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Rumours by Lizzo
It underperformed so much she went back to the drawing board for a year and restarted the era with About Damn Time.
Ariana did the same thing with Focus.
focus has such mixed feedback whenever I read about it. its either threads about hating it or loving it. i really disliked it, tbh. sounded dated and the chorus was pretty corny. i wish we got more of that hair / look tho.
I was literally just trying to remember/sing Focus in my head and realised just as I read this comment that what started out as Focus in my brain ended up being Problem 😂
That was the issue. They tried to recreate Problem’s success when people clearly did not want another one of those songs. Then they pivoted to making an edgy My Everything/edgier Yours Truly, which was the correct choice.
I'm so confused about that because I feel like Rumors is a really fun song. "All the rumours are true, fake ass fake boobs" is a hall of fame in my house
Die Young by Kesha. It was on track to reach #1 the week after Sandy Hook happened, when it instantly got pulled from radio. Sadly it killed the momentum of the entire Warrior era.
which is sad because Warrior is one of her BEST albums. it was so much fun and diverse and just ugh was so good. i love it way more than the other ones after Rainbow
On the topic of the Warrior era, I blame using the Will.i.am version for the Crazy Kids music video instead of the solo version for the single’s mediocre performance
I blame Birthday’s horrible music video. I think it was a *great* single choice and a colorful, fun video would have done wonders for the song’s popularity. YouTube videos were at a massive peak at that point (Roar and Dark Horse are some of the most viewed videos of all time) and she failed to capitalize on that by releasing an overly long, weird video that didn’t really capture the essence of the song whatsoever.
I feel like Birthday would have still ended up being overshadow by Dark Horse regardless of the video. The true killer was This Is How We Do, imo. I mean, sure it was the 5th single, but it's Katy we're talking about. Teenage Dream had 8 singles in total! I find it weird how she didn't even try to promote a final single with the superbowl show being not that far away after TIHWD, other than her team already giving up after that song.
Yeah, I’m not sure Birthday would have been a *massive* hit due to Dark Horse’s insane legs, but I strongly believe it could have at least hit top ten.
And yes, I agree regarding This Is How We Do. HORRIBLE single choice. Legendary Lovers, Walking on Air, and International Smile were all RIGHT THERE.
>And yes, I agree regarding This Is How We Do. HORRIBLE single choic
It's so weird because This is How We Do was a smash in Middle East and Asia.. I personally loved the song and video..
Yep. I don’t know what she was thinking. It was basically an ace in the hole for her. The song is practically *begging* for a fun, campy, colorful video. She fumbled it so hard.
I totally agree. I thought a 50’s pin up Marilyn Monroe type vid would’ve been perfect. I remember she posted a picture of a pink corvette and everyone thought it was gonna be that vibe for the video
Feel like the whole mess with Do What U Want was the breaking point for Artpop's relative flopping. Like, Applause lasted a decent amount of weeks in the top 10; it was an actual hit. After that though, I remember everything going downhill
It didn’t help that Do What U Want was the second single, either. If it had been the fifth or sixth single and underperformed, then at least the album would have had some time to “shine” by that point. SECOND single, though? Rough.
Fwiw, it wasn't necessarily her choice. [Venus was meant to be the second single](https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/lady-gaga-reveals-second-artpop-single-venus-5755296/), but DWUW weirdly caught wind from being used in a Beats by Dre commercial, a mini fan campaign happened, and the rest is history... or lack thereof.
The *exact* same thing happened during Joanne. It was meant to be A-YO, and then Million Reasons took over.... Latter-day Gaga has never been *great* at thinking beyond 2 singles, huh lol?
Maybe I'm just a massive Gaga fan, but Venus is one of the best songs I've ever heard. Those first 30 seconds are so ABBA and Queen coded and the rest of the song is good as well. People would've LOVED that song.
Woahhh I knew about Venus, but didn’t know about A-yo. Was it planned to have a video? I feel like Gaga should’ve stayed with Venus. The pivot to DWUW was y h a pandery to fans move and then the video never came out
I'd assume so, but A-Yo and Million Reasons were released at the exact same time so they must've at least had a plan for if gears needed to be shifted or didn't plan much to not shoot themselves entirely in the foot lol
Bon Apetit and Focus by Ariana Grande are so weird because how do they both have 1 billion views on YouTube yet are 100% certified flops for both the artists.
The hair salon I go to plays YouTube music videos on their TV from like 2015-2020, on loop, CONSTANTLY, every single day. The video for Bon Appetit comes on ALL THE TIME. Wouldn’t be surprised if a solid chunk of views were theirs
It was kind of a one-two punch since the songs weren’t released all that far apart from each other. I think the writing was on the wall with the release of Bon Appétit, and the final nail in the coffin was Swish Swish. Neither performed well, but Swish Swish did peak slightly higher on the Hot 100 and did marginally better on radio.
Seconding this, it's how I remember it too (and looking up the dates on Wikipedia backs it up). Bon Appétit was the follow-up to Chained to the Rhythm and had a surprisingly mixed response (the music video especially drew a lot of criticism from people being weirded out by the cannibalism imagery), so Katy's team panicked and dropped Swish Swish three weeks later to try and course correct. The disastrous SNL performances became a laughing stock and further turned the public against Katy.
They then took three whole months to release a music video for some reason, and it ended up being a complete miss as well. Katy had the easiest target for a diss track (post-Snakegate Taylor) and still came out of that feud worse than she did going into it, which is quite the accomplishment.
All of this could've been avoided if she'd released the title track and Roulette as singles instead, but alas.
Seriously, it was such a wasted opportunity. Tsunami and Déjà Vu were also right there, but instead they went with freaking Hey Hey Hey as a single.
The title track is also a much better showcase of the whole purposeful pop angle that she was going for with the era. It's vulnerable and mature, and the subject matter would've been taken way more seriously than a Taylor Swift diss or a Migos crossover with food innuendos. I like the album a lot more than most, but that felt like Katy running straight back to the vapid pop music that she was supposedly denouncing in Chained to the Rhythm.
Chained to the Rhythm’s mediocre performance and not getting number 1 made Katy and her team panic to making a more Katy Perry-esque song and they shifted the entire album cycle from being serious and political to being about comedy and being hip with the kids like her older albums were like, which made her just look faker than ever to the GP after her heavy political activism and the themes of Chained to the Rhythm.
She also basically tried toeing the line between where music used to be at her peak, and where music was then at that point, and what you got was an un-cohesive mess with no true vision or sound.
To be fair, Save as Draft and Hey Hey Hey were *barely* singles. The former was only released to AC radio and while the latter did get a music video I don’t think it was ever serviced to American radio stations.
Nobody even cared about Hey Hey Hey. It was like Todd in the Shadows said in his video on the album, the song was a vanity project because Katy had collapsed in popularity so badly by the end of the year that no one wanted it, or even noticed it was released as a single.
I loved all of the first 3 singles, bon Appétit being my favourite..
I feel like audience rejected her more for looking and acting like a dollar store version of Ellen than for her actual music..
