Is GUTS about to face the "sophomore slump"?

[Reginald 13,830]

not Carly catching strays in the Olivia shade thread  

[Versace 7,860]

Bad Idea is a good song but I think it doesn’t quite translate as a single if they wanted a hit.

[nATAH 42,380]

loving the music so far but the art direction just seems to be sour 2.0... where's the creativity?

[LadyEnigma 1,027]

Nah GUTS so far is doing great and shaping up to be a great album, I think it’ll be a fun one.

[Decodekid 26,674]

I don’t it’s a slump, she got a number one hit and another top ten hit, the problem is people are not as hyped as they were with sour, which was a rapid and unexpected success.

I think back then people were more involved with her because the sound was fresh compared to what was trending, also there was a lot of controversy regarding drivers license which def helped with its rise.
 

Now it’s like nothing’s happening and she’s no longer a new artist so the hype it’s just not that big cause she’s also not reinventing much of her image, which is not a bad thing but the gp wants that out of pop stars and she’s simply not doing it, she’ll be fine though I think. 

[sexy 3,135]

I think this is an example of the impossible bar female popstars are expected to meet – not only do they have to smash the charts (at least one #1 single and a couple followup Top 10s), but they're expected to dominate the conversation however they did during their previous "imperial era."

But this is utterly unrealistic. Never mind that male popstars absolutely do not get held to the same standard, recent examples being The Weeknd's Dawn FM, Ed Sheeran's recent album which is so under the radar that I'm not even sure what it's called, Bruno Mars's collab with Anderson Paak, Shawn Mendes's perpetual underperformance. Justin Bieber's first four singles from the Justice album were all total flops, until he reached Peaches. Doubtless people would have been saying, "She's over!!" if Justin Bieber were a female popstar. 

This is also why I think ARTPOP is overhyped as a flop album. Its actual commercial performance, purely by the numbers, was by no means a failure. People forget Applause lasted in the Top 10 for almost 15 weeks, a bona fide hit.

The music landscape is always changing, and even if you can jimmy-rig the charts to get a #1, you can't fake a genuine hit. That being said, Vampire has held on in the Top 10 since its debut, and Bad Idea Right is getting all sorts of buzz on social media. You can't dominate the conversation every time. It's just not realistic, and also kinda impossible to plan. Even if you get everything right, who knows who else is releasing and what the masses are in the mood for? Right now, evidently it's right-wing country music, unfortunately. Even Taylor, who by all accounts is having objectively unprecedented commercial success, has only one #1 for this era. 

Anyway yeah chart success is only part of it, and a poor way to measure overall success