The triumph of “Roar” over “Applause” reveals a philosophical rift between the two pop stars. As it turns out, people are more excited to hear themselves in a song than revel in someone else’s fame.
Katy Perry and Lady Gaga's comeback singles weren't meant to come out the same week. Perry's "Roar" leaked two days ahead of schedule, and Gaga's "Applause," originally slated for August 18th, was rushed out after a low-quality mp3 of the song leaked. Or so they say – it's not hard to imagine that Gaga intentionally jumped the gun to force a competition with her main rival on the pop charts. But regardless of how this came to be, this clash of pop divas has a clear and decisive winner: Katy Perry, whose single has far better buzz and has a firm lock on the top of the iTunes singles chart, while Gaga lags behind in second place. We won't have a clear idea of how much more Perry has sold compared to Gaga until next week, but the difference in views between the official lyrics videos for their songs is rather extreme. Perry's emoji-filled video for "Roar" was released two days ahead of the clip for "Applause," but nevertheless has 7.3 million views while Gaga is hovering just above 500K. (However, the "official audio" clip on Gaga's YouTube channel is over 9 million.)
