred thousand more is ridiculous. We look at things through rose colored lenses and forget the narratives that surrounded our faves years ago. Like let's be real 

Edited 5 hours ago by Bey_Rihstan

[Joey307]

Sweetener plus TUN which I view as one era made her a force. I wish she had released more singles from TUN, would've made it even more iconic. 

 

I still remember how angry the r/music subreddit was when TUN, 7R, and BUWYG, occupied the top three spots on BBH100 

[Robyn.]

2 minutes ago, Bey_Rihstan said:

This is also a terrible comparison because GGGB/ME were released in 2 completely different eras? They performed similarly for their respective eras. ME was a year end top 20 album like GGGB bxbxjxkxoxox it wasn't some random flop people are making it out to be. Like… AGLM, Rated R & MOTS weren't Rih's 7th albums. Hddjjdkdid it was the norm for sis to sell around 1M pure units in the states 
 

Anyway, my point was using pure sales as the signifier for MPG for a girl that debuted in a worse sales climate… while Rih, as massive as she was, was only selling a few hundred thousand more is ridiculous. We look at things through rose colored lenses and forget the narratives that surrounded our faves years ago. Like let's be real 

Girl, My Everything was being outsold by ARTPOP in pure sales, which was considered a flop?    

 

HOW is it equivalent to GGGB's success at its time. Those Rihanna album you mentioned were outselling My Everything worldwide, I only posted US stats.

 

[Bey_Rihstan]

Just now, Robyn. said:

Girl, My Everything was being outsold by ARTPOP in pure sales, which was considered a flop?    

 

HOW is it equivalent to GGGB's success at its time. Those Rihanna album you mentioned were outselling My Everything worldwide, I only posted US stats.

 

Babe. Gdhdjdkf I feel like you're perceiving this as an attack on Rihanna when it isn't. Anyway, 

 

ME BB200 Year end: #17 

Artpop BB 200 Year End: #34 

artpop singles year end: 

applause: #37

DWUW: #84 

GUY: N/A

 

ME singles year end: 

 

Problems: #9 

break free: #37 

Bang bang: #27

Love me harder: #56

One last time: #67 

 

 

1 top ten vs 4… hun…

 

so yea back to my point. Pure sales in 2014 weren't completely indicative of the cultural zeitgeist at the time. Gaga had the advantage of debuting during the peak of the digital era and retained a buying fanbase. Ariana debuted at the cusp of things leaning heavily towards streaming. She outperformed a MPG that year and kept up the momentum nxbxbxjxjxjc like 

 

[KillingYourCareer]

2 hours ago, KKCuteCat said:

Seriously, who gets to decide who is MPG or not?

There's a board that includes some ATRL music experts including @Kelly HATER, @jonalive11, @Barbie Destroy, @MonstersNation_ and @elisass who used to meet once every three months to add/remove pop girls to/from the MPG category. They haven't held a meeting in a while, but they said they might for Sabrina Carpenter sometime in 2025.

[Robyn.]

5 minutes ago, Bey_Rihstan said:

 

so yea back to my point. Pure sales in 2014 weren't completely indicative of the cultural zeitgeist at the time. Gaga had the advantage of debuting during the peak of the digital era and retained a buying fanbase. Ariana debuted at the cusp of things leaning heavily towards streaming. She outperformed a MPG that year and kept up the momentum nxbxbxjxjxjc like 

 

My entire point was about pure sales and albums though so I'm not sure why singles are being brought up but anyways?  

 

Saying that Ariana's pure sales were weaker than the other MPGs, is not saying she was flopping. She was definitely getting several hits from that album.

 

My point and answer TO THIS THREAD, is that she wasn't perceived as a MPG yet, because she was missing that one element compared to the other girls who were setting the bar higher than her. Yes, pure sales weren't the only factor, but they were still going strong in 2014. 

 

And to answer your claim of Ariana debuting close to the streaming age, take Meghan Trainor as an example who debuted around that time and sold 1,2M PURE in the US with her debut album Title. Another example of how weak Ariana was in that department.

