Why did Gaga not have more #1s during BTW Era

[KatherinePierce 221]

2 hours ago, LilyLark said:

Uh....BTW has the same exact score as The Fame on metacritic.

Yes it is. But gp doesnt even know borm this way but they knew TF. And TF sales waay more than BTW. 

[Quartz 12,535]

You guys really are downplaying Judas's negative impact on her momentum. It barely scratched the top ten and it made the people who were unsure of her (because she was 'evil') really ride the hate train afterwards. Dude, she spent three eras, THREE ERAS, to repair the backlash Judas started. People in my country still remember Judas. They don't easily forgive.

[FfFfFfFF 55,800]

4 hours ago, EdgeOfGloryGa said:

but it’s still a top 10? I think we just held her to an insane standard back then.. I mean it charted just below the same tier that followed with the next singles of EOG and YAI. Judas was just controversial, hence the reception.

It was top 10 for a week and overall charted for only a few weeks. Compared to her previous single this was an obvious underperformance and showed that her popularity started to damage. Still not a "flop" but an underperformance.

Also, may I remind you that The Edge Of Glory peaked when it was released as a promo single, not as an official single and You And I performed moderately worldwide.

[KatieJudasGaga4 67,907]

3 minutes ago, EdgeOfGloryGa said:

Ok? It was still a top 10 hit?

I think it underperformed in North America and some other places. However, Judas had way more longevity in Latin America and in most parts of Europe. It even lasted more weeks on the chart in Spain than Born This Way and The Edge of Glory. It performed way better than You and I worldwide

[FfFfFfFF 55,800]

12 minutes ago, EdgeOfGloryGa said:

Ok? It was still a top 10 hit?

Is that the only thing you gathered from my post? Do you think there are no differences between a song that was top 10 for 10 weeks and one that was top 10 for one? Ok.

[HIMe 1,975]

Judas, while being THAT bop, wasn't a good single. 

On top of that it also leaked and got rush released. 

Judas flopping forced her team once again rush release what could have been the biggest song of the album, TEOG. 

TEOG being rush released didn't get the right marketing. 

TEOG also got its video canceled, forcing Gaga to release whatever that thing was, while everyone else was slaying with their videos. 

You and I was an awful single choice. 

MTN, unfortunately the era had done too many damages to her imagine and this is the reflection of it. 

[DonatellaPop 3,482]

because having musical taste is a privilege 

[27monster27 13,109]

1. She should have waited three months for the second single.

2. Born This Way (the album) came out a full month later than it should have come out.

3. No Farmville, cut the magazine covers down to half as many, and cut the performances down by a fourth.

4. Make a compromise with Kendrick's team and release the collabs as singles with Lady Gaga on them.

This is more or less what should have happened.

[KatieJudasGaga4 67,907]

7 hours ago, HIMe said:

Judas, while being THAT bop, wasn't a good single. 

On top of that it also leaked and got rush released. 

Judas flopping forced her team once again rush release what could have been the biggest song of the album, TEOG. 

TEOG being rush released didn't get the right marketing. 

TEOG also got its video canceled, forcing Gaga to release whatever that thing was, while everyone else was slaying with their videos. 

You and I was an awful single choice. 

MTN, unfortunately the era had done too many damages to her imagine and this is the reflection of it. 

Judas underperformed, didn't flop

[JustJames 965]

As mentioned by others, the scheduling of the lead single's release in relation to the album drop was problematic. Additionally, the album was filled with hard-hitting production and songwriting without many chances to 'breathe' in between. BTW, MTN, EOG, and Scheibe were songs that could have led an era on their own and become #1's. But, releasing those 4 consecutively would have been exhausting for both Gaga and the audience. 

TFM era was poorly managed; fatigue had yet to set in, LG was at her peak as a songwriter and performer, and they left songs like DITD and SHICD - danceable, controversy-free, potential hits - and Speechless - a 'breather' and first ballad opportunity - from becoming top 10's. BTW didn't have any songs similar to SHICD; BTW's answer to Speechless was the, IMO, medicore 'You and I' that, VMA performance aside, I'm not sure could have stood on its own. This is another reason I wish Telephone had been kept; not only was it off-theme for TFM, but how would a Beyonce collab have fared in place of Judas? How would the rest of the era performed with that swap?

