Wow, this thread is full of unnecessary excuses.
4 and Femme Fatale didn't flop, they UNDERPERFORMED for the calibre of artists Britney and Beyoncé are, FF did well on the singles side and sold over 700k albums, 4 did well on the albums side with 1 milli (1 million nowadays is nice considering only 9 or 10 albums sold that much this year
) but all of its singles flopped except BTINH which made the top 100 songs of the year according to Billboard so they're even.
Born This Way didn't flop, it sold over 2m albums and 3 of its singles were platinum or multi-platinum hits.
I wonder why some ATRLers are so narrow-minded.