In America, Britney had 2 #1's last year with Hold It Against Me and yes am including the S&M remix with Rihanna. Even Billboard counted it as a Britney Spears hit. Til The World Ends became her best ever radio song ever! That's right it's not ...Baby one More Time or Oops I did It Again or even Toxic. I was quite suprised by that. Anyways, I Wanna Go had great radio success also and it became her 3rd top 10 hit from her Femme Fatale album which was the most top 10's she had in her career. Britney had 4 top 10 hits last year and didn't do any promotion really for her new album.

Lady Gaga in America only had great radio success with Born This Way and The Edge of Glory while You and I did get some support but didn't get as popular as BTW or TEOG. She only had 1 number 1 hit. Judas hardly got any radio attention but did debut in the top 10 because of strong downloads. Gaga did have 4 top 10 hits and the album sales did well because Gaga did promote alot.

What do you think? Did Britney do better than Gaga despite the album sales? Or does Gaga still rule despite only getting 2 songs being overplayed?

I was pleasantly surprised by that to be honest. Britney is superior in almost every way, but usually not in mainstream success lately which is easy to understand. Britney had a fantastic year in 2011, Till The World Ends must have been a bigger smash than I had originally thought!

Well to start with Britney didn't come out hyping her album to be the "best of the decade".
Till the World Ends is absolutely brilliant. I'm not surprised it was a major radio hit. Apart from Edge of Glory, most songs from BTW were pretty average IMO and a major fail. Well, maybe not a major fail if it hadn't been hyped up so much.

I swear there were quite a few GaGa songs floating around last year so they probably cancelled each other out.

Not really, the Born This Way album campaign started out strong but as it went a long it got weaker and weaker, then with Marry the Night it just fell apart.

The single choices were poor and the timing was bad. She shouldn't have released Judas while she was touring as she couldn't promote it properly and You and I was a poor single choice. Hair wouldve been better

It strange because it seemed as though the whole BTW campaign started out so clear and defined and then it all seemed to fall to pieces. Throwing out MTN just seemed desperate and now we're at the other end of the era it just seems like a huge sloppy mess.

Maybe there was too much going on for her and her team to cope with. Hopefully Gaga will come back more focused next time.

I think they thought the album was better than it was. Maybe they won't be so complacent next time but then again Gaga has started hype for the next album already on her twitter. I really liked BTW but it wasn't really very commercial hence why the singles suffered

I always had the impression that they knew it wasn't as commercial as her previous albums but it had much more substance and so would push it hard because if anyone was going to get the commercial music buying public to venture onto something different it would be Gaga...but then nothing really happened.

Maybe Adele stole their thunder, she did become impossible to keep up with in the end.

Britney had no promo (literally!! She only made 3 appearances during the first week and then she never bothered again) and that's why her album didn't sell, because singles can sell themselves with all the airplay, but you can't convince anyone that isn't already a fan to go give 10 dollars to buy the full album unless you promote it!

GaGa on the other hand promoted each and every one of her singles, yet it was obvious that the masses weren't into any of them, not even the lead single tbh. Her airplay was stronger than Britney's in the first week of release of the first 4 singles, but then when the singles weren't doing that well, radio would reduce the spins. She sold quite a lot of albums, though, so her era overall was a success, moderate for her standards, but still a success

It sold so much because of the amazon offer although I appreciate that Gaga and Interscope had nothing to do with that. It's not a total failure as like you said it did fairly well and certainly isn't a bad album at all. She maybe takes it all too seriously and it isn't much 'fun' but it's a very good album overall. The Fame Monster was her best though as it had a mixture of fun pop and dark elements

Its because Britney's latest songs are more radio friendly, not about gay rights or feminism, its easy to listen to and its fun not having to listen to preaching whilst trying to enjoy a song.

Receipts?

GaGa's whole last era was a flop. She tried every trick in the book from dressing up as a man to wearing steaks but none of it worked. Britney turns up, does little to no promo and still manages to blitz GaGa on radio.

Even when she mimed S&M and did the remix with Rihanna there was a huge huge frenzy. Looks like GaGa still has a long way to go.

BTW must be one of the most successful unsuccessful albums in recent memory judging by the way so many seem to totally disregard actuality and focus on their biased interpretation of events.

Most stated the actuality that the campaign started off really well but went downhill afterwards. I personally don't see anything biased there.

It started off in a blaze of glory but turned into a damp squib by the end. The Jo Calderone thing was embarrassing and I hate the overly long videos. A lot of people felt deflated as they were thinking they'd be hearing the best album of the decade

In what way though?

Her 1st, 3rd and 4th singles were big hits (BTW: 3.4 million, TEOG: 2.4 million, Y&I: 1.8 million). The 2nd single was a short lived, moderate stumble (Judas: 850k) and the only real flop was the 5th single (MTN: 500k) which was seemingly pulled from radio by Interscope when it wasn't looking good.

That's a bit up and down to really be classed as downhill after starting off well. Even if it did, surely that's the pattern most album campaigns follow? As more albums shift and interest wains, singles sell less and therefore chart lower?

Album wise, it's really no surprise it went the way it did. Massive fanbase = front loaded sales. 2+ million is a good result for 10 months on sale.

Not saying it was flaw free and full of brilliance from beginning to end, but the campaign only really died with MTN...which was the 5th single from a big selling album. I just feel people are making it seem like a more dramatic turn of events than it was. Both fan and non alike.

Only about 400k of the 1.1 million first week sales came from the Amazon offer, and even then nobody knows who would or wouldn't have bought it anyway. If an album you wanted was being offered for 99c, you would buy it wouldn't you?

And even with the remaining 700k sales, that's only about 200k less than Britney's entire sales for Femme Fatale in the US...

I love how you like quoting figures and all but the OP is talking about US radio airplay?

I think Gaga and Britney both did quite well in 2011 overall, Judas messed things up so they quickly switched to The Edge of Glory to repair the damage. Overall could of gone better for both Gaga's release schedule was a mess and well Britney's album didn't exactly fly of the sheleves, but overall they both had good "eras"

Radio listeners enjoyed songs like hold it against me, born this way, the edge of glory, til the world ends and i wanna go

"Till the World Ends" is a great pop song that sadly didn't even break the top 20 here in the UK. She should have hauled ass over here and pushed it.

I like Lady GaGa but I love Britney more, I think the thing with Lady GaGa is that she is so overrated, she might be a good singer but every thing GaGa has done Madonna's been there and brought the T-Shirt.

its interesting