More Than A Melody

I can't decide which song I want for third single. There are so many options. This album is genuinely incredible. I know detractors will eat their words in a couple of years, just like they did with Fine Line.

When I said "faded a lot faster" I meant from the Hot 100, not the streaming chart. Lights Up is a song under 3 minutes with a catchy hook. Aperture is 5:11 minutes, and the vocals don't start until 45 seconds in. The track doesn't count as a stream until 30 seconds in. The first chorus of Aperture doesn't start until 2 minutes and a half. A good chunk (if not most) of the big streaming songs on Spotify have ended or are ending by the time Aperture has its first CHORUS. As for Sign of the Times... you're comparing 2017 with 2026 in terms of the streaming scene? Look up the average length of a song in 2017 vs 2026 since you like numbers so much. Aperture was never going to perform well on streaming. Do you think Harry/Columbia thought it would? Do you think they were born yesterday? If they had released American Girls/Dance No More/Taste Back as the lead singles, it would've been a different story, but they didn't because there's this thing called artistic vision... some people put that before chart performance. Harry quite literally asked this to Haruki Murakami in an interview released last week: Considering this album is debuting with higher numbers in all charts except the US worldwide (UK, Australia, France, New Zealand, Germany, so far), and the album already has two #1 singles in the UK, clearly there's not less interest in Harry. But a different sound, particularly one heralded by a song like Aperture will yield different results. Literally, comparing the performance of an album in which the lead single was As It Was vs Aperture and calling the latter an underperformance is simply ridiculous. It's the shallowest form of analysis and tells us absolutely nothing. Good job wasting your time.

Adele's 30 was an underperformance only by Adele's standards. Everyone, even on ATRL, said that it wasn't underperforming by normal artist standards. And that's including myself! Her last two projects had been the two biggest albums any artist had released in the modern era... Harry's House was huge, but there's not even a point of comparison with 21 and 25. KATTDO is performing very similarly (actually quite better) than Fine Line. The lead single for Fine Line was Lights Up, which debuted at 17 and faded away quite fast. In comparison, Aperture debuted at #1 and lingered in the chart for a while. The second single for Fine Line was Adore You, which peaked at #6 and was huge on the radio. It had a ton of longevity. We don't know how American Girls will fare, but it's shaping up to perform better than Adore You right now (it'll probably debut top 5 and seems quite stable on both Spotify and Apple Music). Only the third single off Fine Line hit #1, Watermelon Sugar (Falling was a hit in Europe but wasn't a single in the US). It was only #1 for a week, but it became a massive hit regardless. Harry has several options for a big summer single: Taste Back is performing quite well without being a single, but there's also Pop or Dance No More. KATTDO debuted with double the streams Fine Line did. It'll probably have a similar opening week than Fine Line in America. And all of this with a pretty minimal approach to promo in the US. American Girls hasn't even been added to the radio. Netflix special aside, he hasn't even performed in America yet. With a completely different sound and clearly not really a focus on charts (if there had been a focus on charts, the lead single wouldn't have been a 5-minute song with a 45-second intro and a House sound. It would've been American Girls to begin with). Fine Line was pure pop while KATTDO is way more experimental, particularly for the tasteless and bland American audience. In the UK, this album outsold Harry's House. Aperture became a hit, and American Girls is also becoming one. I think As It Was+Taylor Swift skewed a lot of y'all's perception of success and what a big album is. KATTDO will be one of the biggest albums of the year, multiple top 10/top 5 hits, a massive tour, etc. How is that an underperformance in any way shape or form? Edited to add: In the grand scheme of things, Fine Line was bigger than Harry's House, btw. Even though Harry's House was really pushed to big numbers the first few weeks because of how big As It Was was, it kind of engulfed the entire era. It didn't let the second single breathe. Late Night Talking was made a single in JULY and As It Was still charted higher than LNT. And LNT is the only song off Harry's House that was able to hit 1 billion for that reason. The third song that could reach that is Matilda and it's still 250M+ away. In contrast, Fine Line has 4 songs with 1B+ streams (3 billion, 2 billion, 1.5 billion, 1 billion). It has more overall streams than Harry's House and more songs off that era are known by the GP than off Harry's House. If KATTDO ends up being similar to Fine Line, that's better than being similar to Harry's House imo.

