Truth Teller

Short n Sweet is at 11B despite being so recent, so less than half a billion away from #10. Reminder that Dua's debut would be nowhere near this cheat sheet without the "Complete Edition" full of tacked-on collabs that were irrelevant to the album and Future Nostalgia would be #7 instead of #3 without the similarly strategized "Moonlight Edition"

True but Lizzo's album instantly vanishing into the abyss was part of the larger, heavily publicized media saga around the abuse allegations and lawsuit(s). This was supposed to be her big comeback from that mess and she directly tried to push that story via the cover and lead single. What's Sam's storyline?

Just because Sam's older music was slow and sad, it's not automatically better. It sucked and that was always the consensus. Their one and only album that the Grammy's and other institutions cared about as a whole sits at only 62 on Metacritic (merely one point above Prism) and, as the critics clocked immediately, Sam's lyrics were basic and obvious, their vocals overwrought and weepy and half the songs were boring fillers. Before the yasification, they were barely above Lewis Capaldi's level in terms of quality perception. So, the quality was never "there" for them. Their music was just as superficial as Katy's but without any of the fun and good pop writing. Katy, among all the missteps, bad lyrics, radio fodder and on-the-nose, tacky visuals, put out some of the best and most remembered pop songs of the last 20 years. Meanwhile, Sam's biggest and most decorated/awarded hit was an accidental (?) carbon-copy of a Tom Petty song, who now gets 25% of its royalties.

Well, with Charmed, PLL and Picket Fences, she's done about 350 episodes worth of television, so I think she can sit. There might be another tv comeback in store for her when she's older and can play an older lady.

Hmmm she's kind of giving in that picture, why did she choose the one where she looks like a surprised fish as the cover? Anyway

@conatus thank you so much for hosting, this was fun!

Loving this non-linear hit trajectory of the streaming era. Anything can become a hit at any point. This song in particular was very... botched in its original time. Replaced as the lead single, video shelved, pulled from US radio to push Illusion... It would have done a lot better as the lead or as the 3rd single, but it was squeezed in between. But now it's sailing.

Can I delete 5?

Good but we need Luke's Friday Night OUT and Charlie's in Hawaii IN

Came in for Desnudate. I don't claim this project

The Writing's on the Wall + Survivor + DF >>>>> Beyoncé's first 3 albums. This is the most fair comparison I can come up with since they were in kindergarten during the first album and since it'd be unfair to hold 3 albums against Beyonce's full discography spanning 23 years and 47 genres.

I think people tend to forget that era was also an underperformance. The Normani song was a smash (not as big as Unholy) and then there was some bland pop song after that, which became a decent hit. The next (several) singles made little noise and are now completely forgotten. They had to tack on collabs and soundtrack songs from over 2 years before, on a second disc, to get the album any traction, and even then, it still missed the UK #1 selling only 20k copies (the previous album sold 100k) and did even worse on Billboard. So, no, that middle aesthetic also didn't work, career wise.

HTILY is so good. It's very 2007 but so what? Take a Bow wasn't good in any calendar year.

I'm getting a bit turned off by the discourse on Sam Smith. Obviously, coming out as non-binary and trying more out-there and sexually charged images hurt their commercial career, like... what do you want us to say? That it was a mistake? That they should have just continued to do sad ballads forever, dressed modestly for the heteronormative parts of the public to stay on board, just for a couple more years, until the natural end of their shelf life as a hit-maker, which was already beginning to happen on the 2nd album? Are we supposed to post specific pictures or videos (like already happening in this and other threads) where they "crossed the line" and became too queer and no longer palatable? It's so weird. This is who they are and the choices they made didn't even end their career. They managed to secure one of their biggest hits that they can perform for the rest of their life (and have fun on stage instead of trying to look like a guy next door X Factor contestant). Nothing went wrong. They remain a success story.

So... The Boy huh? Kind of a disappointing winner. I'd take 5 other Rochelle songs over it or better yet SMO/Stateside. But it's passable. But whew what a rate. You always come through @conatus , both with the actual hosting duties and also with a sense of community that makes everything worth following and reading. These rates are always a huge spike in my ATRL activity. Do another one soon

Refused. I will be giving Blue Cornball a 5.1 average at best.

Sabotaging any song is kind of questionable to me to begin with, but sabotaging a song you actually like?

The only explanation is that y'all snubbed Illegal because of TikTok. This is NOT a #18 by any stretch of the imagination

WHAT THE ****

WHAT WAIT

half of this is exactly accurate no feelings on Romeo leaving

a summary of most of Sudan's album, I fear

Esta Noche?

SMO is the only non-PP song that can win. And if enough people have sabotaged the correct PP song, it will.