G.U.Y. flopping makes no sense

[MelbHawker 6,525]

I think the messiness of the ARTPOP roll-out killed any momentum she had going into it. GUY had no chance.

The hype, the references to fine art during the promotional tours, the persona she took on during that time, all the outfits.. ‘Applause’ kinda came and went and it didn’t reflect what preceded it. DWUW was a mess because of how evil R. Kelly turned out to be, & the MV controversy. Her team kinda just made it disappear overnight & then the era was just.. finished. There was quite a lot of controversy during that time in her career.. the Terry Richardson rumors/hardcore performance art, people didn’t like it. I never saw GUY as a proper single release anyhow, I’ve always viewed it as her / her team saying goodbye to an era they knew fans would always love, but just didn’t work overall.

 

[JustTea 3,096]

19 hours ago, ThisGuyTony said:

I’m sure this has been discussed to death but I was revisiting Gaga’s discography and came up to G.U.Y.

It had:

- 1 televised TV performance 

- a high budget, very Gaga-esque MV, with combined views of 224M views

ArtRave was still a sold out tour that year, Cheek to Cheek still went #1 that year + Cheek to Cheek Tour was sold out.

Why did fans and the GP suddenly stop supporting her with this single but still came back for Cheek to Cheek and Perfect Illusion/Joanne?

The song will be lucky to ever scrap Gold certification 💀

It should be gold eligible tbh. It has like 450M streams which equals to 3M RIAA units WW, so in the US it should be near 1M already. 

[Rifek 51,663]

Gypsy should’ve been the 3rd and last single 

[Duke 437]

It did make sense at the time.

as a fan at the time, I don’t think any of us expected it do well. 
 

Video was too long

Gap between singles was too long

ARTPOP hadn’t performed well overall

DWUW was clearly best single material and tried to be rush released without a video, people were confused 

Gaga had been looking bizarre in public, total loss of sex appeal

 

etc etc etc etc

[Quentin 4,451]

3 minutes ago, Duke said:

total loss of sex appeal

[Bradley 55,750]

She was just too weird for the public at that point. The whole need for reinvention stems a lot from how she began to target more traditional audience with a relatively more conservative image.

[HookerDotGov 512]

I mean, it dropped ~3 months after DWUW peaked. ARTPOP had lost steam. The video dropped on a Saturday at like 7PM EST if I remember. The entire roll out made no sense and, honestly, G.U.Y. was a weak single to drop at that moment. Like, if the album rollout hadn't been botched it would've worked, but it was so safe as a "reboot" and I remember a lot of people felt like it sounded like her older work and not fresh or new. 

[QueenMortuana 991]

Many good points in here but I hate seeing people make it seem that her career would've been totally over if she didn't do jazz and the sound of music after ARTPOP. 

[Patrickern777 542]

Because the song is about power bottoms and powerful women, and GP was not into that at that time

Touch me, touch me, don't be sweet
Love me, love me, please retweet
Let me be the girl under you that makes you cry

[FATCAT 56,408]

In 16 months it will go viral on Tiktok

[Ladle Ghoulash 12,786]

On 11/26/2023 at 5:00 PM, QueenMortuana said:

Many good points in here but I hate seeing people make it seem that her career would've been totally over if she didn't do jazz and the sound of music after ARTPOP. 

She certainly was in desperate need of a rebrand tbf

[Schwerk 6,590]

On 11/26/2023 at 3:20 AM, 27monster27 said:

See I never understood arguments like this though because Ariana got a strong top five hit with "Break Free" and that was also Zedd produced and very much so a heavy EDM song.

Break Free is much more relatable to a wide audience. Everyone can relate to wanting to break free, whether it's from a relationship, a job, your parents, your old self. G.U.Y lyrics are totally unrelatable and most people can't even understand what she's singing at first listen, let alone get the metaphors. 

Also the song, especially the chorus, is very monotonous compared to Break free. Gaga sounds like a robot. At the time I really didn't understand GUY as a single choice, it was doomed to fail.

[Future Lovers 5,873]

On 11/26/2023 at 5:00 PM, QueenMortuana said:

Many good points in here but I hate seeing people make it seem that her career would've been totally over if she didn't do jazz and the sound of music after ARTPOP. 

It wouldn't be over but she wouldn't be anywhere near where she is right now without a hard reset. That version of Gaga was simply nor sustainable in the long term. She was groundbreaking and an icon in the truest since of the word, but her whole aesthetic around that time could only exist at that time. It wouldn't have survived into the mid to late 2010s, and especially not now. 

[River 97,610]

Starting a song with "greetings homos" is very gay-specific tbh so I understand why the common straights didn't like it, it was too gay for them

[Modern Ecstacy 3,817]

People are giving a million different reasons about it being EDM etc. etc. but I highly disagree.

The biggest reason for it to flop was because Gaga's popularity had severely declined by that point. Somewhere during the Born This Way, her popularity started to tumble and it damaged her reputation a lot. As the fandom calls it, she was "overexposed" 

As we all know how messy the reputation of ARTPOP was, there simply wasn't a chance for G.U.Y to do well (Especially as a 3rd single). The media had destroyed her, her TF/TFM and Born This Way peak was gone, and people just didn't really care for her anymore, they had moved on from her.