Today, Explained - How to survive a flop

Episode Date: August 30, 2026

In the streaming era, success is public, failure is viral, and everyone's one release away from a flop era. How do you come back? This episode was produced by Hady Mawajdeh, edited by Jenny Lawton and Miranda Kennedy, fact-checked by Melissa Hirsch, engineered by David Tatasciore, and hosted by Jonquilyn Hill. Lizzo at the "Scary Movie" global premiere at the Paramount Theatre in Los Angeles, California. Photo by Michael Buckner/Variety via Getty Images. If you have a question, give us a call at 1-800-618-8545 or email [e-mail] to Explain It to Me ad-free by becoming a Vox Member: vox.com/members. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Two and five Canadians will hear the words, you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters. On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation Walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcf walk.ca.ca. Real Canadian Superstore has everything you need this back-to-school season. Save on lunchbox savers like Ziggy's sliced Ellie Me products for always 375.

And get Life Brand Pure Vita shampoo or conditioner for $8 each. At Real Canadian Superstore, when you're ready, we're ready, with a whole world and more. How do you go from having a billion streams, number one hits, to 3,000 copies and nobody knows about the album? When you go as high as Lizzo went, it's only natural that there's going to be a time when you come to. down from that. There is no sugar-coding it. Katie Perry's new musical era has been a flop. Is it just me, or does it feel like a lot of music artists are in their flop era?

Think about it. Nothing was the same since Kendrick knocked out Drake. Embarrassing! Katie Perry, not really giving firework right now. They ask you how you are, and you just have to say that you're fine when you're not really fine, but you just can't get into it because they would never understand. And there was once a point in time where I couldn't step foot in a workout class without hearing Lizzo. What's up, Peloton? It's Lizzo. Get on your bikes because I'm definitely online.

But her latest album made no noise. I hurt my own feelings. And I was really stressed and I was really sad because I just was like, wait a minute. This is like some of my best stuff. I'm John Gwyn Hill. And this week on Explan It to Me from Vox, what can we all learn from those failures? Why is it so hard to strike gold twice? Essentially, what the flop is going on? I think it's mostly about ambition, not meeting reality. That's Spencer Cornhaber.

He writes about music and pop culture at the Atlantic. It's when someone sets out to do something with sort of grand goals, whether that's have hits like a pop star is supposed to have, or even connect with the same fan base that listen to. your last album as an indie artist. It creates the conditions where the public might notice that you didn't meet those goals, especially if you're kind of open about them. And when there's a disconnect, that's when F word starts coming around. Is this new? Have we always talked about stardom this way? Or is this, I don't know, Stan Brain taking over for all of us?

Stan Brain is taking over for all of us. But the idea of a flop is one of the oldest storylines or tropes in entertainment history and Hollywood. You know, it could refer to silent movie stars when Hollywood made the turn to Tockeys, and suddenly this whole generation of icons looked washed up. There's nothing you could have done differently. There's nothing you can do. Your time has run out. Used to be in silent pictures.

Used to be big. I am big. It's the pictures that got small. It could refer to the Bee Gees. After the public turned on disco and all of a sudden their music isn't selling like it used to. Ork had referred to someone like Lizzo who suddenly puts on an album and realizes it isn't the, you know, Oso-Woke 2010s anymore. Why are we all flopping around right now?

I think that something is going on where the machinery of popularity has changed under our feet and we don't really know why or what it means. You know, it was about 10 years ago that TikTok came on the scene and really upended the entire internet attention economy. Like immediately, as soon as you open up the app, it's like, gotcha, here's another one. Here's another one. Here's another one. Next thing, you know, an hour's gone by and you've wasted it. No wonder, the hugely popular social media app has more than a billion users. And created a world where short-form videos, memes, quirky jokes, lots of personality, facial tics, catchphrases. these were sort of the coin of the realm and drove what popularity was for a long time.