Between MTN and EOG, 1 should have been the lead single, with my preference being MTN. Then, BTW as a second single in sync with the Grammy performance. This would have given her two #1 hits and took her further into spring than Judas allowed, while avoiding the religious controversy stirred up by it. The 3rd single needed to be a step back production-wise, and I think I lean toward 'Hair' as a safe, positive, mid-tempo song that could provide great visuals, MV, etc. while not overwhelming the GP. The 4th single then could have been a mega-hit like EOG, with a real shot at the top of the charts, allowing a 5th single to experiment with. That's when I would have dropped a 'Scheibe'+'You and I' double release with a HML finale if neither fell outside the top 12. In this scenario, I could easily see:

MTN = #1; BTW = #1; Hair = #3-#6; EOG = #1-#3; Scheibe = #10; You and I = #8; HML = #10

though I'd prefer:

Monster = #1; Bad Romance = #1; Alejandro = #3; DITD = #3; Speechless = #3; SHICD = #5

MTN = #1; BTW = #1; Telephone = #1; EOG = #1; Scheibe = #6; HML = #8

At the end of the day, BTW came hitting hard but it was a risk to not include any mid-scale/mid-tempo beats that were controversy-free and not 'dark' or 'heavy.' BTW alone was going to alienate some listeners, but to release any one of Judas, Bloody Mary, Electric Chapel, or Black Jesus was a recipe for disaster. It also should have been obvious that EOG and MTN couldn't be released consecutively after BTW. LG wanted MTN as the lead and that would have allowed both MTN and BTW's successor to perform better than in reality. EOG's MV is also one of the major missteps of her two peak eras- swap visuals with MTN and give LG another #1 and perhaps BTW would have gotten a 2nd wind?

[RochestrMonstr 3,203]

Overexposure and backlash began by the time Judas came out, and there wasn’t really much she could do about it. It’s fortunate TEOG was able to get her another worldwide hit, and You and I was able to do well at home. This era was messier than a lot of people around here remember (probably because it got good numbers and ARTPOP followed it, which makes it not seem as bad by comparison) 

It really wasn’t until the pallet cleansing of C2C that she was able to reverse the damage. 

[agpuh 138]

Here's a comprehensive (and a little long) explanation.

There was a confluence of factors working against her at the time. Many issues, I'd argue, began with Alejandro being the third TFM single. That song and video really primed the Madonna comparisons (not to say that comparison didn't predate it, but it really solidified there), something that cast a large shadow over the BTW era when the lead single was perceived as derivative of Express Yourself. It's also the first instance of Gaga using someone who was not a professional video director for her video, something that every BTW era video lacked and definitely affected their reception. Jonas Akerlund recently talked about how Gaga had too many ideas for the Telephone video and they needed to cut some out, and having someone to filter her input really benefited Gaga at the time. It was also her 7th consecutive upbeat electronic dance song, and people were starting to get tired of it. So when she came back with Born This Way and then Judas, it felt like more of the same.

Mismanagement was an issue leading into the era. The hype for Gaga's follow up began early, she was saying "you were Born This Way" at every Monster Ball for months before she announced her album title at the VMAs and sang a line of the title track. The VMAs were three/four months before she announced the release dates of the single and album, which were two and five months off respectively. The timeline from the release date announcement to album release needed to be much shorter. For how long the album release had been drawn out, expectations rose to the point that Born This Way would have needed to had Thriller-level reception to not be seen as a disappointment. Everything Gaga said, whether in interviews or comments she'd say to fans at her concerts ("album of the decade") only reinforced the impossibly high expectations. 