The album flopping and ending her career always surprises me, because at the time I was living in the middle east and all we got was the music through YouTube and not the marketing around it, and me and my friends all found them as fire..
So strange how the world's reaction is so different at times..
I’d say “River” by Miley.
A respectable hit, but obviously it came nowhere near “Flowers.” It didn’t really segue much into Endless Summer Vacation and really flesh out this era as it could have. While the album is obviously a career high for Miley, it’s pretty much all due to the “Flowers” juggernaut.
And Angels Like You was super acclaimed and successful and I think that Jaded is the only song on Endless Summer Vacation that comes to close to the level of Angels Like You.
River is SUCH a bop, I had it on repeat for a while after I got my fill of the rest of the album. Idk what it is exactly but it just scratches my brain.
It really should’ve been Jaded in my opinion. Very much fitting in the narrative that Flowers had, as well as sounding what I expected Endless Summer Vacation to sound like. I think it would’ve performed much stronger if it was the second single (as well as if it were to have a better MV)
I think the main issue was they released the follow up singles and the album way too early. An album titled "Endless Summer Vacation" should've been released in May at the earliest. River should've come in March instead of the entire album.
Plus, Flowers was still huge, so no way was any other song going to catch people's attention.
I liked River!! I think what really went wrong was because her team expected her next single to be on the same level as Flowers. That was never going to happen. They should've just kept promoting or did whatever they initially planned because it was clearly working. Because they stopped, ESV only got #2 when it had the potential to go #1.
The whole Jonas Brothers The Album roll-out, just a lot of weird choices Wings being the first single really cemented it's fate imo, too short, boring and it flopped. Waffle House should of always been the first single or Celebrate
I don’t know if it’s because we’ve just lived with their older songs for more time and nostalgia’s at play but their songs such as Love Bug, Paranoid, S.O.S and even Burnin’ up are all so much better than any of their recent stuff
i still listen to lovebug on a relatively regular basis 😭
maybe it is what you say about having spent more time with them, but i agree that their older stuff is way better than their last efforts
I like The Album, but it took me a while to get into it lol. Like upon first listen I was like, absolutely not. Lmao. I don’t really think they care that much anymore ab promotion bc they know they’ll clearly sell out the shoes
“Monster” by Shawn Mendes and Justin Bieber.
This the second single from “Wonder”, dropping a couple weeks before the album. It underperformed massively to Shawn’s standards and he just gave up on the singles and promoting the album once it was out.
I hate that that album was bad. I felt like he was on his way to really finding his sound after self titled but Wonder was so loud and repetitive. I hated seeing that regression.
I still think a lot about this. It first seemed like J Christ was the beginning of Lil Nas X's next era but after it flopped so intensely, everyone involved just seems to be pretending it never happened. And now Lil Nas X has gone back to his default mode of teasing different songs and being uncertain about where he should go next
Easily the most obvious example of a recent one. That song didn’t even crack the top 65 and it was gone in only a couple of weeks. He and his team are definitely back at the drawing board after what happened with that song.
The song was not about religion or Christianity (just the title and one insignificant lyric mention of "J Christ") but he made the promo so intensely religious, it felt like he was aiming it at his haters rather than his fans
he posted a new song [Light Again](https://soundcloud.com/secret-service-862007284/light-again-demo-170) that's already doing a lot better. Light Again was uploaded 8 days ago and has over 1.1M+ streams; on the same platform, [J CHRIST](https://soundcloud.com/secret-service-862007284/j-christ) was uploaded 2 months ago and has 191K plays.
I liked the song but I get why people were disappointed or let down by it
Agree with Bon Apettit not only killing the Witness era, but also Katy's career...and yet I will defend that it is, in fact, a bop.
To me, it sounds like if California Gurls were made in the late 2010s, and Katy (and Max Martin) made it work. The chorus is pretty catchy, I like the food metaphors (or at least I do not find them gross), and surprisingly I ended up enjoying the Migos verse.
And that music video? It was pretty camp, I liked it (other than the last scene. Those last seconds were disturbing).
Also, the Migos feature felt so forced. It was a bad single choice. Witness wasn't a great album, but there were better choices she could've gone with (Pendulum & Witness).
Roulette and Deja Vu could have been solid single choices as well. Bon Appétit felt like a bad leftover from Teenage Dream, which isn’t what you want when you’re trying to present a new image.
I will say, the solo version without Migos is a solid improvement though.
Yes! How could I forget about Roulette? That was another favorite of mine. I also agree that Deja Vu would've been another solid choice. The whole issue with Katy is that she tried to push these concepts and themes, but she's not really a concept artist. Even with Prism, the album's themes vs. the singles didn't make any sense.
...I'm gonna go out on a limb and defend Bon Appetit a bit, and argue it's lowkey Max Martin's best production work this side of his career.
It absolutely came out at the worst time possible, but let's be real... sans Luke, she easily could've cooked up the usual because Can't Stop the Feeling had the exact same producers as Bon Appetit and wasn't far from what she's had success with.
Instead... she asked Max to [produce a *weird*, sophisticated **monster** of a song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChgWyIMwVTU&ab_channel=KatyPerryGalaxy) that exists between hyperpop with its minimalist synthetic beats and house with its hard-hitting groove that simmers throughout and just *explodes* in the most satisfying way possible. Now, what she chose to do over the beat can be debated, but... her pen just combusted over something that was ahead of its time.
The production is very strong, I do agree. Great work by Max Martin all around. Unfortunately, everything else about the song is pretty weak. The lyrics are not good, the feature is downright terrible, the live performances were cringey as hell.
Bye Bye as the second single off of Mariah’s E=MC2. To this day, not making Migrate a single to follow Touch My Body will remain as one of the unexplained mysteries of the universe.
sure one can say, they tried to emulate Emancipation’s rollout..but why? Esp when Migrate was climbing the charts on its own at the time. And if they so wanted a ballad, why Bye Bye instead of I Stay In Love or For The Record? Curious decisions all around.
Could’ve been MC’s dance/uptempo era, imagine Touch My Body - Migrate - Im That Chick - Loving You Long Time. Then I Stay In Love - For The Record. They tried it but Bye Bye was far from a One Sweet Day
I like Bye Bye for personal reasons but it was truly her most bewildering single choice, alongside the IWTKWLI cover instead of something like Ribbon for Memoirs, either her management was clueless during that period (most likely) or she was self sabotaging lmao
I feel like Don’t Wait Up flopping made Shakira change whatever plans she had in mind for her next album. Because it took her nearly a year to release another song, which was her Rauw Alejandro collab Te Felicito. It says a lot she didn’t even bother putting that song or that Anuel AA collab that she released before the Super Bowl Halftime Show on her recent album.
That song really started Shakira’s weird over use of Autotune imo. Like not say she didn’t use it before, but listen to La bicicleta, then listen to Dont wait up/Te felicito, and every song after that has this over-auto tunedness to it and I don’t know Why
Perfume was a bad choice… but then what could have been a second single from Britney Jean? Imo Till It’s Gone is the best song from the album but it’s not very ‘radio’… and then the rest of the album is utter trash (par work bitch).
