Although it was released over a year ago, I thought I'd quickly discuss Lady Gaga's latest album "ARTPOP", or as many people have called it: "Artflop" (or "Fartplop" if you're that immature).
Obviously, as a Lady Gaga little monster forever, I take some offense to that re-titling, not because I prefer to kiss Gaga's ass instead of facing the truth, but because calling "ARTPOP" a 'flop' doesn't quite seem accurate.
Let me explain. So a "flop" is classically considered to be a project that overwhelmingly
under-performs in the commercial marketplace, like a movie grossing $1 million or less at the box office when its budget was $50 million (this would actually be considered a "bomb", or the movie version of a 'flop'). Using an album as an example, take Mariah Carey's "Me. I Am Mariah...The Elusive Chanteuse", released this year after five years of no new music from the diva of whistle tones. All of her albums have sold millions of copies around the world (200 million to be exact!), so you would expect that "Elusive Chanteuse" would sell just the same right? Wrong: it debuted at number 3 on the Billboard 200 with 58,000 copies sold, a FAR cry from her last album, "Memoirs of an Imperfect Angel" which debuted at the same position but with sales of 168,000 copies. Before that, her prior two smash albums "E=MC2" and "The Emancipation of MiMi" each debuted at number 1 with sales exceeding 400,000 copies ("Emancipation" was even the top selling album in the US in 2005), and those albums came 15-18 years into the songstress' career, so giving the Madonna excuse of "she's no longer relevant to a younger audience" is invalid. To date, "The Elusive Chanteuse" has sold about 117,000 copies in the US; given that it took over three years to record and numerous producers, singers, and rappers contributed to the project, I would definitely say that album was a flop in every sense of the word.
Now, back to Lady Gaga. Where does "ARTPOP" exactly stand on the 'flop' to 'smash' spectrum? Well, as I just did with Mariah, we gotta examine the statistics first, because they do show some interesting results. First off, "ARTPOP" became Lady Gaga's second number 1 album in the US, as it debuted at the position with sales of 258,000 copies. Right off the bat, any die-hard little monster would notice that sales figure is a considerable drop from the debut sales haul of "Born This Way": 1,108,000 copies. True: 440,000 of those copies were sold through Amazon, who discounted the album for two days for 99 cents, but 668,000 copies were still bought at iTunes or physical retailers at full price. Regardless of such, there's one fact that can't be disputed: "ARTPOP" sold considerably less than "Born This Way" as far as overall sales-to-date go. "Born This Way" has sold approximately 8 million copies worldwide since its 2011 release (6 million units sold in the first year); within one year of the release date for "ARTPOP", worldwide sales figures stand at 2.5 million copies. "Born This Way" came in as the 3rd best selling album of 2011 in the US, while "ARTPOP" was ranked 103 in the end of 2013 report, but was later declared the 34th best seller of 2014 by Billboard. So that must be somewhat disappointing to Gaga's team, who spent countless hours promoting the project, as well as Gaga herself with an abundance of TV performances, interviews, promo clips etc.
But that's comparing Gaga against herself, when compared to other female artists of the past couple years: "ARTPOP" has sold more copies than Miley Cyrus' "Bangerz" (2 million sold), Mariah Carey's "The Elusive Chanteuse" (less than 500,000 copies so far), Jennifer Lopez's "AKA" (less than 500,000 so far), Shakira's "Shakira" (less than 500,000 copies), and even Madonna's last album "MDNA" (2 million sold), but does fall short of recent albums released by Beyonce ("Beyonce", 5 million), Lorde ("Pure Heroine", 2.7 million), Katy Perry ("Prism", 3 million) and Taylor Swift ("1989", 4 million...so far). Gaga has big competition for sure, but she's actually outsold more prominent acts with careers spanning far beyond hers and the number of albums "ARTPOP" outsold are greater than the number of albums it has sold less than. When put in that perspective, it looks like Mother Monster hasn't been doing so bad after all, but there are still other stats that beef up the 'flop' talk. "ARTPOP" quickly descended on the Billboard 200 and didn't chart long into 2014. Also, when it fell from 1-8 in its second week, its sales declined by 84%, making Gaga the only artist to have two albums decrease in sales by at least that amount from their debut week to their second ("Born This Way" originally held the all-time title when it declined 85% in sales in its second week; Madonna would later take that title from her when sales for "MDNA" declined by 86% in its second week). "ARTPOP" definitely did not have as much staying power as I personally would have predicted, and it surely didn't become a juggernaut for hits like "The Fame" and "Born This Way".
However, there is still a bright side to this that takes credibility away from the 'flop' arguments. Yeah, "ARTPOP" didn't spew out multiple number one (or even top ten) hits like Taylor Swift did with "1989" this year, but still, TWO of its songs reached the top ten ("Applause", no.4, and "Dope", no.8"), one single reached the top twenty ("Do What U Want", no.13), and third single "G.U.Y" did chart, albeit very low (no.72). "ARTPOP" has sold a total of 725,000 copies in the US as of December 2014, that's a higher figure than Kanye's "Yeezus" (620,000), Pharrell's "GIRL" (519,000), and Iggy Azalea's "The New Classic" (423,000). Come to think of it, the only album to contain multiple top ten hits this year of any genre, besides Taylor Swift's "1989" (let it be noted that Swift is the exception to the state of the music industry in 2014, not the rule) was Ariana Grande's "My Everything" ("Problem", no.2, "Bang Bang", no.3, "Break Free", no.4, and "Love Me Harder", no.7), and do you know how many copies that album has sold? Around 400,000 in the US so far, not that robust of a figure for an artist of Grande's popularity. True, "ARTPOP" was no match for giants like Justin Timberlake, Luke Bryan, Jay-Z, Taylor Swift, Beyonce, so on and so forth, but once again, those artists have actually done exceptionally well in the 2010s.
Did Lady Gaga reach a career low with her album sales? Yes, she did. But guess what? So did alot of people! And I mean A LOT. Let's run down the list: Mariah Carey, Jennifer Lopez, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Madonna, Avril Lavigne, Nickelback, Mary J Blige, Shakira, Sarah McLachlan, Sheryl Crow. The list does go on, believe me, but those are just the bigger names that have sold millions of records before, with multiple albums, but now might be struggling to get a fancy centerpiece on the table (let's be real here, with all the money these people have made already, all of them could retire for life this very moment while I'd most likely be working until I'm 72). I don't know if Gaga's career will continue to descend, but she's already claimed another number one album with her Tony Bennett-collab "Cheek to Cheek" (131,000 sold in its first week), so I think she'll be just fine regardless of the outcome.
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