Then Born This Way was released, and the big story coming out of that, as I mentioned before, was the Madonna comparison. Never mind that it was the 1000th ever Billboard Hot 100 #1, a number one debut, and posted huge sales numbers and radio impressions. Arguably the single debuted at it's peak performance (except maybe when the video was released, don't remember when exactly that happened), it spent 6 weeks at number one but less than 10 weeks in the top 10. It fell quickly down the charts. Judas then leaked early and was rushed out, giving it sub-optimal conditions for peak chart performance. On the strength of it's sales, it reached #10, before dropping off the Hot 100 pretty quickly. It suffered from debuting on a religious holiday, which  combined with being about Judas, pissed off a lot of people. Gaga had trouble performing it live with the choreography, Judas was her second song in a row that people though was derivative of something else (in this case, Gaga's own Bad Romance which was intentional, and TEOG, initially released as a promo single, really stole its thunder (better sales, better debut, better radio play). The Judas video was overshadowed by the Super Bass video which was dropped the same day, and then the reception to TEOG made them change course. TEOG, the third single released before the album was out, performed great. It had an anthemic rock feel that was closer to the moment (this was after Adele's breakthrough and the beginning of the era where singer-songwriter/indie/alt-pop were becoming more dominant), but lacking a well-produced video stopped it from re-peaking. The album was then released and sold 1.1* Million albums, and people got really hung up on that asterisk. Instead of focusing on the music or the performances, the narrative was that she cheated to have a colossal sales weeks that had a steep drop in the second week. By the time we get to You and I, a song that mainly played well in the US, many people were tired. Marry The Night came out and people had lost interest.

Then there was mismanagement of the era and shake ups in her creative team. Her image, particularly towards the beginning when she had the prosthetics and an ethereal dominatrix thing going on, didn't have fantastic reception. The highlight of this, for me, was her American Idol mentoring look when they distorted their logo to censor her dildo high heels. Nicola Formichetti had just left to be the new artistic director of Mugler, don't think Brandon Maxwell joined yet. The Teal Wig era was better, generally, but that is probably a case of too little, too late. Gaga appeared on every talk show and every magazine and performed everywhere while still touring on The Monster Ball. Her two eras blending together and the media blitz (which included a Farmville crossover) leading up to the album release is where the overexposure comes from. Her music videos, which were always a major part in her popularity, were not popular relative to the output of her contemporaries. Allowing Boomkack to direct multiple definitely didn't do her any favors. 

Gaga also took risks with her album and image that didn't pay off *in the moment*. She made unabashedly queer anthems that turned off a mostly straight general public who were not used to being catered to. Gaga really started the then current trend of empowerment anthems by constantly talking about empowerment and elevating her gay fans in a more direct way than any other current pop star. But Born This Way wasn't released till after songs like Firework and Raise Your Glass were already #1 hits. Born This Way differed in being more direct in it's subject matter, and we celebrate it for that, but the specificity made it less commercial. Gaga also became increasingly political, taking the fight to repeal DADT to the VMA red carpet and the stage (that's when the meat dress happened) and then wrote an anthem in response to Arizona's racist immigration law (Americano). Taking stances like these and making it intrinsic to the music limited her audience, but also crystallized her already large fan base. Although she wasn't getting the crossover appeal she needed to have her singles perform better, she laid the groundwork to have a  base of support that would endure long term. So while her fans (including myself) may have been frustrated that her commercial performance wasn't ideal, the humanizing effect this era had on her let gave her the space to try out different things in her career. She now had an audience that would stay with her after ARTPOP, would make her jazz collaboration with Tony Bennett and Joanne go #1 despite how different they were musically from her first 4 albums, and would tune in for her in AHS and go to the theater for ASIB. Not everyone has that kind of support.

[FfFfFfFF 55,800]

7 hours ago, EdgeOfGloryGa said:

Why you mad 

Because you misunderstood my post.

How the fact that Judas was top 10 (for a week) denied the fact that her popularity, GP approval and overall chart performance was declining and kept doing so until ARTPOP? 

[Vitleysingur 13,789]

Back when she was still a streaming antidote, streaming wasn't a composition of Billborad charts. 

[SashaxBzns 514]

On 8/12/2019 at 2:50 AM, KatherinePierce said:

BTW was a bad album and gp and critics knows it. Only the little babies here dont accept it. The production was so lazy and over the place. Songs were boring and half of them were fillers

 

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