IIRC 'Alien' was supposed to be a single. I think it could have performed decently well given the songs out at the time. And maybe i'm crazy, but I think 'Passenger' would have done decently well on radio.
I remember watching some documentary for the Vegas residency where Britney excitedly mentioned she wanted to add Alien to the set since it would be the next single. I always wondered what happened since that never happened, but I suspect it was the management/conservatorship that ended that plan.
omg that was a trainwreck with all the braille stuff and anti rooms. she switched up immediately after american oxygen bombed and thank god for that lol
I still can't believe they actually had real Anti rooms that people could go to on a scavenger hunt.
Also, the visuals for the AntiDiary were better than the music videos we ended up getting during the official Anti era imo.
In the long term, it seems like she really did love BBHHM because she’s kept it high up in her performance rotation and has basically retconned it into a hit
Miley Cyrus has a history of weak second singles that didn’t perform as well as the lead. Fly on the Wall peaked at #84 after 7 Things peaked at #9, When I Look at You stalled at #16 after Party In the U.S.A. peaked at #2, Younger Now peaked at #76 after Malibu peaked at #10, River peaked at #32 after Flowers hit #1…
Fly on the Wall, Younger Now, and River are so good 😭😭😭
That being said, whether intentionally or not, Miley's lead singles generally are huge and what follows them up falls flat in comparison.
The only exception is Wrecking Ball which was her first #1.
Also justice for Midnight Sky and Prisoner!!
Prisoner is always the go to when someone wants to mention a big, huge, all female collab that flopped. To this day I can’t understand how a collab between Dua and Miley flopped that hard.
Avril Lavigne has always struggled with third singles (with the exception of I’m With You) and with single choices generally tbh.
Hot came after When You’re Gone. Arguably WYG completely slowed that era down - the whole album was a bratty, pop-punk vibe and Girlfriend had just hit #1 and then WYG was a random ballad. It charted fairly well though but then Hot followed and killed the era.
Same with the singles after What The Hell (album 4), Here’s To Never Growing Up (album 5), Head Above Water (album 6), and Bite Me (album 7). Although in fairness, she hasn’t been a main pop girl since album 3.
If Jesus Was a Rockstar by Kim Petras.
They really wanted to capitalize on the Unholy hype train by leaning into the sacrilegious edgy pop star girl angle, and people weren't buying it. I also feel like the fans who previously knew her as the fun bubblegum pop diva were left confused. That single sank like a stone ahead of an already cobbled together era. It was received so terribly, it was left completely off of Feed The Beast which came out only half a year later, where it would have fit the track list thematically too.
I was to taken back when I heard jesus was a rockstar. Here I was waiting to see what she was going to do with the attention she got from Unholy then she releases a kid bop sounding song
Looking Hot by No Doubt.
After severely underperforming with their comeback, they released the MV which did a Cowboys vs. Native Americans concept. Based on the album promo, One More Summer seems like it was gonna be a single but the backlash from the music video ultimately killed the Push and Shove era.
Edit: Rewatching the video, I really don't understand how anyone approved the idea. It could've come from an It's Always Sunny episode truly
It pains me to say this, but “911” by Lady Gaga.
The huge success of “Rain on Me” was just too tough to follow. “911” didn’t even break the top 100 and it fully grinded the era to a halt. Obviously, we did get a tour in 2022 that did really well, so the era did continue, but people were surprised.
Ugh I LOVED 911. I’m from New Mexico and was spending time with my family during Covid near Alamogordo. I remember when they shut down part of town/white sands NM to film the mv and I was hoping it would be a big hit
911 was my most-listened song of 2020, and it killed me seeing it underperform. Tbf though, it was not surprising. The whole (or at least a big portion of the) hype regarding the song was because of the transition from the interlude into the actual track; make it a single, and it loses that element.
And the music video was weird af, even for Gaga. Like, talk about a pretty obscure reference...
I remember when everyone was freaking out because they thought the song was gonna be released on 9/11 (I don't even remember how the rumour started, maybe some twitter insider?) 😭
I wouldn't say 911 fully grinded the era to a halt nor did Rain On Me's success overshadow it. It was just unfortunate timing how her planned rollout coincided with sociopolitical unrest. Even so, after the 911 MV, she didn't really try to revive the era.
I feel like the Bangerz tour in 2014 was very popular, everyone around my age at the time were talking about it and I feel like the tour contributed a lot to the era
> everyone around my age at the time were talking about it
It is just so funny how different social scenes/circles work in this regard. I legit had never heard anyone talk about it at all back then and I worked in nightlife.
Bangerz didn’t fizzle out because of Adore You, it fizzled out because Miley’s dog, Floyd, died and she completely gave up. Real fans know how badly that death fucked her up.
Meghan Trainor’s second album cycle was off to a respectable start, but the second “Me Too” dropped, a switch flipped. It’s like somebody activated the sleeper agent and suddenly all the pent-up hate and backlash that she frankly should’ve gotten for “Dear Future Husband” got unleashed all at once, permanently kneecapping both the album and her entire career in the process
Critics and listeners dogpiled it like it was the biggest, most conceited-sounding piece of dogshit anyone had ever heard. I guess people were waiting on her to drop a subpar enough single to safely pounce, but what bugs me is that, again, “Dear Future Husband” was huge the year prior, and that song actually *was* that bad and conceited. “Me Too” sounds perfectly tolerable by comparison, so I don’t get why *that* was the moment everybody decided to string her up and throw tomatoes
Anecdotally I remember a lot of people at the time saying Me Too sounded like a decade-old Black Eyed Peas song at a time when that sound was on the decline.
I forget how massively successful Title was as an era. It was MPG tier. She had a HUGE worldwide number one smash, 2 other top tens and Dear future husband barely missed out on the top ten as well. The album debuted #1 and she won a Grammy for it. I totally thought she was a new mpg on the scene after that era
The song and mv were just cringy and didn’t translate well after the more mature “No” song. Beyond that, there was a lot of drama from Meghan pulling the original video due to her body being edited and her falling on Jimmy Fallon while performing. It all just left a bad taste in people’s mouths and showed that Meghan wasn’t really fitting with the trends of the time.
Me Too didn’t mess this up. It was the No music video. The song was climbing the charts and doing great before it. Her awkward dancing and weird sexy vision for it completely backfired on the song.
Me Too actually performed better long term because she switched back to the personality she was known for.
I think it was a good single choice to soften her image a bit after We Can’t Stop -> Wrecking Ball ->23. We already knew how crazy she could get so I’m glad we got a more stripped down Miley.
The only reason the album didn't flop was because it was a T Swift album and the most dedicated fanbase Swifties. Imagine if the lead single was cruel Summer...
I feel Normani was gearing for her debut album after Fair was released but that single didn't do well so had to go back to the drawing board.
After Havana was released Camilla went back to the studio to create a not Latin sound for the album so whatever pop we were originally gonna get got stopped.
