Chaos™️ on Wikipedia over MAYHEM’s Lead

[KennyRichie 1,981]

Does it really matter in the streaming era which song is the lead?

[StrawberryBlond 14,827]

I'm utterly bewildered by the whole back and forth with Wikipedia. To me, the answer is simple - DWAS was released first (whether it was an official single or not is irrelevant) and now it's on the album and the standard edition as that. Therefore, it is, by definition, the lead. If Disease had been axed due to its bad performance, I could understand the confusion, but it's still there, so what gives? Artists do this all the time. It's the most natural thing to want to include a stand-alone single that was a much bigger hit than expected, to maximise the album's streams and say it already has one success. There's no bother when they do it. There are exceptions however - Bebe Rexha had that hit with I'm Good (Blue) released in August 2022 as a stand-alone single but didn't release the lead single from her new album until 2023, followed by another 2 singles pre-album. By the time the album got released in April 2023, I'm Good was on the tracklist but Wikipedia never listed it as an official single. Everyone realised that its inclusion was purely a numbers game since all her other singles were flopping but inclusion of a 1 billion streamed song improved its success dramatically. But that comes off a lot more capitalistic than when Gaga did it because that song was so generic.

It's a common technique, it's just the first time Gaga's done it. I don't get why fans are getting wound up, the public don't know or care which was the first officially announced lead single. Disease was never promoted everywhere as the lead like her earlier albums (only fans know of what was written on that schedule) so she can get away with this, no problem. 

58 minutes ago, LOVEDRUG said:

Die with a Smile is obviously not the lead single, because Disease was actively labelled (by both Gaga and numerous publications) as the lead single. You can't have two lead singles released two months apart.

It's not always that simple. Ideally, an album should follow the early singles soon enough but not always. The most absurd example I can think of is the Sam Hunt song, Body Like A Back Road. That was released in February 2017, became a massive hit...and no second single followed. Until May 2018. Then no third single followed...until October 2019. And then no fourth single followed...until March 2020. The album finally arrived in April 2020, with all those songs on it, officially labelled as the first, second, third and fourth singles. My interpretation is that he made that first song just to keep his name out there but it blew up to the point where he was pressured to make an album out of it and it naturally took a bit of time. Usually, the label wants you have another big hit just before the album comes out and will hold out until you achieve it. And if you can't do it, they just shove your last biggest performing stand-alone single on it. I've heard of long-ago singles miraculously becoming lead singles before because they just happened to a big hit and nothing newer was working out but this was the most outrageous example. So, yes, after that, a lead single released 7 months ago? Perfectly normal. Rita Ora also released 2 songs in 2017 that ended up on her album released at the end of 2018 and they got labelled the first 2 singles because they went top ten and it helped towards the album's hit status and counted towards how many top ten hits were on it.

[LOVEDRUG 10,649]

10 minutes ago, StrawberryBlond said:

I'm utterly bewildered by the whole back and forth with Wikipedia. To me, the answer is simple - DWAS was released first (whether it was an official single or not is irrelevant) and now it's on the album and the standard edition as that. Therefore, it is, by definition, the lead. If Disease had been axed due to its bad performance, I could understand the confusion, but it's still there, so what gives? Artists do this all the time. It's the most natural thing to want to include a stand-alone single that was a much bigger hit than expected, to maximise the album's streams and say it already has one success. There's no bother when they do it. There are exceptions however - Bebe Rexha had that hit with I'm Good (Blue) released in August 2022 as a stand-alone single but didn't release the lead single from her new album until 2023, followed by another 2 singles pre-album. By the time the album got released in April 2023, I'm Good was on the tracklist but Wikipedia never listed it as an official single. Everyone realised that its inclusion was purely a numbers game since all her other singles were flopping but inclusion of a 1 billion streamed song improved its success dramatically. But that comes off a lot more capitalistic than when Gaga did it because that song was so generic.

It's a common technique, it's just the first time Gaga's done it. I don't get why fans are getting wound up, the public don't know or care which was the first officially announced lead single. Disease was never promoted everywhere as the lead like her earlier albums (only fans know of what was written on that schedule) so she can get away with this, no problem. 

It's not always that simple. Ideally, an album should follow the early singles soon enough but not always. The most absurd example I can think of is the Sam Hunt song, Body Like A Back Road. That was released in February 2017, became a massive hit...and no second single followed. Until May 2018. Then no third single followed...until October 2019. And then no fourth single followed...until March 2020. The album finally arrived in April 2020, with all those songs on it, officially labelled as the first, second, third and fourth singles. My interpretation is that he made that first song just to keep his name out there but it blew up to the point where he was pressured to make an album out of it and it naturally took a bit of time. Usually, the label wants you have another big hit just before the album comes out and will hold out until you achieve it. And if you can't do it, they just shove your last biggest performing stand-alone single on it. I've heard of long-ago singles miraculously becoming lead singles before because they just happened to a big hit and nothing newer was working out but this was the most outrageous example. So, yes, after that, a lead single released 7 months ago? Perfectly normal. Rita Ora also released 2 songs in 2017 that ended up on her album released at the end of 2018 and they got labelled the first 2 singles because they went top ten and it helped towards the album's hit status and counted towards how many top ten hits were on it.