The way y'all use this word for literally anything these days is ridiculous. If this is a flop then what's left for the rest of the music industry sans Taylor Swift?

I don't think they're holding back dates because of ticket sales. The shows are not until December. Night 1 in Sydney, according to the Ticketmaster App there are 225 tickets available. Night two there are 594. If you don't think he'll sell 800 tickets in 11 months Melbourne night 1 and 2 are sold out. Melbourne night 3 has 96 tickets left. He could probaly double the dates there and still sell out. I'm not sure if he'll add more dates there but if he doesn't it won't be because of low ticket sales.

I've been listening to her since Dive. I couldn't believe how good she was and how few streams she had. Still insane to me it took this long for her to take off. Still want my man to hit #1 this week, but I hope she gets her own soon.

No other pop boy would debut as #1 with a song like Aperture, so if he does, that's actually quite huge and indicative of his power.

It's been above MIN on all streaming platforms every single day since release. MIN is only in contention because of radio

Everyone knows he's doing a world tour next year too. He even slipped up and more or less confirmed it in an interview.

It sold 35K according to Wikipedia. And those streaming numbers don't bode well for week 2. It might fall off of top 50 entirely. Harold

1D was a teeny bopper band with teeny bopper fans. I was one of those fans, so I'm not saying this in a shady way. Harry has become an artist with demand in all demographics. I've gone to several of his shows. His audience isn't small children. It's mostly women, but of all ages, and there are A LOT of men as well. More and more each tour. IDK that Camila was ever more successful than 5H. She had some huge songs on her own but so did 5H. I didn't really pay that close attention to her, so I don't know if she ever translated that into tour or album sales, or acclaim. That's where she'd make a difference with 5H. Your last point is spot on. Why do people expect her to shade the others or the group? Even 1D kept the facade of coming back together while they had no intentions to. Imagine a K-pop group. She's not shading anyone, she's saying what is expected of her. Rose has been super successful but there's still a long way for her to go to be able to break away from the group completely. Her fans are still mostly just BP fans.

I heard he's adding 3 more to Mexico potentially. So he'll probably add some to Sao Paulo too. You could try to snag some more for the new added dates? There's better availability now.

Rosé loves Harry OT: I mean, yes, what else is she gonna say?

A huge flop that broke the streaming record for a debut song and will debut at #1 in the UK and top 10 US (potentially top 5 or better) despite being a completely unconventional sound, have a 1 minute long intro, and be over 5 minutes long? The only reason Aperture is doing numbers in the slightest is BECAUSE he is Harry Styles. No other pop boy would've even charted a song like this. It also can never be "a flop" if you knew exactly what you were doing when you put it out. You think Columbia and Harry are brand new in this business and don't know what works in streaming? They took that risk fully knowing. It's strategic. 11.5 million individual people put their names on a waiting list to get tickets to see him. If he had released AIW 2.0 trust he would be doing 20M a day.

11.5 Million People Signed Up for Tickets for Harry Styles' Madison Square Garden ResidencyTicketmaster said the figure represents the largest-ever presale for a single artist in the New York market. Harry Styles' upcoming Madison Square Garden residency for the Together, Together Tour is already making history, as the pop star's pre-sale for the shows garnered a massive 11.5 million registrations for tickets, Ticketmaster said on Tuesday. Per Ticketmaster, that figure marks "the highest volume ever recorded for an artist presale" in the New York market, as well as "the largest artist presale registration performance ever seen for a single market or residency-style run" overall. For reference, with Madison Square Garden listing its capacity at 19,500 people for an event, that totals to about 585,000 tickets available across all 30 shows Styles is set to perform at the venue during the upcoming run. That's just 5 percent of all of those who signed up for the presale registration. Of course, it's not clear how many of those sign-ups come from actual fans versus scalpers and bot accounts, but even if only half of those registrations were legitimate, it reflects a massive demand for one of the world's biggest artists that may not be met by even a large residency at one market in the U.S. https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/music/music-news/harry-styles-breaks-pre-sale-registration-record-new-york-1236486451/