Poll: Lady Gaga, Britney Spears & Katy Perry’s Pop Single Slump — Who’ll Bounce Back First?

If you’re thinking something seems a bit wobbly with the reigning giants of pop — in this case: Britney Spears, Katy Perry and Lady Gaga —  truth be told, we’ve seen this all before. All one really need to do is go back about 15 years, to when just after the millennium had turned, when radio’s then-ruling divas found themselves out of step with both the charts and the airwaves.

Need a quick recap? Here we go: Mariah Carey, who’d racked up her 14th and 15th chart-topping singles (“Heartbreaker” and “Thank God I Found You”) just a year prior, bombed with 2001 film Glitter and its accompanying soundtrack, while subsequent album Charmbracelet became her first to fail at producing any Top 40 hits. Likewise, Madonna followed up the massive success of award-winning albums Ray Of Light and Music with the disappointing American Life in 2003. Whitney Houston, who’d sold 11 million copies of 1998’s My Love Is Your Love, dropped her next studio album, Just Whitney, toward the end of 2002. Can you name one song off of it? And don’t even get us started on Janet Jackson and Nipplegate.

So let’s bring this back to 2016. Mid-summer this year, Britney Spears released what seemed like was going to be a massive comeback single, “Make Me” — only it wasn’t. The song creaked into the Top 20 on the Billboard Hot 100 then slid out of sight weeks ago, despite Spears’ high-profile performance at the MTV Video Music Awards in August.

The same day we got “Make Me,” Katy Perry offered up surprise standalone single “Rise.” Alas, not even relentless plays during NBC’s Olympic games coverage could send the inspirational ballad to the soaring heights of Perry’s previous smashes like “Teenage Dream,” “Firework” and “Dark Horse.”

That brings us to Lady Gaga‘s “Perfect Illusion,” off the upcoming Joanne, which looks like — unless there’s some divine intervention from the pop gods above — it will go down as her first lead single to miss the Top 10. In fact, after debuting at #15 on the Hot 100 just two weeks ago, “Perfect Illusion” has dramatically plunged down the chart. (This week it’s at #59.)

So, ultimately, what’s going on? For one, maybe, just maybe, all three songs weren’t up to scratch. Perhaps they’re just not as good as fans were expecting them to be. Britney came out of the gate ahead of Glory with a ballad. No one really knew Katy had a single on the way, and, again: ballad…not that there’s anything wrong with a good ballad; but maybe the slower tempo material is best left for, say, the third or fourth single? And then there’s Gaga, who switched up her signature dance-pop sound and gave her followers a much more low-key music video than they’d grown accustomed to.

Can Britney, Katy and Gaga get back on track? If history has taught us anything, the answer to that question is yes, it’s very likely they can. Mariah returned to form after her Glitter/Charmbracelet double-slip with the massive Emancipation Of Mimi in 2005. That same year, Madonna unleashed what’s considered one of her career-best releases, Confessions On A Dance Floor. Before her untimely death in 2012, Whitney bounced back with the acclaimed I Look To You, while Janet gave us her stellar Unbreakable last October, following a seven-year break in recording.

Album-wise, it’s too soon to tell what future hits or misses Perry and even Gaga have lying in wait just yet. But in the instances of the above-mentioned elder divas of pop, the lesson learned is that all it really takes is one solid project to get back on top, and back in the good graces of the music-consuming public.

All of this brings us to our latest poll, which you can exercise your democratic right with below.

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Do you think your favorite pop dolls have more hits up their be-jeweled sleeves? Let us know below!