It was proven that not everyone can have their cake and eat it too when this week’s Billboard 200 chart was released. At #1 was Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream which was expected after the major success of her singles, “California Girls,” “Teenage Dream,” and the promo circus that was put together by her label. What wasn’t expected was although Perry was #1, her sales’ numbers were lacking. Teenage Dream sold about 192,000 copies which is not horrible by today’s music industry standards but is far off from earlier predictions. Early predictions had Perry estimated to sell near Gold numbers: near 400,000.

In a recent MTV article, the spotlight is put on Perry’s latest album as being more of a greatest hits collection than a “cohesive” list of songs. [READ HERE] Which makes sense as it seems people nowadays like their music uptempo and short as possible. So it’s almost as if the record labels know they won’t make the money with album sales so they say, “it’s all about the singles.”

There’s no sense in fighting the change; the days of each of your albums going Diamond with 2-5 #1 singles are over. Mariah Carey was the last to do accomplish that feat. Even Britney Spears who sold a ton of albums still only achieved her second #1 single about 10 years into her career and we still think that had to do with politics. In a similar situation, Alicia Keys couldn’t get a single to chart properly to save her life off the The Element of Freedom but that album surely went on to sell near-Gold figures in its first week alone and became Platinum soon after. On the contrary, Rihanna has hits upon hits especially only being around for five years yet her albums sales are nothing to boast about. Eminem is the only one out right now who can top both the singles’ and album charts along with Lady GaGa of the new decade of Pop Stars.

So as it stands the current crop of Pop stars are catering to listeners who appreciate a “fun” single instead of a “solid” album. But what will work for Perry is she has so many singles on Teenage Dream that they will keep the listeners’ attention and cause the album to stay in the charts for a long while.