And I'm not exactly sure what's going on, but to me it feels like a lot of that landscape is starting to become stale, crusty, old, janky. People don't really know how to work its levers in the way they once did. And so a lot of artists and entertainers and public figures who once seemed like bankable commodities are starting to seem less reliable. You know, it used to be that if someone caused their fans to go out and buy their new single at the store, those sales would be totaled and we would have a very clear sense of how popular that single was in relation to other things that were on sale that week. Now it's more about how often something is listened to on Spotify or for how long someone listens to it. And it's all these different kind of metrics that aren't even always. measuring what you might think of as traditional popularity. Some can have very high streaming numbers because they put out a lot of short songs that their fans all listen to over and over again,

even if another artist has a larger fan base that would kind of traditionally mean that they're more broadly popular. So it's created this sort of confusion about what popularity even means. Why does it seem like one bad movie or one bad album can end a career now? Was there once more room for artists to fail. I don't want to be too romantic about how things used to be. We all know that the tabloids and media critics of previous decades, whether that's the 2000s, the 90s, the 30s, we're quite vicious, quite gleeful about the failures of famous people. We all know how much downfalls can be glorified. We all know how much Schadenfreude runs our culture. I don't think any of that is new. I think that there's just this kind of feeling like their failure is our failure.

There's been a collapsing between the sort of normal civilian individual and the celebrity. That's partly because we all live our lives online and on social media. We have to curate our image and think about how we're coming across to strangers who will never meet in a way that like people not too long ago would have found totally weird. And so that's put us in this sort of celebrity mindset where we all have arcs and narratives. and brands. You know, we see how many people commented on our latest Instagram post, how many likes we got. So I think there's kind of almost an odd empathy for celebrities when they flop now. Is it possible for a flop to be good for an artist? I think 100% of flop era can set up

a really fun redemption arc for an artist. And we've seen a lot of them lately. You know, Madonna just put out this album Confessions, too, that fans are saying is her best. album in decades. And it's sort of, you can tell listening to it that it comes from a desire to sort of reclaim something that a lot of people felt like she lost, which was the sense of owning the dance floor. And so that was kind of like a flop to heroism story that has made for some really fun music. I'd also point to someone like the artist Slater. She's like this pop singer who all my friends are obsessed with right now. She put out this really crazy, noisy album

that is just finally starting to break through and rack up some chart numbers for her after years of trying. And she said that she recorded it when she was kind of at the end of her rope and about to quit the music industry because she put out a couple albums that were flops. And, you know, it

kind of creatively freed her up to kind of do what pleased her. I think that hope springs eternal in a way that, like, maybe didn't exist before. And so for an artist like Lizzo, I would bet money that she's taking notes. She's thinking very hard and she's plotting her comeback and I wouldn't necessarily bet against her.

Okay, so it is possible to claw your way back from a flop. But how do you avoid one in the first place? That's next. Support for the show comes from tachyatry. If you've been looking into mental health support, therapy can definitely help. But sometimes it's not the whole answer. Psychiatric care is a whole other side of the mental health equation, but the process of getting that care isn't always clear or easy.

That's why tachiatry exists. Tachiatry is a 100% online psychiatry practice that provides comprehensive evaluations, diagnoses, and ongoing medication management for conditions like ADHD, anxiety, depression, bipolar disorder, OCD, PTSD, insomnia, and more. Your provider can diagnose mental health conditions and prescribe you medication when it's needed. And because it's 100% online, you have a lot more flexibility. Your provider takes time to get to know you and tailor your treatment to fit just what you need.

Plus, all 800-plus tachyotry clinicians are in-network with major insurers. So if you're looking for care without the insurance headache and months-long wait lists, check out tachiatry. You can go to tachyotri.com slash explain it to complete the short assessment and get matched with an in-network psychiatrist in just a few minutes. That's tachiatry.com slash explain it to get matched in minutes. Support for today, Explain, comes from Found if your business finances have ever felt out of control. You might want to try Found.

Found gives business owners one place for banking, bookkeeping, and contractor payments with Found all of your businesses moving parts can finally work together. Found auto categorizes your expenses and captures receipts, so you're not stuck sorting through them at the end of the month. Instead, you see what you're earning, spending, and saving. You get visibility into your profit and loss so you can make calls about your business with confidence instead of waiting on your bookkeeper. You can also pay your contractors and keep their 1099s organized right from the app, which means one less headache during tax season. You can take back control of your business today.

Open a found account at found.com, spelled fownd.com. Found is a financial technology company. It is not a bank. Banking services are provided by lead bank, a member of the FDIC. found does not provide tax legal or accounting advice. Optional subscriptions to found plus for $35 a month or $315 a year or found pro for $80 a month or $720 a year. There are no monthly account maintenance fees, but other fees such as transactional fees for wires, instant transfers, and ATM apply. Read, found fee schedule.

