What kind of revisionist history is this? Ke$ha The Artist was big for a while, let us not forget that Animal debuted with 150k+ and went Platinum. She also debuted at #1 with "We R Who We R". Carly couldn't even do 1/3 of its sells and never had another hit on her own.
bringhimdowndown was talking about stars that were HUGE and quickly flamed out (spare me the Joanne jokes!). Ke$ha never was except in the literal sense despite the success she saw.