The Enduring Appeal of Pop Stars Who ?Flop?
I have noticed that the term ?flop,? employed to describe big artists or albums that fail to top past commercial victories, seems to grow in popularity with each passing year. Lady Gaga?s last two albums, Joanne and ARTPOP, have become synonymous with flopping, despite boasting hits like ?Million Reasons? and ?Applause? and carrying her to the Super Bowl stage. It has been suggested that Lorde, Kesha, and Demi Lovato?s zeitgeist-dominating but mildly underselling 2017 releases Melodrama, Rainbow, and Tell Me You Love Me were all flops, even though each featured a major hit in ?Green Light,? ?Praying,? and ?Sorry Not Sorry.? The term has become so casually wielded that even Taylor Swift?s Reputation, which debuted with 2017?s biggest sales week at more than 1.26 million copies sold, sparked conversation over whether the album could be considered a flop by Swift?s A-list standards.
And yet, surveying the message-board and Twitter chatter among self-identifying pop ?stans? (a term adapted from the Eminem song to describe the most obsessive of fans), those who adore these supposedly fallen stars seem to revere them more than ever. If a music industry undergoing a sales and streaming flux has led to flopped albums being more common than ever, then so is their silver lining: the underdog effect that leads some listeners to rally around their favorite pop star with even more fervor.
While we may have reached peak flop last year, the exultant reaction to underselling pop LPs isn?t a new phenomenon. Some of the albums that occupy a near-mythic place in the pop stan imagination?like Britney Spears? Blackout, Carly Rae Jepsen?s E?MO?TION, or Christina Aguilera?s Bionic?failed to match the commercial success of their creators? previous releases, despite featuring singles that landed in the top 40. Perhaps not coincidentally, many these albums also represent the critical highpoints of each singer?s career. Similarly, critical darlings like Charli XCX, Tove Lo, and Tinashe inspire adamant adoration with releases that barely register with the broader public. Look harder and you will even find stans still obsessed with records by Paris Hilton, Lindsay Lohan, and onetime ?Hills? heel Heidi Montag, despite the fact that almost everyone else in the world has forgotten these albums even existed, if they ever knew of them in the first place.
On one hand, this may be the Hot 100 equivalent of record-store-clerk syndrome, with the most serious of pop listeners proudly repping their supposedly undersung heroes. But I suspect there?s more to it than that.
I and many others identify specifically with the commercial pressures and major-label struggles of artists like Jepsen and Charli XCX. I?m queer and many other people who adore their albums also seem to be queer or belong to other marginalized communities. Perhaps we see our own challenges reflected in our favorite flops, feel defensive of them as people who have also been maligned, and find inspiration in their perseverance. After all, ?flop? is a diss directed almost exclusively at women, and weaponized most viciously against women of color. How are you going to call icons like Janet Jackson, Brandy, or Mariah Carey flops when their male contemporaries with similarly declining sales are rarely treated like has-beens? It?s more than just feeling overprotective?double standards and the pressure to be perfect are familiar territory for those who?ve been ostracized in some way. Fighting for your favorite pop star?s dignity can feel like fighting for your own.
I first recognized this tendency in myself when I realized that the worse a Ciara album did, the more I seemed to enjoy it. After her first two albums sold well into the millions, none of her subsequent releases (Fantasy Ride, Basic Instinct, Ciara, and Jackie) sold even a quarter of a million copies?a sales dip made infamous by an animated MTV News graph immortalized in GIF form. But I found myself not just savoring these supposedly less successful albums, but promoting them in conversations with friends. It wasn?t just that her albums were underappreciated?I connected with how Ciara continued to push ahead with her music.
I?m not alone in this. In a 2011 New York Times piece on stan culture, writer Alex Hawgood observed:
[The intensity of stan culture] can make competition among stans particularly ugly, but it can also serve as a lifeboat, keeping a troubled performer?s career afloat. The singer Ciara, a former A-list recording artist who fell into a series of problems with her former label, Jive, that resulted in her most-recent album being shelved, might have been forgotten were it not for die-hards going to bat for her day after day on Web sites like That Grape Juice or Popjustice.
?Her stans compare her to Beyonc? or Rihanna, despite the fact that her album shipped something like less than 30,000 units in North America,? [artist manager David] Russell said. ?They will continue to drum up anticipation for whatever keeps her relevant, even if it?s just a fashion association,? like the singer?s friendship with Riccardo Tisci of Givenchy. ?Her stans will defend her to the death,? Mr. Russell added. ?It?s a little scary.?This ugliness is the flipside to the flop-fan phenomenon, and sometimes it can echo pop music?s nagging tendency to pit female stars against one another. One common way for stans to defend their favorite idol is by arguing that one of her competitors is an even bigger flop. Another strategy is to search Twitter for anyone even remotely criticizing said idol and argue with them until they retreat. Though I don?t go that far, I have gotten into my share of petty arguments in the past. I understand that impulse to defend: Ciara?s last album, 2015?s Jackie, may have been uneven, but it featured one of my favorite singles of the year (and Ciara?s entire career), the cleverly biting and refreshingly plaintive ?I Bet.? That song peaked at No. 43 on the Billboard Hot 100?a modest hit (and one of the few R&B songs to go platinum that year), but a far cry from the top 10 hits of Ciara?s earlier albums. ?I Bet? deserved better, and no one can tell me otherwise.
Don?t really know wtf this article is talking, but I seem Ciara?s name