I'm JQ. Back with More Explain It to Me. My name is Tom Brian, and I am the executive editor at StereoGum, the music website. Tom, you have spent years studying the songs that reach number one on the billboard charts. Yes, ma'am. So what makes a song not succeed? So the whole idea of a flop is relative, right? Like, there's a million songs on Spotify that nobody will ever hear. Those songs are not necessarily flops because they did not necessarily come with expectations.

When a major artist, someone who is expected to succeed, comes out and does not reach whatever benchmark that they or their fans or their label expect for them, then it can be embarrassing. And the internet being what it is, people love to seize upon that embarrassment and, you know, take off running with it. Are the songs that flop bad? Is that why they're flopping? In some cases, yeah. You can definitely pick out a few and be like, oh, like that wasn't the one. A lot of it is just timing and luck. And sometimes an artist comes along at the exact right moment and builds up goodwill and puts out the right song for them in that time. And then sometimes they misread the room in sort of howlingly, clangingly obvious ways and they end up not doing well. You know, it happens. It's happened to plenty of great people, plenty of stars. have bounced back from having flops, but it, you know, it does happen. Yeah, what are some really good songs that have flopped? Oh, well, geez. I guess as an online indie music critic, my sort of prototypical example is Emotion by

Harley-Gepson, not the song, The Whole album. But I need to tell you something. She had had this gigantic global breakout smash with the song, Call Me Maybe. And then the song, The Song, Call Me Maybe. And then the song, The album that she put out after this is this brilliant, layered, excellent pop record that became, I would say, influential upon the idea that you could be a pop star if it was a cult artist, like an indie rock band or an underground rapper or something. But it didn't sell. It didn't do numbers. And so in its moment, it was a critically beloved flop.

This is crazy. How much of becoming a hit is about the music itself and how much of it, if you can, if you can, can even measure that is about stuff like virality, marketing. Well, those things are so bound up with each other. And so, you know, especially a lot of the time artists are making songs that are somehow engineered to go viral. Or they're making songs that comment on their own public perception and, in effect, market themselves. And so when something like Lizzo comes along and puts out a record that doesn't do well, it becomes a a bigger story than just, oh, people weren't feeling this song.

It becomes like, oh, people don't like this person or this person has run out of their goodwill or whatever. And because, like, a Lizzo song, you hear her persona jumping through the speaker, whether the song does well or not. So the song and the artist become inextricable from each other. The song and the marketing become inextricable. There is another example of an artist who has gone from really high highs to very low flops that I would love to get into. And that's Katie Perry. I feel like we've come a long way from Left Shark at the Super Bowl. Like what happened there?

Katie Perry has had the career that pop stars used to have, where they have a crazy dominant stretch, where they're knocking out hit after hit after hit and they're unstoppable. According to Billboard, Perry is the first woman and second artist ever in the first. 53-year history of the Hot 100 to have five songs from one album hit number one on the chart. Katie Perry sure has something to roar about. The new song is officially her eighth number one single. And then everything kind of tails off over time and one album has five number one hits. Next album has two number one hits. Next has no significant hits at all but like a couple top tens. And it goes like that. You know, she put out an album right in the beginning of the pandemic and so you can say, well, that that one didn't do well, and that's not her fault. And then she spent a long time on American Idol, as a judge.

She spent a long time playing Las Vegas residencies. And then she was like, that's it. I'm quitting American Idol. I'm coming back. I'm being the pop star that you all want me to be. And she did a couple of things. She made a bad album, is one thing. She also reunited with Dr. Luke, who was the co-writer and producer of lots of her big hits, but who in the time since she stopped working with him, know, all this unsavory stuff about him, accusations were made. Keshah, who was friends with Katie Perry when she came up, was the person making those accusations. And so for her to get back with him while bringing this message of like, it's a woman's world, something like that was the lead single.

Oh, yeah. Sexy Confident. Yeah, I remember. So that's how a song goes from being a bad song to just a notorious flop. When not only does the song not perform. It doesn't get radio air playing streams and all that stuff. It actually like burns up a lot of the goodwill that this person has had. And it happens.

Wow. Do you ever feel like a plastic bag floating in the wind? Yeah, we all do. That's the power of it. Are there examples of songs that critics may be hated initially? And then over time, it's like, oh, this is actually a classic. So many. The songs, they were.

hits and were universally regarded as irritating in their time, they have a great hit rate. You know, people were annoyed by Mbop by Hanson. Or wannabe by the Spice Girls. It's so good, though. Yeah, those songs are fantastic. Like, Abba. Like, they were, I would say, widely regarded as a punchline. And now that is just an impeccable, beautiful, influential pop catalog.

like a song like the Quad City DJs come on and ride at the train. Like that's a, that's not a song. The critics were really lining up to praise in the 1990s. But as a person who was a child then, I can tell you that song goes so hard and like never stop going on. Oh my God. You talk about middle school dance. Like even when I was growing, listen, we're all going to form a chew-choo. Get your hands on my shoulders.