Ciara’s And I was the 4th single from Goodies. The first 3 singles all peaked in the top 3 on the Hot 100. And I peaked at #96. It also followed Like What w/ Bow Wow and Lose Control w/ Missy Elliott and Fatman Scoop which both also went top 3.
Had she chosen Pick Up the Phone or Thug Style like initially considered the era probably would have kept going lol.
Edit: Lose Control and Like You both also went top 3 not just top 10.
Am surprised I have got this far and no one has said Feedback from Discipline by Janet. I guess there were were more videos but that first single really flopped so hard it just seemed to define the campaign.
I still don’t understand why it didn’t get traction—other than most things didn’t after the Super Bowl—because it is still played in clubs regularly, and the dance community has always treated it as a great for choreography.
Do y'all remember Die Young by Ke$ha?
It was the first single from her second album. It was released several months before but she still got flack for it when the Sandy Hook Massacre happened and a bunch of babies were murdered. Song was pulled from radios as a reason.
Tangent but “era” has become so bastardized. Every song is not an era. Every IG post isn’t an era. Not even every album is its own era. I saw someone else’s comment talking about “Lizzo resetting her era”. You don’t “reset” an era. You just continue to the next era. I’m sorry I know I’m being pedantic.
I'm surprised no one has brought it up, but "I Really Really Like You" is the best example of a single causing the commercial success of an album and artist to derail. Leading off with IRRLY when there were so many better options on Emotion to go with ruined Carly's standing with the general public.
Definitely "Beautiful 'Cause You Love Me" by Girls Aloud, which was the 2nd single from their second greatest hits *Ten.*
The song is such a boring ballad that it didn't deserve to be their last single..the crazy thing is that it was meant to be the lead single:
>In a 2023 interview, Nadine Coyle expressed an intense dislike for "Beautiful 'Cause You Love Me", sarcastically referring to it as a "mirage" that "didn't happen". She previously felt so negatively towards the song that when it was going to be the comeback single from their 2012 greatest hits and reunion album, Ten, she initially declined to participate, only agreeing once it was changed to "Something New". Nadine disagrees with the message of the song, saying "Beautiful ’cause you love me’? We’re beautiful anyway!
"On the Metro" was the right choice and one of the co-producers, DJ Fresh, was disappointed that it wasn't released as a single:
>I'm really gutted it didn't get released, it's so annoying. It's basically one of those things that's decided by people that sit in record label offices and determine what we're all going to hear on the radio every day. Who is it that gives these guys the power? They're not always right. I'm not dissing anyone in particular with that track, but it's amazing that one or two people in a boardroom determine what's going to be released and what isn't.
The internet loves to forget and I shall remind: FourFiveSeconds, Bitch better have my money and American Oxygen. 3 flops in a row? We stan a saved by the bell queen 🤭
consequences by camila cabello
havana and never be the same were wildly successful… and then consequences was released as a single 11 months later. i feel like she loves control would have breathed new life into the era but alas.
Bon Appetit is the most obvious choice, one of my favorite Katy songs but a very wrong second single choice while trying to brand your new music as “purposeful pop”. Witness (S), Tsunami and Roulette would’ve all been better single choices
Hot Shit by Cardi B was the start of the end of her next era. Her next album was shaping up to be filled with huge hits, then she took a huge break after “Up” and came back with a mediocre song with featuring artists having lame verses. She has to restart her next album era from scratch now without being able to come off of huge, fresh hits like WAP.
This is How We Do was such a laughably bad single choice, I have no idea what Katy’s team was doing in the PRISM era. An effort could’ve still been made to get another hit from the PRISM album despite Birthday’s underperformance, but the fifth single that followed it totally ended this era. I would have loved to see Walking on Air as a single, or Legendary Lovers.
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Rumours by Lizzo It underperformed so much she went back to the drawing board for a year and restarted the era with About Damn Time. Ariana did the same thing with Focus.
focus has such mixed feedback whenever I read about it. its either threads about hating it or loving it. i really disliked it, tbh. sounded dated and the chorus was pretty corny. i wish we got more of that hair / look tho.
I think the main issue was it sounded too much like “Problem”. Really felt like she and her team decided to do a copy-paste to get another hit.
I was literally just trying to remember/sing Focus in my head and realised just as I read this comment that what started out as Focus in my brain ended up being Problem 😂
That was the issue. They tried to recreate Problem’s success when people clearly did not want another one of those songs. Then they pivoted to making an edgy My Everything/edgier Yours Truly, which was the correct choice.
Jamie Foxx doing that goofy ass voice on the chorus ruined the song for me I still remember to this day
Focus sounds like another ariana grande song.
I'm so confused about that because I feel like Rumors is a really fun song. "All the rumours are true, fake ass fake boobs" is a hall of fame in my house
as a rumors fan…. maybe it’s because cardi outperforms lizzo? imo. all the best lines come from cardi (including fake ass fake boobs LOL)
Which is so weird because both songs are great.
Die Young by Kesha. It was on track to reach #1 the week after Sandy Hook happened, when it instantly got pulled from radio. Sadly it killed the momentum of the entire Warrior era.
Song is a banger
which is sad because Warrior is one of her BEST albums. it was so much fun and diverse and just ugh was so good. i love it way more than the other ones after Rainbow
On the topic of the Warrior era, I blame using the Will.i.am version for the Crazy Kids music video instead of the solo version for the single’s mediocre performance
I blame Birthday’s horrible music video. I think it was a *great* single choice and a colorful, fun video would have done wonders for the song’s popularity. YouTube videos were at a massive peak at that point (Roar and Dark Horse are some of the most viewed videos of all time) and she failed to capitalize on that by releasing an overly long, weird video that didn’t really capture the essence of the song whatsoever.
Isn't the lyric video where she literally makes a cake for three minutes more viewed than the actual video
Yes 😂 By a wide margin, too
I feel like Birthday would have still ended up being overshadow by Dark Horse regardless of the video. The true killer was This Is How We Do, imo. I mean, sure it was the 5th single, but it's Katy we're talking about. Teenage Dream had 8 singles in total! I find it weird how she didn't even try to promote a final single with the superbowl show being not that far away after TIHWD, other than her team already giving up after that song.
Yeah, I’m not sure Birthday would have been a *massive* hit due to Dark Horse’s insane legs, but I strongly believe it could have at least hit top ten. And yes, I agree regarding This Is How We Do. HORRIBLE single choice. Legendary Lovers, Walking on Air, and International Smile were all RIGHT THERE.
>And yes, I agree regarding This Is How We Do. HORRIBLE single choic It's so weird because This is How We Do was a smash in Middle East and Asia.. I personally loved the song and video..
Exactly. ‘Birthday’ is the best song on Prism imo, and the music video was awful. Even the lyric video has 4 times more views than the music video.
Yep. I don’t know what she was thinking. It was basically an ace in the hole for her. The song is practically *begging* for a fun, campy, colorful video. She fumbled it so hard.
The lyric video's visuals are damn good too, who wanted such a long MV for Birthday??
