Pt 1. Who You Callin' a Flop?!

"U.N.I.T.Y., U.N.I.T.Y. that's a unity."

Please. Stop the violence. It's boring.

There's something about the latest conversation around Lizzo's album sales that keeps bothering me and it's not really about Lizzo.

Every time someone declares that an artist "flopped," I find myself wondering who gets to make that decision in the first place. The word gets thrown around like the slippery fish that it is, constantly trying to wiggle a real definition out of its reach. Is it numbers? If so, which ones? Money? How much? Units? How many? And the artist is left to fight each and every accusation that doesn't relate to the art they just put out.

Success, as hurled by critics, acts as the big bad self-evident wolf, but underneath it is a much larger assumption. It assumes we all agree on what success looks like.

Do we? In traditional African folklore, we wonder "Why you always lying?"

If you're a record label, success might mean first-week sales, chart positions, and return on investment. If you're a streaming platform, maybe it's engagement, retention, and playlists. If you're an artist, maybe it's making the work you wanted to make. If you're a fan, maybe it's finding that one song right when you need it.

Those are all different definitions that are collapsed into one.

Lizzo is also interesting because her career already challenges the idea that commercial metrics tell the whole story. Before the world knew "Truth Hurts," she already spent years making music, building an audience, and developing herself as an artist. That song existed for years before audiences across social media brought it back into the spotlight. By the time many people discovered her, she already built an entire creative practice.

Her breakthrough wasn't overnight. It felt like people caught up to her work that was waiting patiently for its moment. That's why I think it's worth separating metrics from value. Metrics are measurements. Value is something we assign meaning to.

Streams can tell us how many people listened to a song. They can't tell us whether that song gave someone permission to see themselves differently. Album sales can tell us how many copies moved. They can't tell us whether an artist helped shift a conversation about body image, representation, or creative ownership.

And those things matter too. At least equally.

That doesn't mean commercial success is unimportant. Artists deserve to make a living. Collaborators deserve to be paid. And sustainable careers require moneeeey. But commercial performance is just one dimension of an artist's work, not the definition of it.

I also wonder if we've become too comfortable thinking of artists as products instead of ecosystems.

If an album falls off of the charts, does it make a sound?

An album doesn't exist in isolation. It can lead to conversations, partnerships, educational opportunities, advocacy work, community building, and entirely new ways of relating to an audience. If one revenue stream underperforms, it doesn't automatically mean the artist has failed. It might just mean that the work created value somewhere else that isn't reflected in a chart.

Maybe that's the question I'm actually interested in. If an artist helps move an important conversation or action forward, creates work that people carry with them for years, and contributes something to culture, but their album doesn't debut at number one, what exactly failed?

Have we simply become accustomed to measuring only the things that are easiest to count?

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