Well, yes and no. Obviously if Gaga herself had labelled it as the lead single, I don't think anybody would dispute that fact, even if fans wouldn't be happy about it. But all of these terms are generally pretty fluid, and outside of definitively being able to say that Die with a Smile is the first single chronologically, it's hard to objectively apply labels to it.

It's why there's such conflict about whether or not The Fame Monster is a full studio album. Because going by most quantitative definitions (length, number of tracks, promotion) it would be counted as one. But because of a bunch of articles and industry reports from 2009 that label it as an extended play, many Wikipedia editors still cling on to that fact.

Ultimately, regardless of whether Die with a Smile should be considered to be the lead single, Disease has explicitly been referred to as such. I don't see why it makes sense to overrule a definitive, objective fact in order to preserve an unclear, undetermined, ungrounded premise. As proven by the waters around The Fame Monster being murky, most of the time, a 'lead single' is 'whatever the artist says is the lead single', just as 'an album' is 'whatever the artist says is an album'.

Edited January 30 by LOVEDRUG

[tyler k 5,330]

why do yall care THAT much about this...... 

[ChvVolk 2,303]

I dont recall Gaga calling it a lead

[Chromanne 1,415]

2 hours ago, Jill said:

Wikipedia has Harlequin listed as LG7 for obvious reasons. Harlequin is Gaga's seventh album while Mayhem is her eighth.

According to Wikipedia, Love for Sale is the seventh studio album of Lady Gaga, Harlequin is just a soundtrack album or companion album. 

[ChvVolk 2,303]

1 hour ago, Bradley said:

'Lead' means primary. In this case, Disease was the primary choice that kicked off the era. It had the significance of a lead single.

Die With A Smile came first, sure, but it was an afterthought, and did not serve to introduce us to the Mayhem era.

I see DWAS as a promo single. It promoted that Bruno and Gaga were coming back to the spotlight and had more projects coming. The single did just that. Then Disease was the lead single from the album.

[Ladle Ghoulash 23,850]

2 hours ago, Nutella said:

I still consider Disease to be the lead...

but calling DWAS "a Bruno song with a Gaga feature" is such a dumb take.

That is fully what it is, though. So by dumb, you mean canonically and factually true? 

[NUTELLA 9,092]

Just now, Ladle Ghoulash said:

That is fully what it is, though. So by dumb, you mean canonically and factually true? 

Maybe by dumb I mean illiterate. Read it and weep, babe lol

[Ladle Ghoulash 23,850]

4 minutes ago, Nutella said:

Maybe by dumb I mean illiterate. Read it and weep, babe lol

Right, the song that Bruno had written most of when she came into the studio and she wrote the second verse and the harmony on the chorus. Yeah, definitely primarily a Lady Gaga joint. Critical thinking, babes. Try it 

[NUTELLA 9,092]

Just now, Ladle Ghoulash said:

Right, the song that Bruno had written most of when she came into the studio and she wrote the second verse and the harmony on the chorus. Yeah, definitely primarily a Lady Gaga joint. Critical thinking, babes. Try it 

I didn't call it "primarily a Lady Gaga joint," did I, little miss literate?

But as you yourself said, "she came into the studio and wrote the second verse and the harmony on the chorus."

You can dislike the song until you're blue in the face... but she's a collaborative duet.

[Jill 30,113]

1 hour ago, StarstruckIllusion said:

No pop off. 

Harlequin’s intro section on its own Wikipedia page doesn’t even call itself her seventh album - as it shouldn’t as it’s 90% covers.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harlequin_(Lady_Gaga_album)

It’s a mixtape

This has nothing to do with anything. Tony has like a billion albums and a vast majority of them are completely full of covers. If they consider L4S as LG7 but Harlequin just as a soundtrack album then that makes even less sense.

[Jill 30,113]

53 minutes ago, StrawberryBlond said:

I'm utterly bewildered by the whole back and forth with Wikipedia. To me, the answer is simple - DWAS was released first (whether it was an official single or not is irrelevant) and now it's on the album and the standard edition as that. Therefore, it is, by definition, the lead.

To be fair - it could be a buzz single. Many such cases in which a lead single is retroactively converted into a buzz single due to poor reception or other reasons, and the lead re-chosen. In this case, DWAS could be a "buzz single" that came before the lead and was successful. On the other hand, if that can happen, then a lead could also, maybe, be retroactively chosen. TLDR is that Wikipedia editors just have way too much free time on their hands.

[Stephen 30,423]

2 hours ago, StarstruckIllusion said:

⭐️ They’re also fighting over whether Mayhem is her 7th studio album. They’re calling it her 8th and idk why 😭

Because they refuse to acknowledge TFM as LG2 and they count both jazz albums in the list.

 

[REALITY 76,326]

I still consider Disease the lead tbh

I see DWAS as more of a promo single since it was not initially conceived as the lead. Disease also fits in with MAYHEM’s aesthetics more. Like, it’s kind of weird to associate DWAS as the lead of the era when the visuals are so different.