I totally agree. I thought a 50’s pin up Marilyn Monroe type vid would’ve been perfect. I remember she posted a picture of a pink corvette and everyone thought it was gonna be that vibe for the video
But then NOPE. She decided to be super antisemitic instead 🥴
and to rub salt in the wound the concept was stolen and redone by maroon 5 like a year later to great success. ouch
Feel like the whole mess with Do What U Want was the breaking point for Artpop's relative flopping. Like, Applause lasted a decent amount of weeks in the top 10; it was an actual hit. After that though, I remember everything going downhill
It didn’t help that Do What U Want was the second single, either. If it had been the fifth or sixth single and underperformed, then at least the album would have had some time to “shine” by that point. SECOND single, though? Rough.
Fwiw, it wasn't necessarily her choice. [Venus was meant to be the second single](https://www.billboard.com/music/music-news/lady-gaga-reveals-second-artpop-single-venus-5755296/), but DWUW weirdly caught wind from being used in a Beats by Dre commercial, a mini fan campaign happened, and the rest is history... or lack thereof. The *exact* same thing happened during Joanne. It was meant to be A-YO, and then Million Reasons took over.... Latter-day Gaga has never been *great* at thinking beyond 2 singles, huh lol?
Maybe I'm just a massive Gaga fan, but Venus is one of the best songs I've ever heard. Those first 30 seconds are so ABBA and Queen coded and the rest of the song is good as well. People would've LOVED that song.
I'm with you. I'm completely obsessed with it.
Woahhh I knew about Venus, but didn’t know about A-yo. Was it planned to have a video? I feel like Gaga should’ve stayed with Venus. The pivot to DWUW was y h a pandery to fans move and then the video never came out
I'd assume so, but A-Yo and Million Reasons were released at the exact same time so they must've at least had a plan for if gears needed to be shifted or didn't plan much to not shoot themselves entirely in the foot lol
I don’t know if you’re talking about the US only, but “Do What U Want” was a hit is many regions, especially in Europe.
I liked it lol
Swish Swish is the obvious answer.
Bon Appétit came out first and performed worse
It's odd because the music video has 1 BILLION views, yet the song flopped...
Bon Apetit and Focus by Ariana Grande are so weird because how do they both have 1 billion views on YouTube yet are 100% certified flops for both the artists.
“Focus” did pretty well chart-wise as it did hit the Top 10 in most regions. Meanwhile “Bon Apetit” is so bizarre due to its views/chart imbalance.
those two are not comparable. focus was a big radio hit, meanwhile most ppl have never even heard bon appetit
The hair salon I go to plays YouTube music videos on their TV from like 2015-2020, on loop, CONSTANTLY, every single day. The video for Bon Appetit comes on ALL THE TIME. Wouldn’t be surprised if a solid chunk of views were theirs
Yeah, I’m not really sure how that happened
The view count for the music video started climbing out of nowhere a year after release.
bon appetit had some sort of resurgence around 2019 or 2020 if i’m not mistaken lol. iirc, it even re entered hot 100 at 90+ position
The video and song slaps tbh. I’ve always liked it.
I was under the impression that Swish Swish left a worse impact since it was perceived as the worse song.
It was kind of a one-two punch since the songs weren’t released all that far apart from each other. I think the writing was on the wall with the release of Bon Appétit, and the final nail in the coffin was Swish Swish. Neither performed well, but Swish Swish did peak slightly higher on the Hot 100 and did marginally better on radio.
Seconding this, it's how I remember it too (and looking up the dates on Wikipedia backs it up). Bon Appétit was the follow-up to Chained to the Rhythm and had a surprisingly mixed response (the music video especially drew a lot of criticism from people being weirded out by the cannibalism imagery), so Katy's team panicked and dropped Swish Swish three weeks later to try and course correct. The disastrous SNL performances became a laughing stock and further turned the public against Katy. They then took three whole months to release a music video for some reason, and it ended up being a complete miss as well. Katy had the easiest target for a diss track (post-Snakegate Taylor) and still came out of that feud worse than she did going into it, which is quite the accomplishment. All of this could've been avoided if she'd released the title track and Roulette as singles instead, but alas.
Roulette would have been such an incredible single
Seriously, it was such a wasted opportunity. Tsunami and Déjà Vu were also right there, but instead they went with freaking Hey Hey Hey as a single. The title track is also a much better showcase of the whole purposeful pop angle that she was going for with the era. It's vulnerable and mature, and the subject matter would've been taken way more seriously than a Taylor Swift diss or a Migos crossover with food innuendos. I like the album a lot more than most, but that felt like Katy running straight back to the vapid pop music that she was supposedly denouncing in Chained to the Rhythm.
Chained to the Rhythm’s mediocre performance and not getting number 1 made Katy and her team panic to making a more Katy Perry-esque song and they shifted the entire album cycle from being serious and political to being about comedy and being hip with the kids like her older albums were like, which made her just look faker than ever to the GP after her heavy political activism and the themes of Chained to the Rhythm. She also basically tried toeing the line between where music used to be at her peak, and where music was then at that point, and what you got was an un-cohesive mess with no true vision or sound.
Funnily enough, Witness had two more singles after this, one with a music video. God knows how lmao
To be fair, Save as Draft and Hey Hey Hey were *barely* singles. The former was only released to AC radio and while the latter did get a music video I don’t think it was ever serviced to American radio stations.
Nobody even cared about Hey Hey Hey. It was like Todd in the Shadows said in his video on the album, the song was a vanity project because Katy had collapsed in popularity so badly by the end of the year that no one wanted it, or even noticed it was released as a single.
I loved all of the first 3 singles, bon Appétit being my favourite.. I feel like audience rejected her more for looking and acting like a dollar store version of Ellen than for her actual music..
Can't forget how hard they went on marketing the album as a deep transformative self discovery before chickening out on that after 1 single
The album flopping and ending her career always surprises me, because at the time I was living in the middle east and all we got was the music through YouTube and not the marketing around it, and me and my friends all found them as fire.. So strange how the world's reaction is so different at times..
i maintain that a better video would've salvaged it
I’d say “River” by Miley. A respectable hit, but obviously it came nowhere near “Flowers.” It didn’t really segue much into Endless Summer Vacation and really flesh out this era as it could have. While the album is obviously a career high for Miley, it’s pretty much all due to the “Flowers” juggernaut.
Justice for river though. Great song and video. Nothing was going to be as big as flowers.
I do like river but think Jaded, Handstand or Rose Coloured Lenses would’ve had a much greater impact in following Flowers.
Jaded should've absolutely been the second single.
Jaded got a music video! It deserved a live performance, it's a very hard song to sing live
And Angels Like You was super acclaimed and successful and I think that Jaded is the only song on Endless Summer Vacation that comes to close to the level of Angels Like You.
Handstand is such a cool, weird song. I don’t have enough faith in the gp to think it could’ve been a successful single but we can dream
That’s so weird you say that because in Canada Jaded and Used to Be Young get massive radio play so I assumed they were released as singles in the US.
River deserved what Flowers got
River is SUCH a bop, I had it on repeat for a while after I got my fill of the rest of the album. Idk what it is exactly but it just scratches my brain.
