Even if Gaga and Katy swore they had no interest in competing with one another, the general public, and especially the standoms, saw things differently. The campaign screamed desperation–a Justin Bieber’s “ Yummy” kind of desperation–but despite its efforts, “Roar” by Katy Perry still had better sales. Gaga’s marketing didn’t help as she began promising coveted prizes to the two fans who promoted her new album’s lead single the most, leading many to buy multiple copies and cry “Buy Applause on iTunes” so much it became a meme. The stans of Tumblr queen, Lana Del Rey, were also turning after the leak of Del Rey’s unreleased song, “ So Legit,” which aimed some obvious shade at Gaga–lyrics like “ Stefani, you suck/I know you're selling 20 million/Wish they could have seen you when we booed you off in Williamsburg.” Madonna stans had been vocally critical ever since the release of Born This Way’s title track, and many prior to. It seems like just a weird conspiracy theory now, but at the time, the accusation that Gaga was faking her hip injury due to low ticket sales was fairly widespread on stan forums.īy the time ARTPOP’s first single, “Applause,” dropped, whole communities were rooting against her, especially other standoms. By the spring of 2012, the general public had gotten somewhat of a break from her–the big promo for Born This Way had settled and the last single dropped nearly six months prior–but stan forums (even if the term “stan” hadn’t caught on quite yet) were still bombarded with her image because Little Monsters continued flocking to her shows and uploading their fancams (even if the term “fancam” hadn’t caught on quite yet). When Gaga broke her hip, certain sections of Twitter and Tumblr (we used to go there) were elated “ flopga” was finally falling. When she wasn’t releasing a song or album, she was making music videos or embarking on a new tour. If you’re on people’s TVs for too long, they’ll get sick of seeing your face, and then they’ll hate you–waiting for you to make one or a couple small slip-ups that can be re-contextualized into seemingly cancellable behavior.įor those first 4-5 years of Gaga’s career, she never went away. It’s imperative a celebrity stays within the public sphere enough to be “relevant,” but there is such a thing as overexposure-especially with women. The Born This Way Ball tour started in April of 2012, lasting a little under a year before being cut short by a traumatic hip injury that (among other things) has caused Gaga chronic pain ever since. On May 23rd, a whole 17 days after wrapping up her last big release’s international tour, Born This Way, the album, debuted at number one with the highest first-week sales the US had seen in five years. The Monster Ball tour ran up until May of 2011, but the first single for her next album dropped in February.
One month later, she dropped a new single, “Bad Romance,” followed by an EP, The Fame Monster.
Her first album, The Fame, dropped in August of 2008, about a month after the explosion of her second single, “Poker Face.” That album’s tour, The Fame Ball, started the next year in May, then ended in September. See, in the first 4-5 years of her career, Lady Gaga didn’t take a break. That album’s success doomed ARTPOP in more ways than one. ARTPOP might have sold more copies than a vast majority of musicians could hope to sell in a lifetime, but at 258,000 in its first week, its sales were pitifully lower than her previous album’s debut of over one-million. Yes, as many little monsters will defend, ARTPOP did debut at number one, and yes, it was internationally the ninth best-selling album of its year, but that can’t prove the album’s success because success is subjective. Is the 2015 album, Emotions, a successful indie record with widespread critical acclaim, or do we evaluate Carly Rae Jepsen’s success on the cultural explosion of “Call Me Maybe”? A flop album should seemingly be defined as an album that doesn’t sell many copies, but that can only be relative to an artist’s previous work or the expectations of success. We should first acknowledge that there are no set standards for what makes someone or something a “flop”–a concept that is culturally defined where the characteristics waver with every prominent example.
This post is going to be pretty long, partially because the history is extensive due to Lady Gaga’s immense celebrity, and partially because ARTPOP gives us an opportunity to explore what a flop is.
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