Tm4074

I get this comparison but I think Beyoncé is a better comparison in terms of commercial and chart success. Both hitmakers and favor consistency over one giant peak. Both are consistent albums artists and hitmakers with dedicated fan bases that carry them even for the eras that aren't as well-received by the GP. They both have 8 studio albums and almost equal chart stats. Beyonce 9 #1 hits 24 top 10s 107 charting songs DIL: #1 for 1 week (102 weeks total B'Day: #1 for 1 week (74 weeks) IASF: #1 for 1 week (193 weeks) 4: #1 for 2 weeks (78 weeks) Beyoncé: #1 for 3 weeks (186 weeks) Lemonade: #1 for 1 week (87 weeks) Renaissance: #1 for 1 week ( 91 weeks) Cowboy Carter: #1 for 2 weeks (58 weeks) Weeks at #1: 12 weeks Total weeks on the chart: 869 weeks 8 #1 albums 3 multi week #1 albums Ariana Grande 10 #1 hits 25 top 10s 110 charting songs Yours Truly: #1 for 1 week (54 weeks total) My Everything: #1 for 1 week (100 weeks total) DW: #2 (170 weeks) *still charting Sweetener: #1 for 1 week (91 weeks) TUN: #1 for 2 weeks (196 weeks) *still charting Positions: #1 for 2 weeks (107 weeks) Eternal Sunshine: #1 for 3 weeks (128 weeks) *still charting Petal: #1 for 1 week (4 weeks) *still charting 11 weeks at #1 850 weeks on the chart 7 #1 albums 3 multi week #1 albums Ariana is equals with Gaga/Bey atp, however Bey is a better comparison for Ariana considering their trajectory and they are consistently huge and have no flops.

She surpassed Katy a long time ago and she's about equal with Gaga now and on pace to surpass her real soon. Anybody denying that is blinded by nostalgia and needs to get with the times. Petal had a bigger opening than any Gaga album since Born this Way in 2011. Almost half of Gaga's recurrent units are from The Fame/Monster. Ariana's recurrent units aren't reliant on one major album. Gaga may have had a bigger peak (tbf TF/TFM is a bigger peak than 90% of artists past and present) but Ariana's overall catalogue is stronger. Chartmasters: Gaga: 107.5M (+19,750) Ariana: 106M (+27,550) petal units are not included yet* This site is so weirdly dismissive of Ariana because of streaming when she pioneered streaming for female pop artists. This current generation follows Ariana not Gaga, Katy, etc. Yall didn't care about streaming records until TUN because none of your faves were making any noise on streaming. Put some respect on her name. And the "no iconic moments" is ridiculous. You're just old and out of touch. TuN was a whole cultural phenomenon. Please sit down.

In all seriousness, marketing was non-existent. I'm chronically online in these pop music spaces and had no idea they were releasing. Also they abandoned their adult contemporary audience, which was the core of their base, when they decided to be authentic to their true self. It's a respectable position but the commercial outcome of that decision isn't going to show a favorable return. If they were marketed similar to someone like Troye Sivan from the jump they wouldn't have the massive commercial success they had during their peak but would probably have a more stable career long term in pop music's middle class. It's a trade off.

Probably one of the worst offenses of nepotism I've witnessed recently. At least Gracie Abrams despite being bland and untalented had some bops thanks to Audrey Hobert and also had a more gradual come up, not having a break out hit until her second album. And her dad is a creative in the entertainment industry not a Groupon billionaire like this Stella Leftly person. I mean she has barely any footprint in the music industry or on social media and all of a sudden has a huge hit song? Not to mention the song is garbage and an AI ripoff of Stick Season. Unfortunately the internet has been corporatized and now these billionaires are using the fragmented culture, attention economy and algorithm to their advantage by buying their way in. It's easier to get a hit when you can have your billionaire daddy buy airplay, playlisting and priority on the algorithm. Way easier to achieve this than it was before when the monoculture was stronger. I'm not usually for gatekeepers but they need to gatekeep these nepobabies. There is always going to be nepotism but it was never this egregious in music. I'll take boring and inoffensive Gracie Abrams flavor of nepotism over this lady any day.

