Member Since: 1/1/2014
Posts: 11,797
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Billboard defends gaga (and katy and justin)
While artists need to use social media to form and communicate with fan bases, Twitter and Facebook also amplify hits and misses. Part of the fun of tweeting an opinion about a song or album is that you become part of a musical discussion, and calling something a "train wreck" will always get more replies than describing it as "just okay" (see also: trolling as a general concept). One can picture that vitriolic sounding board getting under Bieber's skin enough to the point where he frustratedly tweeted that he was "retiring" on Christmas Eve. And the sentiment was conveyed even more pointedly by Lady Gaga following the release of her latest album, "ARTPOP," last November.
"I put so much love into my music, into my shows, I make it all for you," Gaga wrote. "I'll never understand the overflow of hate sent my way."
At the time of that post, Gaga had just scored the second No. 1 album of her career, and "ARTPOP's" first single, "Applause," had spent over three months in the Top 10 of the Hot 100 chart. But because "ARTPOP" debuted with 258,000 copies sold according to Nielsen SoundScan after 2011's "Born This Way" started with 1.1 million sold -- and because "Applause" did not reach No. 1 on the Hot 100, like the "Born This Way" title track did -- onlookers presumed that the challenging full-length was an embarrassing step downward for Gaga. Never mind that "Applause" contains the most sumptuous Gaga hook since "Bad Romance," or that "ARTPOP's" debut was exactly in line with the debuts of Miley Cyrus and Katy Perry, or that Gaga will once again delight millions of fans on tour in 2014; enough people (and a few fact-free tabloids) decided that "ARTPOP" did not live up to expectations, and gave it a public execution.
Gaga is one of many artists with an online fan army -- dedicated entities that promote a group's favorite artist, but too often have a nasty tendency to wage war with whichever artists are "competing" with their idol. The casualties of the 2013 stan wars were countless: how many Little Monsters and KatyCats sacrificed their composure when "Applause" and "Roar" were being pitted against each other back in August? How about the fact that, in the months before Beyonce's album arrived in spectacular fashion on Dec. 13, non-BeyHive members claimed that she had "fallen off" since she had failed to hitch a proper single to her Super Bowl performance and subsequent world tour? And what to make of the members of Rihanna's Navy that had to defend their prolific leader for not releasing an album in 2013 -- a perfectly understandable thing to do, after releasing seven albums in eight years? In 2013, everyone flopped, and no one flopped.
The Year In Pop: Lorde & Macklemore Take On The One Percent
This isn't a call for self-delusion: celebrated pop artists will release projects that don't work and deserve to be critiqued. Sometimes a negative reaction will even lead to a positive reinvention, which has happened to Miley Cyrus over the past year and to Madonna on about three separate occasions in her career. But acknowledging an artistic misstep is not the same as spewing bile at a musician after asking for the impossible and not receiving it. In the past two months, I've seen multiple Twitter users (some whom I know and respect) pummel Katy Perry's choice of "Unconditionally" as the second single from her "PRISM" album, and gleefully declare the song to be a "flop." Admittedly, "Unconditionally" is not quite as strong as Perry's blockbuster "Teenage Dream" cuts, but can anyone seriously discredit Perry, an artist with eight No. 1 singles in a little over five years, for "only" sending a mid-tempo ballad to No. 14 on the Hot 100 chart? Our expectations are always high for our favorite pop artists' output, sometimes absurdly so. So when something like "Unconditionally" becomes a hit but not a smash, it is denounced as a "flop," because that's a more arresting storyline than a superstar remaining a superstar.
I love following the plot lines of music's biggest stars as they move between genres and personas, and discussing those moves with fellow pop junkies. This resolution is not about ignoring backstories or stifling passion, but rather, about adding context to the overall debate and seeing the forest for the trees. In other words: chilling out a little bit. Real, complex people pour their creative hearts into our favorite pieces of music, not fairytale characters that deserve to fall and rise because those stories are more enjoyable to recount. As we begin a new year, let's try to get off the roller coaster as much as possible, stop the "flop" talk and tweak our expectations so that everyone, including fans, can win
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