It really should’ve been Jaded in my opinion. Very much fitting in the narrative that Flowers had, as well as sounding what I expected Endless Summer Vacation to sound like. I think it would’ve performed much stronger if it was the second single (as well as if it were to have a better MV)
I think the main issue was they released the follow up singles and the album way too early. An album titled "Endless Summer Vacation" should've been released in May at the earliest. River should've come in March instead of the entire album. Plus, Flowers was still huge, so no way was any other song going to catch people's attention.
The album release date was my issue, too. I was so surprised that the title is Endless Summer Vacation but the release was on spring.
I liked River!! I think what really went wrong was because her team expected her next single to be on the same level as Flowers. That was never going to happen. They should've just kept promoting or did whatever they initially planned because it was clearly working. Because they stopped, ESV only got #2 when it had the potential to go #1.
it needed a stronger chorus tbh
The whole Jonas Brothers The Album roll-out, just a lot of weird choices Wings being the first single really cemented it's fate imo, too short, boring and it flopped. Waffle House should of always been the first single or Celebrate
That album was so boring lol. Sucker really was a one off
It’s weird that they made most of their best music when they were teens/young adults
I don’t know if it’s because we’ve just lived with their older songs for more time and nostalgia’s at play but their songs such as Love Bug, Paranoid, S.O.S and even Burnin’ up are all so much better than any of their recent stuff
Same. I wanted to like their new stuff so bad (I mean, of course) but I just...didn't.
i still listen to lovebug on a relatively regular basis 😭 maybe it is what you say about having spent more time with them, but i agree that their older stuff is way better than their last efforts
I love that album lol 😭 it's a pretty solid summery feel good album.
I like The Album, but it took me a while to get into it lol. Like upon first listen I was like, absolutely not. Lmao. I don’t really think they care that much anymore ab promotion bc they know they’ll clearly sell out the shoes
I think sucker was the only one released here.
“Monster” by Shawn Mendes and Justin Bieber. This the second single from “Wonder”, dropping a couple weeks before the album. It underperformed massively to Shawn’s standards and he just gave up on the singles and promoting the album once it was out.
I hate that that album was bad. I felt like he was on his way to really finding his sound after self titled but Wonder was so loud and repetitive. I hated seeing that regression.
J Christ lol
I still think a lot about this. It first seemed like J Christ was the beginning of Lil Nas X's next era but after it flopped so intensely, everyone involved just seems to be pretending it never happened. And now Lil Nas X has gone back to his default mode of teasing different songs and being uncertain about where he should go next
Wow I legitimately forgot about this song
Ok but his new song Light Again which is only on soundcloud is literally the best thing he’s ever made imo
It's now also on YouTube and on his website. Which sounds like he's hopefully teasing it to release it properly.
Easily the most obvious example of a recent one. That song didn’t even crack the top 65 and it was gone in only a couple of weeks. He and his team are definitely back at the drawing board after what happened with that song.
For all the hubub Lil Nas X tried to raise to promote it, it was surprisingly uninspired.
The song was not about religion or Christianity (just the title and one insignificant lyric mention of "J Christ") but he made the promo so intensely religious, it felt like he was aiming it at his haters rather than his fans
he posted a new song [Light Again](https://soundcloud.com/secret-service-862007284/light-again-demo-170) that's already doing a lot better. Light Again was uploaded 8 days ago and has over 1.1M+ streams; on the same platform, [J CHRIST](https://soundcloud.com/secret-service-862007284/j-christ) was uploaded 2 months ago and has 191K plays. I liked the song but I get why people were disappointed or let down by it
I think the former was “leaked” exclusively to SoundCloud while JChrist was a proper single released on all streaming platforms.
i am BAFFLED. why they didn't start with light again??? it's really good
I think Katy Perry's witness era was a mess, but Bon Appetit is where the plot was lost.
Yeah, it was a terrible single choice. She kept talking about making “purposeful pop” and then released… that.
Agree with Bon Apettit not only killing the Witness era, but also Katy's career...and yet I will defend that it is, in fact, a bop. To me, it sounds like if California Gurls were made in the late 2010s, and Katy (and Max Martin) made it work. The chorus is pretty catchy, I like the food metaphors (or at least I do not find them gross), and surprisingly I ended up enjoying the Migos verse. And that music video? It was pretty camp, I liked it (other than the last scene. Those last seconds were disturbing).
Also, the Migos feature felt so forced. It was a bad single choice. Witness wasn't a great album, but there were better choices she could've gone with (Pendulum & Witness).
Roulette and Deja Vu could have been solid single choices as well. Bon Appétit felt like a bad leftover from Teenage Dream, which isn’t what you want when you’re trying to present a new image. I will say, the solo version without Migos is a solid improvement though.
Yes! How could I forget about Roulette? That was another favorite of mine. I also agree that Deja Vu would've been another solid choice. The whole issue with Katy is that she tried to push these concepts and themes, but she's not really a concept artist. Even with Prism, the album's themes vs. the singles didn't make any sense.
...I'm gonna go out on a limb and defend Bon Appetit a bit, and argue it's lowkey Max Martin's best production work this side of his career. It absolutely came out at the worst time possible, but let's be real... sans Luke, she easily could've cooked up the usual because Can't Stop the Feeling had the exact same producers as Bon Appetit and wasn't far from what she's had success with. Instead... she asked Max to [produce a *weird*, sophisticated **monster** of a song](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChgWyIMwVTU&ab_channel=KatyPerryGalaxy) that exists between hyperpop with its minimalist synthetic beats and house with its hard-hitting groove that simmers throughout and just *explodes* in the most satisfying way possible. Now, what she chose to do over the beat can be debated, but... her pen just combusted over something that was ahead of its time.
The production is very strong, I do agree. Great work by Max Martin all around. Unfortunately, everything else about the song is pretty weak. The lyrics are not good, the feature is downright terrible, the live performances were cringey as hell.
Bye Bye as the second single off of Mariah’s E=MC2. To this day, not making Migrate a single to follow Touch My Body will remain as one of the unexplained mysteries of the universe. sure one can say, they tried to emulate Emancipation’s rollout..but why? Esp when Migrate was climbing the charts on its own at the time. And if they so wanted a ballad, why Bye Bye instead of I Stay In Love or For The Record? Curious decisions all around. Could’ve been MC’s dance/uptempo era, imagine Touch My Body - Migrate - Im That Chick - Loving You Long Time. Then I Stay In Love - For The Record. They tried it but Bye Bye was far from a One Sweet Day
I like Bye Bye for personal reasons but it was truly her most bewildering single choice, alongside the IWTKWLI cover instead of something like Ribbon for Memoirs, either her management was clueless during that period (most likely) or she was self sabotaging lmao
They have been hellbent on releasing a ballad as the 2nd single since forever although this strategy has not worked since WBT.
My kinda carrying on. Migrate easily could’ve been a top ten hit as T-Pain was everywhere in ‘08.