Sam Smith and Lizzo confirmed boatmates

yes, and

HTIMYLM went #1 rhythmic radio. Her 4th #1 there after 34+35, LMH and Problem. Her first solo #1 there since it was the remix of 34+35 that went #1. This is probably her biggest radio hit since Positions era and one of her biggest multi-format radio hits. I'm surprised with all her cross genre hits HTIMYLM is the song rhythmic airplay rallied behind lol

She wrote everything on ES though. Max doesn't write lyrics and he's not a lyricist. Max and Ariana have similar strengths - melody and vocal production. The lyrics on ES are vague as well which worked for that album but didn't work for this one because of how she sold it to the fans/public. The problem is she chose restraint on an album she described as "feral". Vocals, delivery and overall tone are too similar to ES and ES was well-received and popular. She needed a more significant shift to differentiate this album. There are some songs where she is trying different things, but overall it's not reinventing the wheel for her. Similar to Positions following TUN, difference is Positions had big vocal moments and was less cynical which separated it from TUN. ES and petal both have dystopian themes and commentary on fame, and are mostly exploring the same sounds give or take a few songs. If she recorded the songs like how she's performing them live it would have made a world of difference. The music and lyrics hit much harder with a more dominant and aggressive vocal performance. She made an artistic choice on record and it didn't fully resonate.

This should have been a streaming release. Her team setting her up by going theatrical.

That's the problem. Most liberals aren't like that but the annoying ones online are given the biggest platform and are the de-facto representation for liberals in general and the group that the right targets their attacks on. This subset on the left are always on the defense. MAGA represents conservatism as a whole now, they have control over all their politicians and the culture, they are united. The left is fragmented. If anything is fueling MAGA its the vocal minority of the left giving them material to respond to. The left has a huge marketing problem and the annoying moralizing vocal minority on the left is the root of that. Most actual leftists care about getting their legislation passed not policing people online for their alleged moral wrongdoings, but we wouldn't know that based on the media and the algorithm.

The moralizing from the left is obnoxious and drives people away from the left. That's why the right has control over our culture, media and government right now. Yes the right is dangerous but the left aren't helping the cause by propping up these self-righteous moralizing clowns that are doing it for woke points online. They need to be called out for their bs just like the right is. As a long time progressive who actually cares about getting legislation passed like Medicare for all, taxing the rich, funding our public schools, etc. these leftists online complaining about minor grievances and blowing them up are driving people away and only making the right stronger. The irony is they are actually circling back to conservatism with their lack of nuance and critical thinking skills.

Her vibes and aura. She also doesn't have the parasocial fanbase/hater element either. She's allowed more flexibility bc people are willing to accept her in various forms and not question it. Nobody is super attached positively or negatively to her persona, she's a universally recognized "cool girl" and generally liked by most of the public.

In what world do these two not have industry support? Billie has more Grammys than most legends. Grammys are voted on by the industry. I love Billie and enjoy Olivia's music but neither lack industry support bffr. Olivia's album rollout had so much industry support and backing. If anything the industry over-hypes them. Gen Z artists wouldn't last a day with how the industry treated their female millennial counterparts. If this was 2010-2015 neither would have any GF Grammy nominations, never mind multiple wins, especially Olivia being an ex-act. They didn't give artist's coming from those networks respect right away back then.

The most obvious case of payola I've seen in awhile. Where are these mysterious 10m US streams coming from? She wants an Oscar so bad they're buying streams and airplay to inflate chart positions

The internet also said The Fame aged badly in the mid-to-late 2010s and now look at it. They just say anything to drag. TUN has some of the strongest recurrent daily streams from 2019 female albums. Only Lover is slightly ahead in daily streams.

The best use of the term cultural reset. Broke every single streaming record for a female and/or pop artist by a huge margin. Pioneered the pop album on streaming. Pop music was playing second fiddle to hip-hop on streaming and TUN completely changed that.

It's baffling to me nobody on her team axed that scene when the discourse about her body has been threatening to take over the narrative every time she engages with the public for years now. It almost derailed the first Wicked press tour, did successfully derail the second press tour and created negative attention and discourse on the opening night of tour fueling the narrative she's "detached" and "weak" on stage. Ariana has said before that this bs taking over the music is frustrating for her. Someone should have told her that would be the case. If it wasn't for the music video this era would have ended up like Positions. Still initial so-so reception but wouldn't be clouded by all this negativity and would have eventually found its audience stabilizing it on the charts. Petal isn't experimental to the degree that's it's alienating, there are plenty of songs that would go off on TikTok like on Positions. It's still a bunch of Ariana/Max/Ilya pop songs. She isn't doing some left-field weird stuff like she did on Sweetener with Pharrell that is actually alienating to a mainstream pop audience. Petal actually has the most DW/TUN reminiscent songs on it and those are the versions of her some fans want back. I guess they lied lol.

As the user base expands to older demographics and other global markets there is an increase in catalogue streams Discovering music isn't linear, many people are discovering old music and listening to catalogues over new music Music is becoming more fragmented as the years pass by. Artists are catering to their niches opposed to the GP Spotify definitely did something to the algorithm since 2024. Auto play isn't as effective Eventually this was going to happen. Streams can't increase every year, soon they were going to plateau. Gains won't be as drastic as they were when streaming was experiencing larger growth from the late 2010s to the early 2020s.

