Blackout2006

That's downright false, considering Sabrina has actually garnered a massive loyal fanbase. MBF opened with Sabrina's biggest openings despite being a smaller hit than SNS, and it was also carried by strong pure sales which is often a sign of high fandom loyalty.

mess with charli, it gon' cost ya

Like...Britney does on Blackout, the album in question?

I don't really see it that way, no...All of the girls who have mentioned Blackout as a heavily influential record to their artistry have actually translated it into their own music. For example, I remember hearing lots of Blackout sensibilities on Adela's new debut album and she has cited Blackout as a revolutionary album. I see it with Jade, too

Is it invasive?

A.I. was started as something for research and people in STEM fields to use. Had we gone down that path, we could've possibly had an ethical version of A.I. that could've helped with math, maybe formulating recipes, and such petty things that don't really harm anyone or anything in the process. My stance is mainly against generative A.I. because it robs people of their work without their consent.

Generative A.I. currently in no shape or form is really arguably ethical. The eco-friendly versions of it like "Eco-GPT" (I think that's the name?) are still using the same cloud servers of database centers that consume freshwater for cooling their machines. Since it's still heavily unregulated, A.I. continues to steal and appropriate people's years of research, media, and art, and deliver us a gross amalgamated version of it depending on our prompt. There's something so eerily body-horror about the people A.I. visually generates because it's not a real figment of its imagination, it's the eyes, lips, nose, hair of all different people mixed into these uncanny mannequins. That's just one thing but all-in-all, it's stealing our work and participating in it obliviously means we're still encouraging a system that's actively destroying books every day, stealing from artists, replacing jobs, widening the rich/poor divide further (in India, workers are having these headgears strapped on their head that record every single aspect of their job's process; it's like your company asking you to train the new employee who is going to replace you and it's disgusting), is disclosing terrifyingly private information of random people, etc. Now, I'm not acting like everyone who uses it should be scorned. I'm not going to find it gross if you use it once in awhile. I only find it REALLY weird when you're talking with an A.I. bot like a FRIEND, venting to a Chatbot that will only affirm you because its biased towards you, asking it to THINK for you, using it all the time for your research and assignments, etc. It's actually killing critical thinking and I don't think people understand the horrifying precedent this is setting for the world.

What Tokyo Toni said

I'm being generous when I say it returned. It held its own space in the form of radio hits like Can't Stop Feeling, Happy, and Cheerleader, but they didn't dominate the zeitgeist like trap and hip-hop music. Royals showed the big labels that you didn't need a Katy Perry or EDM-backing track or an LMFAO feature or extravaganza to make a juggernaut success of Royals' level. Not only did it leverage the entire alternative-pop community into a bigger subculture in the late 2010s, it changed the hit-making formula.

Myself

Glossy mainstream-pop music did return but it held its own space in mainstream music, it wasn't the dominant force it was in the early 2010s with the EDM-pop craze. Through the late 2010s, hip-hop became the far bigger genre and its popularity moved pop music into a darker and more trap-influenced route. Lorde's Royals came with a bang and rewrote what it looked like to write a chartbuster pop juggernaut in 2013. On the longer run, her debut has influenced so many artists like Conan Gray, Olivia Rodrigo, Gracie Abrams, Billie Eilish, and Troye Sivan. It just became part of a larger narrative of albums in the mid-2010s like BTD, Electra Heart, and Ultraviolence that became cornerstones in alternative pop music. But Royal's impact cannot be brushed off like that.

The revisionism with BTD is very weird. It's arguably one of the most influential albums of the 21st century, but when it first came out, it wasn't an immediate critic hit. It took a whole retrospective review from Pitchfork a decade later to give BTD a good score but that album wasn't beloved upon arrival, especially with the controversy surrounding Lana glamourizing toxic relationships. It took sometime for BTD to become a cult classic but Royals was instant. Both of these records were very influential, but people here trying to completely erase Royal's impact is ridiculous.

No WAY that's a new pic She's not aged one bit

I knew this album was going to smash but not this hard, but she really came through with great music, organic anticipation, and hype well translated into success The first few weeks felt like Sourmania all over again

I'm a diehard fan of textless album covers and the reissues cover is stunning, but I think this cover would've looked glorious with the original B'day type font somewhere on the top corner left maybe, it would've completed the album cover look.

I'm a diehard fan of textless album covers and the reissues cover is stunning, but I think this cover would've looked glorious with the original B'day type font somewhere on the top corner left maybe, it would've completed the album cover look.

Geese was pretty big but I can see their controversy as alleged industry plants probably rubbing the committee the wrong way. Most likely, it's going to Ella Langley anyway

169k is actually MASSIVE for an EP by a girl group in the 2020s. Can you imagine the NUMBERS they'd actually pull if they locked in, had all their members back from their sabbaticals, put out stellar non-slop vocal-serve pop bop anthems, and released a full-fledged album? Atp, it sounds like a dream with the sort of music H*be gives them I just wish most of their music now was way better because these girls are sooo talented and they could deservingly be the most definitive girl group of our era.

Wait, didn't someone here a few pages ago predict her making an entire visual thing/documentary out of ts?

Wow, i think my brain is playing with me but for some reason, I thought Massive Attack had more work on Bedtime Stories

i've loved all her work with Massive Attack, so yea

Pack it up

Every time I read up on albums put out by celebrities who were already popular by the time these said albums came out, I never understood why they always debuted outside the top 10 before having to rise through consistent sales and eventually ascend to the top. I can imagine sales accounting prior to the Nielsen Soundscan era was vastly different, but what sort of rule could've disabled or prevented albums that were already successful upon release a high debut? For example, Like a Prayer was released by Madonna at the height of her commercial power and success. Yet, it only charted in the top 40 before it reached the top of the charts. It just doesn't make sense to me. For example, I couldn't imagine Olivia Rodrigo releasing an album as successful as her last one and it not having a hot-shot debut. So why was this the charting norm for all A-list artists of the era? I find it hard to pinpoint shift in consumer behaviour because the moment the Nielsen Soundscan era began, the Bodyguard soundtrack debuted at #1 with 300k+ sales. Such a change would be too instantaneous for it to have been influenced by changes in music consumption. Would appreciate a response on this since the chart geek inside me always thinks about it

Even the CDs couldn't handle the 9.9 motherquake packed in that tiny disc

Only!? Are you kidding me?? That's one of her best songs, it shouldve been over 1b by now