We are making a train around this gym. Absolutely. How do artists tend to respond if they've entered a flop era? Well, there's a grand, beautiful history of artists, one-hit wonders, or people who never quite connected for whatever reason, who instead of trying the same thing over and over again, they become behind-the-scenes figures. They write songs for other people, or they produce, or they become managers.

Max Martin, who is now ahead of John Lennon, but behind Paul McCartney in terms of, like, songwriters with number one hits, like the sheer number of them. Like he was the lead singer for a Swedish band in the 80s that was trying to be Bon Jovi and they never caught on. I didn't know that. Oh yeah. His band was called It's Alive.

You can look their songs up online. They're not that great. But he wound up making all these incredible records with all these different people. There's a lot of that. That has happened many, many times throughout. pop history, that it is certainly one way to deal with the flaw problem. Coming up, we talk with an artist who found a new way to make a head record. Support for the show comes from 11 Labs. Life is pain, says 11 Labs. Or that's what you might think

when you're in a lengthy customer service call with no end in sight. Well, 11 Labs says they have a solution. It's called 11 Agents. 11 agents is a platform for AI voice and chat agents that can actually listen, understand, and resolve customer issues. They say, for instance, they can look up your account, process, requests, and hand off to a person when needed. 11 agents helps create better experiences for customers, they say, while letting call centers and support teams focus on the issues that need personal touch. It's built for Enterprise Scale 2.11 agents handles more than 10 million conversations per week with SOC2, HIPAA, and PCI Certifications, Regional Data Residency, and even four deployed engineers who can work alongside your team to get agents into production. And if you run a business or handle customer operations across support sales or marketing, you can start a demo at 11 labs.io slash TE. See how 11 agents can fit into your workflows and help build experiences that your customers will actually love.

That's 11 labs.io slash TE spelled E L-E-V-E-N-L-A-B-S dot I-O-S-T. Support for this show comes from Masterclass. Learning a new skill comes with its own set of challenges. Time, effort, money, but if you really are dedicated to reaching another level, then Masterclass is a great place to start. Unlike other learning platforms, Masterclass puts you in the room with the people who defined their fields, not just experts, but the best in the world. You'll get unlimited access to over 200 plus classes taught by the world's best business leaders,

writers, chefs, and more. With Masterclass, you get thousands of bite-sized lessons. across 13 categories that can fit into even the busiest of schedules. Our colleague Claire White has tried Masterclass, and here's what she thinks. I'm having so much fun trying out Masterclass, specifically the ones I love are the culinary ones. They've got some really cool classes from amazing chefs like Gordon Ramsey and Thomas Keller, and they have some really, really great chefs teaching knife skills and fundamental cooking methods, things that are basics but are good to brush up on.

Masterclass keeps adding new classes, so there's never been a better time to get in. Right now, as a listener of this show, you get at least 15% off any annual membership at masterclass.com slash explain it. That's 15% off at masterclass.com slash explain it. Head to masterclass.com slash explain it to see the latest offer. It's Explained it to me. I'm JQ. My name is Dan Wilson. I'm a singer and a songwriter and record producer.

When people hear your name, there's probably one song in particular they think of. What is it? I guess it's probably closing time by my band Semi-Sonic. Take me back to when the song came out. How did it come about? And what was the response like? My wife and I were expecting our first child. And I was at the same time kind of writing songs

for a new semi-sonic album. And that was one of about 60 songs that I wrote to show the guys, John and Jake. And I had gotten the impression from the guys in the band that, no, this was not going to be the Dan Becomes a Dad album. So I kind of covertly wrote Closing Time.

About four lines into writing it, I was like, oh, this kind of sounds like it's about bar time, but also being born. When we finally recorded it, it was so kind of blazingly exciting to listen to that it had sort of for us kind of risen to the top of the pop. Pretty soon a whole bunch of crazy stuff happened. It got added to K. Rock in L.A., and that started this kind of domino effect of all the radio stations in the country playing it. And then it sort of took on this crazy life that strangely has not faded. It's still happening.