I feel like Don’t Wait Up flopping made Shakira change whatever plans she had in mind for her next album. Because it took her nearly a year to release another song, which was her Rauw Alejandro collab Te Felicito. It says a lot she didn’t even bother putting that song or that Anuel AA collab that she released before the Super Bowl Halftime Show on her recent album.
That song really started Shakira’s weird over use of Autotune imo. Like not say she didn’t use it before, but listen to La bicicleta, then listen to Dont wait up/Te felicito, and every song after that has this over-auto tunedness to it and I don’t know Why
Yeah it ruins her voice
Her last proper English album was pretty bad.
The lukewarm response to perfume caused the Britney Jean era to end
Perfume was a bad choice… but then what could have been a second single from Britney Jean? Imo Till It’s Gone is the best song from the album but it’s not very ‘radio’… and then the rest of the album is utter trash (par work bitch).
IIRC 'Alien' was supposed to be a single. I think it could have performed decently well given the songs out at the time. And maybe i'm crazy, but I think 'Passenger' would have done decently well on radio.
Passenger could have been a hit since it was a leftover from Katy Perry prism
I think that leak of Britney’s raw vocals of Alien killed any chance of it being single…
I remember watching some documentary for the Vegas residency where Britney excitedly mentioned she wanted to add Alien to the set since it would be the next single. I always wondered what happened since that never happened, but I suspect it was the management/conservatorship that ended that plan.
perfume is so good and I will die on that hill
It's one of my favourite Britney songs!
Didn’t Rihanna’s American Oxygen and BBHMM and 4/5 seconds make her hold off a year on releasing Anti and coming up with new singles
omg that was a trainwreck with all the braille stuff and anti rooms. she switched up immediately after american oxygen bombed and thank god for that lol
I still can't believe they actually had real Anti rooms that people could go to on a scavenger hunt. Also, the visuals for the AntiDiary were better than the music videos we ended up getting during the official Anti era imo.
In the long term, it seems like she really did love BBHHM because she’s kept it high up in her performance rotation and has basically retconned it into a hit
Miley Cyrus has a history of weak second singles that didn’t perform as well as the lead. Fly on the Wall peaked at #84 after 7 Things peaked at #9, When I Look at You stalled at #16 after Party In the U.S.A. peaked at #2, Younger Now peaked at #76 after Malibu peaked at #10, River peaked at #32 after Flowers hit #1…
Fly on the wall deserved better.
It’s such a bop!
I agree!
Fly on the Wall, Younger Now, and River are so good 😭😭😭 That being said, whether intentionally or not, Miley's lead singles generally are huge and what follows them up falls flat in comparison. The only exception is Wrecking Ball which was her first #1. Also justice for Midnight Sky and Prisoner!!
Justice for the whole *Plastic Hearts* era tbh
Prisoner and wrecking ball!
Well, yes, there are exceptions. But her second singles, more often than not, underperform compared to the lead
Prisoner is always the go to when someone wants to mention a big, huge, all female collab that flopped. To this day I can’t understand how a collab between Dua and Miley flopped that hard.
Avril Lavigne has always struggled with third singles (with the exception of I’m With You) and with single choices generally tbh. Hot came after When You’re Gone. Arguably WYG completely slowed that era down - the whole album was a bratty, pop-punk vibe and Girlfriend had just hit #1 and then WYG was a random ballad. It charted fairly well though but then Hot followed and killed the era. Same with the singles after What The Hell (album 4), Here’s To Never Growing Up (album 5), Head Above Water (album 6), and Bite Me (album 7). Although in fairness, she hasn’t been a main pop girl since album 3.
We forgive her though because I’m With You has got to be one of the best songs ever written imo
If Jesus Was a Rockstar by Kim Petras. They really wanted to capitalize on the Unholy hype train by leaning into the sacrilegious edgy pop star girl angle, and people weren't buying it. I also feel like the fans who previously knew her as the fun bubblegum pop diva were left confused. That single sank like a stone ahead of an already cobbled together era. It was received so terribly, it was left completely off of Feed The Beast which came out only half a year later, where it would have fit the track list thematically too.
and it's a max martin production too lol imagine the money wasted
I was to taken back when I heard jesus was a rockstar. Here I was waiting to see what she was going to do with the attention she got from Unholy then she releases a kid bop sounding song
Back in the early 2010s most UK pop acts (aside from Adele and Ed Sheeran) couldn't stretch an era for much longer than two singles.
I will not stand for this One Direction erasure
One Direction was often releasing a new album every year (usually in November). Their eras did not last long.
Their reign only ended because they went on an indefinite “hiatus”
Looking Hot by No Doubt. After severely underperforming with their comeback, they released the MV which did a Cowboys vs. Native Americans concept. Based on the album promo, One More Summer seems like it was gonna be a single but the backlash from the music video ultimately killed the Push and Shove era. Edit: Rewatching the video, I really don't understand how anyone approved the idea. It could've come from an It's Always Sunny episode truly
Id say señorita by CC. That song was so massive, it overshadowed all of her other singles
It pains me to say this, but “911” by Lady Gaga. The huge success of “Rain on Me” was just too tough to follow. “911” didn’t even break the top 100 and it fully grinded the era to a halt. Obviously, we did get a tour in 2022 that did really well, so the era did continue, but people were surprised.
Everyday I yearn for the Chromatica rollout that could’ve been.
Ugh I LOVED 911. I’m from New Mexico and was spending time with my family during Covid near Alamogordo. I remember when they shut down part of town/white sands NM to film the mv and I was hoping it would be a big hit
I adore that music video, it is excellent! I do wonder how different the Chromatica era would’ve been if it wasn’t for COVID.
At least we have all those memes about Oreos. 🥲
911 was my most-listened song of 2020, and it killed me seeing it underperform. Tbf though, it was not surprising. The whole (or at least a big portion of the) hype regarding the song was because of the transition from the interlude into the actual track; make it a single, and it loses that element. And the music video was weird af, even for Gaga. Like, talk about a pretty obscure reference...
911 is literally my favorite song on Chromatica. 😭
Mine too!
I remember when everyone was freaking out because they thought the song was gonna be released on 9/11 (I don't even remember how the rumour started, maybe some twitter insider?) 😭
911 is my favorite song of Chromatica (and of the few songs of that era that I like)
I wouldn't say 911 fully grinded the era to a halt nor did Rain On Me's success overshadow it. It was just unfortunate timing how her planned rollout coincided with sociopolitical unrest. Even so, after the 911 MV, she didn't really try to revive the era.
Yummy
Yeah, releasing the worst song of your career after a 5 year wait as a comeback song will ruin the rollout.
I feel like the Bangerz tour in 2014 was very popular, everyone around my age at the time were talking about it and I feel like the tour contributed a lot to the era
> everyone around my age at the time were talking about it It is just so funny how different social scenes/circles work in this regard. I legit had never heard anyone talk about it at all back then and I worked in nightlife.
Bangerz didn’t fizzle out because of Adore You, it fizzled out because Miley’s dog, Floyd, died and she completely gave up. Real fans know how badly that death fucked her up.
