Dua Lipa - Radical Optimism (May 3, 2024) • Page 20

In other news, the album just passed 1 billion streams on Spotify.

 

Why are you so obsessed with her sales? Jesus

 

Other than TS and Morgan Wallen who in today’s industry is actually able to maintain a high level of sales every week?

 

I mean, I bet the label was hoping for a better performance from the album after the smash era that was Future Nostalgia. However, replicating Future Nostalgia’s success was always going to be a tough task. Most of the streams are from the singles and I am surprised the album/its track aren’t bigger just purely based on curiosity i.e. “I wonder what the person who made Future Nostalgia is going to do next?”

 

Also I am thinking tour dates will come in 2025. I would love to see her again, seeing her twice during the last era was fun!

 

I find it interesting seeing what resonates and what doesn’t. Things that look and sound like they should break but for some reason they don’t.

With the streaming numbers, is a lot of that coming from outside the US?

 

But why are you harping on her so much? You just keep bringing up her sales and popularity. I can’t imagine being this invested in saying someone’s not as popular as people think, unless you’re Paul Klein and she hurt you.

 

I think that releasing Houdini when Dance The Night was still smashing and she was promoting the latter for an Oscar nom was not the best idea, not to mention the song coming out a bit before Christmas songs were starting to dominate and four months between the songs release and the album announcement. Plus, there’s been a lot of big releases this year: Taylor, Billie, Ariana, Charli, and Beyoncé (all in the first half of the year too!) so it’s easy to get lost in the shuffle. It’s still a good album though and its lack of performance compared to Future Nostalgia hopefully isn’t a discouragement to Dua!

 

I mean she went out to make an album. If she wanted to do a single machine it would have been different.

 

God this thread is exhausting. Stop trying to make flop happen.

(but given similar (RO actually slightly higher) first week sales, and Dua’s better streaming and single numbers, it’s interesting (and correct!!) to see how Charli’s album is not considered “a flop.”)

 

This all reminds me of a Steven Hyden column from this week that I also found deeply annoying.

 

Yeah I play this album all the time still I just don’t talk about it

 

the memory holed albums of our youth were never that popular and mocked and “forgotten” and are now known as the classics we knew they were

 

i still haven't heard this album yet, I've been lazy and not been in a pop music mood. I'll get to it eventually though

 

I'm at the point where I might like this more than Future Nostalgia.

 

I’m assuming she’ll tour in the fall around the ACL performance

 

This thread is my favorite running gag

 

The albums listed as "memory-holed" in that piece constitute, like, 50 percent or more of albums this year that got any substantial media attention at all.

I think the premise is flawed, because most new albums just don't have a lot of staying power in the grand scheme of the pop charts or Spotify charts. I guarantee people are still listening to a lot of these album, but it's not happening at the critical mass necessary to keep them on the charts. Especially now that at least half of the Billboard 200 is populated by albums that never, ever fall off it (basically all the Taylor albums, a shit ton of greatest hits albums from beloved classic rock bands, Nevermind, albums from country artists like Chris Stapleton or Morgan Wallen, etc.)

 

The article honestly just comes off as "I don't really keep up with modern music anymore" with the way he was writing about the albums and forgetting them

 

He makes it very clear in the Green Day section that he doesn't keep up with the band, then says he memory holed the new album. Yeah, no shit bud, you don't really like them

 

If he engaged with this idea in a good faith way, that would be compelling. I think there’s something fascinating and sad about how most people (even music fans!) discard new music almost immediately to chase the next thing. There’s no attempt to live with new albums and see how you feel about them after your initial impressions. But he doesn’t talk about that; he just uses the concept as a cheap excuse to take snarky digs at artists who are easy targets. Notice he doesn’t list later-career rock artists he actually likes (Pearl Jam, The Smile) even though they have been just as “memory-holed” as most of what is listed.

 

Haha yeah, I saw someone asked about the Vampire Weekend album not being mentioned and he was like NOPE. yeah, because you personally like it and listen to it

 

Agree with you completely. I have been thinking about it all last night and the more I think about it the more it bugs me. Like, “culture” (online culture) moves so fast now and things come and go because content is virtually infinite. The alternative or counter culture is only found or even tracked in weird niche places like this. I’m still listening to Green Day! My current favorite album of the year I don’t know if it’s even sold 10k copies! But because everything else is flyin by at the speed of Post, that’s what becomes what matters, not the people going to work putting on their fav album or playlist and still enjoying the music. (I also think the way charts are handled is a miscalculation that’s led to a lot of this.)

 

Green Day isn't even my favorite album but I listened to it yesterday

 

I still really love those Green Day and Kacey Musgraves albums he mentioned. I don’t really care whether either is maintaining buzz in the broader music ecosystem. Neither are making music that sounds remotely like where the center of pop is right now. I’d be more surprised if those albums were massive (just like I still can’t quite wrap my head around Zach Bryan being a superstar).