Below, I've laid out 5 well-known musicians who have flopped hard at some point in their music careers.
1. Britney Spears - Britney Jean (2013)
•In the UK, the album sold a paltry 12 959 copies in its first week.
•Although it fared better in the US, selling 107 000 copies, it remains Britney's worst performing album. The most recent album sales count sits at 272 000 copies sold in the US (compare that to 1.7 million for 2008's Circus, or 794 000 for 2011's Femme Fatale).
•This is the album that lead people to speculate that Britney wasn't singing on some of the tracks and that instead a backing vocalist named Myah Marie was signing in place of Britney.
•Her follow up, Glory, didn't fare much better.
Slant Magazine Review (2.5/5):
-Designed by committee, with up to six producers and nine songwriters per track, Britney Jean is stocked with a mix of harsh EDM a la “Scream & Shout” and flaccid midtempo pop.
-Lead single “Work Bitch,” on the other hand, is the aural equivalent of bath salts, a shrill and mechanical assault on the brain, while “Tik Tik Boom” is by far Britney Jean and company's most egregious lapse in judgment[...]
-And despite copious (mis)use of Auto-Tune throughout the album, apparently no one thought to employ it for its intended purpose of pitch correction.
2. Alicia Keys - Here (2016)
•The album received mostly positive reviews, but commercially didn't fare so well.
•Although it debuted high on the charts, it only sold 42 000 copies in its first week - her lowest opening sales ever.
• Had no big singles to garner attention for this album release - nothing managed to crack the Hot 100.
•Sold 107 000 copies in the United States (compared to 1.1 million for 2012's Girl On Fire).
Pitchfork Review (6.5/10):
-“Blended Family (What You Do For Love)” rolls along as an earnest-but-slightly-awkward song about the dynamic within her home, before getting completely sabotaged by a throwaway verse from guest A$AP Rocky.
-The rhythms on HERE represent a departure from her previous efforts and indicate a willingness to experiment with her sound but the lyrics, which rarely betray a sense of adventure, cancel out most of this good work.
3. Green Day - ¡Uno!, ¡Dos!, ¡Tré! (2012)
Although these were 3 separate albums, they were all released in 2012 as part of a trilogy.
•¡Uno! sold decently with 325 000 copies sold in the US alone, but compared to their previous efforts, like 1.2 million for 2009's 21st Century Breakdown and a massive 6.1 million in US sales for 2004's American Idiot, the group failed to deliver.
• Both ¡Dos! and ¡Tré! did much worse - selling 175 000 and 155 000 albums in the United States respectively - and sold even more poorly in the UK.
• ¡Dos! was the first album by Greenday since 1994 to not sell 100 000 copies in its first week.
Billboard Breaks It Down:
-The altered release date for "Tre!" meant that Green Day was releasing three albums -- 37 songs worth of material -- in a 78-day span; it was an overwhelming amount of new music from a band that had taken nearly five years to craft the follow-up to its career-resuscitating 2004 rock opera "American Idiot."
-Comparatively, "Uno!," "Dos!" and "Tre!" are as erratic as Armstrong's words about them. Gone are the calls-to-arm and weighty musings of "21st Century Breakdown," replaced by sneering tales from the gutter, incessant profanity and a general air of sexual frustration.
-On their 2009 album, Green Day told their fans that "Silence is the enemy against your urgency/So rally up the demons of your soul"; on "Dos!," Armstrong declares, "It's fuck time!" on a song called "Fuck Time."
4. Metallica & Lou Reed - LuLu (2011)
Everyone knows Metallica and most music fans know Lou Reed from the iconic band The Velvet Underground. So what happens when you take one of the biggest metal bands in the world and have them collaborate with a rock icon? A total fucking flop, that's what.
•Reviews ranged from horrible to mixed: Pitchfork gave the album a 1.0/10 but David Bowie, apparently, loved it.
•First week sales were only 13 000 copies - putting the album at number 36 on the Billboard charts.
•Current sales figures are sitting around 16 000 copies sold in the US.
Chuck Klosterman's Review in Grantland:
-It’s not really designed for people who like music.
-It is not a successful record.
-As a rule, we’re always supposed to applaud the collapse of the record industry. We are supposed to feel good about the democratization of music and the limitless palette upon which artists can now operate. But that collapse is why Lulu exists. If we still lived in the radio prison of 1992, do you think Metallica would purposefully release an album that no one wants? No way.
5. Madonna - Rebel Heart (2015)
• Sold 238 000 copies in the US (compared to 539 000 for MDNA or 1.7 million for 2005's Confessions on a Dance Floor).
The Atlantic was fascinated by the flop:
-Rebel Heart is a slog, but at least it's trying to be interesting.
-But as heard on the record's 19-song deluxe edition (and the deluxe edition is the only thing that matters in the streaming era), the wannabe attention-grabbing elements mostly blur together, just textures of a mass slog of Madonna-ness.
-So her songwriting chops aren't what they once were—who can expect otherwise, 13 albums in? It doesn’t help that Madonna takes pains to remind people of far better Madonna songs. “Holy Water” samples “Vogue,” and it’s easily the catchiest moment of the album.
What's your favourite flop album, ONTD?
Image Source: one | two | three | four | five
Text Source: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
9 10 11 12
from Oh No They Didn't! http://ift.tt/2oRgWtD
via IFTTT
No comments:
Post a Comment