 

 

 

 

[Pop Art]

In addition to everything already discussed, I distinctly remember there being a lot of discourse about how she was noticeably using features for many of the singles she released from her debut through Dangerous Woman and seemingly underperforming any time she released a solo single (even though several of those "underperforming" solo singles ended doing far better in the long run), so I think that also held back her "MPG Status" for a lot of people as well.

 

This narrative started dissipating in 2018 with no tears left to cry though and was gone by the time the thank u, next era started.

[Tm4074]

I think questioning Ariana's MPG status in 2014 because her pure sales being weaker than already established MPGs just shows how much of a streaming pioneer she was as she and her team knew where music consumption was heading and Ariana's audience which skewed younger were more likely to stream music. While ATRL was harping on pure sales, Ariana was dominating streaming at a time when it wasn't taken seriously which paid off big time. She ended up getting the last laugh when she was the only female pop artist thriving in the hip-hop era of streaming that ended up taking over around 2016 and into the late 2010s while most everyone else declined (except Rihanna with ANTI and Taylor eventually adapted to streaming). It's telling that 1989 and My Everything are the biggest female pop eras from 2014 despite My Everything not having massive pure stats. Pure sales are irrelevant nowadays in the grand scheme of things unless stans are buying multiple copies to boost first week numbers.

 

42 minutes ago, Robyn. said:

And to answer your claim of Ariana debuting close to the streaming age, take Meghan Trainor as an example who debuted around that time and sold 1,2M PURE in the US with her debut album Title. Another example of how weak Ariana was in that department.

 

Meghan Trainor appealed to soccer moms and older women, that's why her pure sales were strong at the time and why she completely fell off like the other soccer mom acts did once streaming took over. Ariana never had that audience and didn't need it. They may be the same age, but had completely different audiences which ended up in Ariana's favor because her audience was the streaming audience while Meghan's audience is an artifact of another era. Pays off to be ahead of the game, not behind it. 

 

[ariananext]

She was probably the first and only true "transitional" artist. Back in 2014, digital sales were still strong—Problem had one of the biggest first-week sales ever. But after that, sales started dropping as streaming (especially YouTube) took over. 2014-2017 was kind of a bridge between the iTunes era and the rise of Spotify. Around that time, a lot of the big pop girls from the 2000s and 2010s were taking breaks.

 

So basically, the artists people compared her to had had huge pure sales, but they were on a break, which led to the whole "she only smashes because there's no competition" argument and didn't really have new material out to compare the outcome. But the market had shifted, and her fanbase, which was younger and consumed music differently, was compared to artists with older, more traditional fanbases. The "she only appeals to kids" criticism was used as a diss in 2019, but now it's seen as a good thing.

 

As others have pointed out, The Way performed the same as singles from other ex-acts that year (like Heart Attack or Come & Get It), even though it was Ariana's first single while they already had established fanbases. Actually, Yours Truly's first-week sales were bigger than any of those other artists' albums. Meanwhile, the My Everything singles were huge, but many fans from other artist groups were too stuck in the past to fully embrace the new wave.

[Tm4074]

7 minutes ago, ariananext said:

The "she only appeals to kids" criticism was used as a diss in 2019, but now it's seen as a good thing.

Funny, this was used against Taylor too. No surprise these two are the only relevant female pop acts from the early-mid 2010's today. I wonder why.... 

[ariananext]

30 minutes ago, Tm4074 said:

Funny, this was used against Taylor too. No surprise these two are the only relevant female pop acts from the early-mid 2010's today. I wonder why.... 

Well, do you remember all the users who called TUN singles meme hits with TikTok tailor made lyrics? Now they're all praying their faves for TikTok promo and for viral hits. For some reasons she's always bashed for something which happens to become a strong point for others.

Edited 3 hours ago by ariananext

[collin]

The bar was different in 2014 for what constituted "MPG" but she was one during My Everything on. People were just used to imperial eras happening straight away. It was the same thing with Rihanna who was lowkey dogged on despite racking up hit after hit. It wasn't until Loud that people fully acknowledged her as top billing.