I actually don't think her career would suffer negatively from a Q4 release. I really do think that if she followed PRISM's release schedule again (single in August, album in October), she'd be fine. She's in a good place.
But as a stan who wants music, she better ****ing not. Teenage Dream release would be much better (single in May, album in July/August).
That's where it becomes tricky. We all want her to spend more time on this album to make sure it's really great and career-defining and not another rushed filler mess, but we also want new music ASAP because it's been 3 years.
I think she could afford to wait until August before releasing a single if that meant 8 solid months working on the album to make sure it's as good as possible. Her brand value is still very high and she can make appearances here and there in the meantime to build hype and keep her brand value high.
But I still love her. She probably won't even start writing til spring 
(but we'll probably have to 
