I realize that its chart run has just begun, but Birthday never charted this high on iTunes, nor did it acclaim over 6 million YouTube views over the course of a single day.

Why is this? Birthday had a massive radio deal and a pre-recorded televised performance, yet never broke the Top 10, neither on iTunes or the Billboard charts. However, Maroon 5 releases a song very similar to it and a video very similar to it, and both are already off to great starts, with the song already reaching the iTunes Top 3 in a day without any radio support or televised promotion yet and the video receiving millions of views and getting spread all over the internet in rapid time.

While there is no guarantee that it will sustain its success, why is "Sugar" already off to a better start than "Birthday" ever reached?

Birthday had a vile video and Katy was overexposed. Sugar is the better song and Maroon 5 are untouchable.

Sugar is better objectively. Plus the music video is watchable.

Katy doesn't have the starpower of Maroon 5

Let's not get carried away. PRISM sold 3x what V did, both in the U.S. and WW, and Dark Horse is bigger than all 3 of this era's singles combined.

I definitely agree that Katy's video (which was absolutely unwatchable), and the way Katy had been forced down everyone's throats by that point definitely contributed. While I think "Birthday" is a better song, Maroon 5 is an easier act for the public to latch on to with a song like this.

People want to hear this kind of M5, but are not here for this kind of Katy Perry.

The video for Sugar was a major misstep. It was released way too early with little hype and to little fanfare. It has little to no replay value and the song is so broken up within it, even casual listeners of the song were deterred. The lack of interest in the video killed the song's iTunes rise, something the BBMA performance boosted a little but unfortunately not enough, and the lack of iTunes performance killed off the great start it had on radio, causing it to peak and plummet.

EDIT: Arguments for Katy's overexposure are nonsense. She never became overexposed during the Teenage Dream era, despite her being a constant fixture on radio for 2 whole years, non-stop. There was, what, 9 months between Roar and Birthday?

Horrible video.

Upbeat, sugar-coated pop songs with catchy hooks and cutesy sexual innuendo isn't something that the public wants to hear from Katy?

Why do y'all keep comparing these songs omg

Sugar went viral and Birthday didn't. I mean.

Not this Birthday rehash already being in the top 3 on iTunes, when did this happen?

I guess the Sugar video was better since it was shorter and played more to their strengths since people would want to hear Maroon 5 at their wedding while they might not really be here for Katy doing tricks in disguise at a birthday party (although Sugar looked staged as hell ) but other than that I don't know why it's slaying so much

Birthday never had much of a chance either with Dark Horse constantly keeping it's foot on ha neck

Now that you pointed that way!

He was trolling lol

dark horse was still slaying + the video sucked

I honestly don't know since Sugar is a terrible song and Birthday isn't that much better.

Simple. People already own Birthday from the millions of copies PRISM shifted. No one really owns Sugar since V is barely gold.

Weird since 21 managed to have 3 huge smashes off of it despite being the best selling album since 2000.

Maroon 5 is bigger than Katy.