In 2019? Absolutely not. It was considered one of the least favorite album tracks on TUN at the time. bloodline had a resurgence recently but we were in a different music climate compared to 2019 when it went viral. needy, bad idea or in my head was a better option for a 4th single in 2019. It was the lowkey trap era back then. bloodline is an outlier on TUN which was mostly lowkey trap-pop.

Yeah the mv really solidified the narrative and the actual music wasn't the center of the conversation, especially since there was already so much discourse surrounding her before the album. Sucks bc that mv is probably one of her best music videos and has a lot of symbolism that is easily missed. Unfortunate how this whole era went bc of that being the tipping point. The "fame sucks" album has always been a hard sell. She kinda did it better on ES. Since that album was loved and was a hit album, and she's still currently promoting it on tour gave petal an uphill battle from the beginning. Wicked and both the press tours also did some damage. It gave her props in Hollywood but damaged the perception of her pop star persona and aura, ngl. There's a reason why Taylor and Beyoncé rarely interact with the public. They don't give them material to work with.

Not that MAGA Langley stan getting brave in here Yeah that's why I said for her standards it's a "flop". It's still going to be certified platinum and has a hit. But all her albums are certified and/or eligible for multiplatinum certifications, even Yours Truly is eligible for 2x and charted for over a year. Idk if Petal will reach those stats with how the album is falling and HTIMYLM seems to be declining all of a sudden bc of the album. Idk what's happening with the single since it was so stable before the album? This isn't a Positions or DW underperformance though since those albums had legs despite initial reception being so-so at the time. Maybe petal picks up later? Right now it's not trending that way unfortunately. I hope I'm wrong of course. I blame the nostalgia era we're in. Petal isn't nostalgia baiting and it's paying the price for it. The majority of the top 10 is a bunch of nostalgia bait by regurgitating sounds that were popular in the past. The entire country trend happening right now is just 90s country-pop re-packaged.

We have arrived at her first flop era (for her standards). It goes to show how much of an albums artists she been that this is happening with a hit single yet significantly underperforming in comparison to her other albums released in the streaming era (Sweetener - present) bc of the album tracks tanking (again for her standards). Even Sweetener with 2018 streaming numbers was doing better. As I said before she will bounce back. Gaga came back after three flop/underperforming albums (Artpop, Joanne, Chromatica). Mariah came back with TEOM after Glitter and Charmbracelet. This is just Ari's Charmbracelet era lmao. Ironically both were the same age during those album releases (33). She'll come back with something to prove. Give it a few years and the internet gives petal the cult classic treatment like they always do. They're so predictable.

MPG? More like episode of Glee

A collapse on the charts, absolutely.

Cher really didn't do much notable work after she won her Oscar for Moonstruck in the 80s. Once Believe took off in the late 90s, she essentially retired from film but maintained and continued her music career till this day. She was only in two movies this century, Burlesque and Mamma Mia 2 which are movie-musicals and she's playing off some version of herself lol. She said she lost interest in doing movies a long time ago. Most people know Cher as a singer first and foremost. In the past 25 ish years, Barbra's only movies were Meet the Fockers in 2004 and Little Fockers in 2010. She did a flop comedy in 2012 so only three movies since the year 2000. She has toured multiple times and put out like 10 albums in the same timeframe. Barbra is probably the best example of a singer/actress that has done well in both but she's from a completely different era of both film and music. Even with that distinction, she didn't end up committing to movies over singing/music. It's not impossible but it's very unlikely Ariana will have a fraction of the success and legacy she has in music in Hollywood. Hollywood allows pop stars to be successful in film for a brief period and then they move on. Pop stars on this level are just too famous and have highly identifiable images/brands which limits their options. The public accepts them in their pop star persona adjacent roles that play to their strengths (ex: Wicked and A Star is Born) but they struggle with allowing them to disappear completely. Gaga hasn't done anything notable or booked anything since the commercial and critical bomb of Joker 2, but she has committed to music and touring. It says nothing of their talents or ability, but how the industry and public perceives them. Her reputation will affect her more in Hollywood than it does in music. A pop star being divisive and controversial is part of the package. Hollywood actors need to be more palpable and inoffensive. I think she knows this hence dropping out of that West End musical and there are no indications of any new acting projects on the horizon. I do agree, the album campaign has been weird and there has been a level of ambivalence. She's not doing a full traditional rollout and maximizing marketing efforts compared to someone like Olivia, but there was definitely intention for this to be successful. She will bounce back though, I'm not worried about that.