Why did MTN underperform?

[Jase 13,125]

1 hour ago, Phlop said:

It’s not a good song and bad video 

 

[Miley 5,006]

1 hour ago, Indyl said:

She was coming off 11 straight Top 10 singles and was over-saturated

Marry the Night was a weird choice for the 5th single; no question it would've done better as the lead or follow-up to Born This Way, instead of Judas, which also wasn't radio-friendly, but still managed to hit the Top 10 thanks to the sheer force of Gaga at the time. If you flipped MTN and Judas, no doubt Judas would have performed worse as Single 5 than MTN did, cuz you're right, MTN was by no means a flop.

When you look at someone like Rihanna, she produces a handful of hits each album, but she's never called a flop when all her other singles miss the Top 20. So MTN hitting Top 30 after a long, huge era is pretty great.

Came here to say this really

[gypsy101 5,428]

i honestly hated that song for like 5 years, i felt that it was like 4 different songs all in one

i do enjoy it now though

[artpopsexual 1,791]

It sadly wasn't that popular, but I assure you that at least here in my lil city it was played a lot on the radio  

My aunt used to turn the radio on everytime she cleaned the house, so I've heard it a lot there, even in 2012  

[holy scheisse 21,870]

57 minutes ago, The Clown said:

Okay, so, as a disclaimer: MTN is my favorite Gaga song and MV ever. I love it to death and I love BTW; it's easealy my favorite album from her. I'm not writting this to hate on Gaga's work, I'm just trying to paint an accurate picture of the events that lead to Gaga's first single to miss the Billboard Hot 100 top 10.

 

Here's the tea... 

 

People tend to forget it now, because when you strip away all the context and you're left with just the receipts, Born This Way looks like a highly successful era.

 

But anybody who was a Monster back then knows that, at the time, BTW was regarded as a huge underperformance by Gaga's standards. The consensus was that it was a frontloaded mess that destroyed her "coolness" in the eyes of the GP.

 

The first thing to understand is that The Fame/The Fame Monster era was absolutely huge. As in, no other pop era after it came close to the level of dominance it had. Not TD, not 21, not 1989, not WWAFA,WDWG?, not TUN. Nothing. Gaga was a cultural phenomenon, she was the moment and she was redefining the game. Check out Google trends in you want to see just how insane the fascination with Gaga was at the time.

 

Why was TF/TFM era so successful? Well, it was mostly because Gaga's novelty and shock factor. Don't get me wrong, the songs were and still are bangers, but there were many girls releasing good dance music at the time. Gaga stood out because of her neverending, everchanging wardrope. Some of her looks are comparable to her biggest hits when it comes to GP familiarity.

 

Born This Way was largely expected to continue and even top that hype. It was promoted like no other album in recent memory; billboards, radio deals, multiple live performances on the highest rated TV shows. So how did it perform?

 

The lead single, while being straight up unstopable in its first month, quickly stumbled down the charts and ended up behind her other leads, despite the heavier promo and better debut that it got. Judas was regarded as the first real "flop" of her career at the time, only being able to spend one week in the top 10. TEOG was a big, organic, worldwide hit, but still lacked that buzz that songs like Paparazzi or Telephone managed to create with their videos and/or live performances. Yoü And I was a cute US hit, but made no noise anywhere else.

 

Fashion wise, she didn't make as much noise either. BTW has some iconic looks, but they are few and far between compared to TF/TFM. The most recognizable look is probably the 2011 Grammy vessel and horns. It's a great one, but it's nothing compared to the meat dress or even the hair bowtie of The Fame era.

 

Gaga's public image deteriorated heavily during this time. On one hand, she commited the sin of bringing politics to the table -- which people generally do not like. It, of course, prompted a backlash from conservatives, but also from some members of the LGBT community, who questioned her sincerity. The Madonna controversy did not help in that regard.

 

In the meantime, Gaga lost in every relevant metric -- singles, albums, touring -- to other girls: Katy, Adele and Madonna respectively. Gaga's hold of the pop industry was rapidly declining and news outlets were quick to notice. Bad publicity was starting to build up. And there was lots of frustration building up after almost 3 years of overexposure.

 

Gaga went from the IT girl, media darling, award show-sweeping artist, to a pretentioue fad who lacks Adele's pipes, Katy's likeability, or Madonna's lasting cultural relevancy. She was seen as over the top, annoying and dusional artist that uses plagiarism, gimmicks and fake woke politics to make a quick buck.

 

So, finally, Marry The Night is released. At this point, Gaga was not only overexposed like crazy, but also didn't really produce any kind of buzz, outside of generally negative press. A fifth single from an underperforming album with a weird artsy MV that was also not too radio friendly was just set up for disaster.

I.... You crushed it lol this is exactly what happened.