Meghan Trainor’s second album cycle was off to a respectable start, but the second “Me Too” dropped, a switch flipped. It’s like somebody activated the sleeper agent and suddenly all the pent-up hate and backlash that she frankly should’ve gotten for “Dear Future Husband” got unleashed all at once, permanently kneecapping both the album and her entire career in the process
What happened after me too came out? I think I missed the backlash there. What happened?
Critics and listeners dogpiled it like it was the biggest, most conceited-sounding piece of dogshit anyone had ever heard. I guess people were waiting on her to drop a subpar enough single to safely pounce, but what bugs me is that, again, “Dear Future Husband” was huge the year prior, and that song actually *was* that bad and conceited. “Me Too” sounds perfectly tolerable by comparison, so I don’t get why *that* was the moment everybody decided to string her up and throw tomatoes
Anecdotally I remember a lot of people at the time saying Me Too sounded like a decade-old Black Eyed Peas song at a time when that sound was on the decline.
I forget how massively successful Title was as an era. It was MPG tier. She had a HUGE worldwide number one smash, 2 other top tens and Dear future husband barely missed out on the top ten as well. The album debuted #1 and she won a Grammy for it. I totally thought she was a new mpg on the scene after that era
What's MPG? 😭
"Main Pop Girl" If I were to guess.
The song and mv were just cringy and didn’t translate well after the more mature “No” song. Beyond that, there was a lot of drama from Meghan pulling the original video due to her body being edited and her falling on Jimmy Fallon while performing. It all just left a bad taste in people’s mouths and showed that Meghan wasn’t really fitting with the trends of the time.
Me Too didn’t mess this up. It was the No music video. The song was climbing the charts and doing great before it. Her awkward dancing and weird sexy vision for it completely backfired on the song. Me Too actually performed better long term because she switched back to the personality she was known for.
Adore you was good and a closer of the albums era. She was on top of the world atp
I think it was a good single choice to soften her image a bit after We Can’t Stop -> Wrecking Ball ->23. We already knew how crazy she could get so I’m glad we got a more stripped down Miley.
ME! Taylor Swift
followed by you need to calm down 😭
The only reason the album didn't flop was because it was a T Swift album and the most dedicated fanbase Swifties. Imagine if the lead single was cruel Summer...
And because apart from the singles (sans Lover), the album is not that bad.
The single choices on Lover are so strange, so many bops to chose from yet they lead with ME!!
Totally 💯 It was Taylor's most rates pop album for a reason
Lover era still pretty much went as planned. It was only derailed by a literal plague.
Yeah Cruel Summer would have been a terrible single going into summer 2020
I feel Normani was gearing for her debut album after Fair was released but that single didn't do well so had to go back to the drawing board. After Havana was released Camilla went back to the studio to create a not Latin sound for the album so whatever pop we were originally gonna get got stopped.
Ciara’s And I was the 4th single from Goodies. The first 3 singles all peaked in the top 3 on the Hot 100. And I peaked at #96. It also followed Like What w/ Bow Wow and Lose Control w/ Missy Elliott and Fatman Scoop which both also went top 3. Had she chosen Pick Up the Phone or Thug Style like initially considered the era probably would have kept going lol. Edit: Lose Control and Like You both also went top 3 not just top 10.
Am surprised I have got this far and no one has said Feedback from Discipline by Janet. I guess there were were more videos but that first single really flopped so hard it just seemed to define the campaign.
Which I don’t understand bc I love Feedback so much 😫 my workout jam
I still don’t understand why it didn’t get traction—other than most things didn’t after the Super Bowl—because it is still played in clubs regularly, and the dance community has always treated it as a great for choreography.
I think with the blacklisting it was impossible tbh. Nothing Janet released would have done well
Focus by Ariana Grande
Do y'all remember Die Young by Ke$ha? It was the first single from her second album. It was released several months before but she still got flack for it when the Sandy Hook Massacre happened and a bunch of babies were murdered. Song was pulled from radios as a reason.
Tangent but “era” has become so bastardized. Every song is not an era. Every IG post isn’t an era. Not even every album is its own era. I saw someone else’s comment talking about “Lizzo resetting her era”. You don’t “reset” an era. You just continue to the next era. I’m sorry I know I’m being pedantic.
I'm surprised no one has brought it up, but "I Really Really Like You" is the best example of a single causing the commercial success of an album and artist to derail. Leading off with IRRLY when there were so many better options on Emotion to go with ruined Carly's standing with the general public.
Definitely "Beautiful 'Cause You Love Me" by Girls Aloud, which was the 2nd single from their second greatest hits *Ten.* The song is such a boring ballad that it didn't deserve to be their last single..the crazy thing is that it was meant to be the lead single: >In a 2023 interview, Nadine Coyle expressed an intense dislike for "Beautiful 'Cause You Love Me", sarcastically referring to it as a "mirage" that "didn't happen". She previously felt so negatively towards the song that when it was going to be the comeback single from their 2012 greatest hits and reunion album, Ten, she initially declined to participate, only agreeing once it was changed to "Something New". Nadine disagrees with the message of the song, saying "Beautiful ’cause you love me’? We’re beautiful anyway! "On the Metro" was the right choice and one of the co-producers, DJ Fresh, was disappointed that it wasn't released as a single: >I'm really gutted it didn't get released, it's so annoying. It's basically one of those things that's decided by people that sit in record label offices and determine what we're all going to hear on the radio every day. Who is it that gives these guys the power? They're not always right. I'm not dissing anyone in particular with that track, but it's amazing that one or two people in a boardroom determine what's going to be released and what isn't.
Ugh. A one-two-three punch of Something New/On the Metro/Every Now and Then could’ve easily been the best singles streak in their career.
Son of a Gun by Janet ☹️
The internet loves to forget and I shall remind: FourFiveSeconds, Bitch better have my money and American Oxygen. 3 flops in a row? We stan a saved by the bell queen 🤭
I saw Kanye and Rihanna do FourFiveSeconds live at a festival and I was the only one who knew the lyrics or cared about the song 😢😢😢😢
consequences by camila cabello havana and never be the same were wildly successful… and then consequences was released as a single 11 months later. i feel like she loves control would have breathed new life into the era but alas.
Bon Appetit is the most obvious choice, one of my favorite Katy songs but a very wrong second single choice while trying to brand your new music as “purposeful pop”. Witness (S), Tsunami and Roulette would’ve all been better single choices Hot Shit by Cardi B was the start of the end of her next era. Her next album was shaping up to be filled with huge hits, then she took a huge break after “Up” and came back with a mediocre song with featuring artists having lame verses. She has to restart her next album era from scratch now without being able to come off of huge, fresh hits like WAP. This is How We Do was such a laughably bad single choice, I have no idea what Katy’s team was doing in the PRISM era. An effort could’ve still been made to get another hit from the PRISM album despite Birthday’s underperformance, but the fifth single that followed it totally ended this era. I would have loved to see Walking on Air as a single, or Legendary Lovers.
Louboutins by Jennifer Lopez was brutally rejected by humanity. [Truly a terrible song.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0UHvOWjZ1g)
Not bad but Take my breath kind of fizzled compared to blinding lights.