Is that the song that you want to be known for? How does it feel that that kind of is the signature song? I mean, awesome. I think it's a great song. When I listen to closing time, I just hear me and all my intentions and flaws and, you know, strengths, whatever. But I actually, like, some things that I've written with other people, I've felt more, like, I feel like when I listen to someone like you

that I did with Adele, I feel like there's a song that feels like a kind of a songwriting trademark or, like, calling card or whatever. And I think there's something more gratifying to write something that someone else covers, and then you can hear it and have an experience that's not connected to your own, like ego and self-image and so on. How did that transition come about?

Because I think for some people, having the big hit song, being the one singing it, having your face out there, that is the ultimate success. And you're very successful, but it maybe looks different from what people would imagine that looks like. Well, let's say if everything had gone, according to plan in life, I probably would have kept being on tour and kept making semi-sonic records. But the child that we had whose arrival is kind of part of closing time, Coco was very, very sick for several years. She was in the hospital for 11 months after she was born. That suddenly made it real hard for me to be away 200 nights a year.

I think I decided that I needed to reinvent myself, reshape my life so that I could be home more with my family. How did you figure out the way to do that reinvention? One of my earliest musical influences, I guess you'd say, although I didn't think of it as an influence when I was eight, but my parents listened to Carol King all the time. And Carol King, I feel the earth move on my feet. And Carol King, I figured out that she was the person who had written a bunch of other songs that I heard on the radio that she didn't sing. I think I figured out early that, like, oh, there's this whole other thing to write songs for other people. And Carol seemed to be almost like the gold standard of that kind of person, like very collaborative, but also had her own recording career. And I always tried to collaborate with people.

When I stopped touring with Semi-Sonic, you know, being a writer for other people was already a big part of my kind of musical dream. So it wasn't exactly a pivot. It was more like writing songs that could bring other people the kind of like crazy experiences that closing time brought me and John and Jake. It's kind of fun to be able to think, okay, if this song I'm writing with this person goes all the way, it's going to be their closing time. And that's just kind of exciting. I can tell just by talking to you how much you love music. Like you love it, you love making it. Like it just, it really does.

It radiates off of you. How do you keep that love of making the art at the forefront of it all? I feel like when I was in my 20s getting things going, I was really mad at the world for not paving the way for me. I would have a great idea and then nobody would appreciate it. And I kind of knew my ideas were good. So I can never say to somebody, don't be frustrated. I can never say to somebody like, chill out. It's going to be cool.

It's all about being a lifer and like enjoying the ride and like making beautiful or alarming or scary or fun things with your brilliant friends. And yet I kind of feel like if you can somehow learn, like if you can remind yourself almost that like, the things that look like success don't feel like success when they're happening. The thing that feels like success

in music is being in a session with other musicians or even alone and making something and going, well, that stands on its own. There's nothing more for me to do. Wow, and I love it. That's way more gratifying than taking

the same song and playing it on a huge stage. When someone like you was climbing up the chart, I was just worried the whole time. Like, I just worried that it would stop climbing and it was going to go back down. I literally spent more time hoping it wouldn't start going down the chart again

than I did saying, you know, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you for this thing that's happening. That's it for us this week. We're working on an episode all about the art of throwing the perfect party. We want to know what's the best party. you've ever gone to or hosted.

What made it unforgettable? Send us an email to AskVox at Vox.com or call 1-800-618-8-55. And if you find yourself at one this weekend, you can even call us from there. If you enjoyed this show, consider becoming a Vox member. Members get cool stuff,

like listening to this podcast ad-free. Head over to vox.com slash members to learn more. And now, it's credits time. Credits time. Time to say goodbye and also tell you who made the show. Produced by Hadima Moak defect, checked by Melissa Hirsch, didn't you know. Credits time, Ginny Lawton, edited. David Tadashore engineered what you heard Miranda Kennedy is our big boss and DP

and I'm JQ now go spread the word Thanks so much for subscribing and listening Thanks so much for subscribing and listening Thanks so much for subscribing and listening Thanks so much for subscribing and listening. I'll talk to you soon. Bye. Two and five Canadians will hear the words you have cancer. That's why every step and dollar raised matters.

On September 19th, join thousands in Toronto for the Princess Margaret Cancer Foundation walk. Challenge yourself, friends, and family to walk 21 kilometers in support of life-saving research. Together, we can carry the fire and help create a world free from the fear of cancer. Register today at pmcf walk.ca.ca. Hey y'all, it's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder what if? Like, what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you love and quality you can trust. Visit wayfair.ca.ca. Wayfair, every style, every home.