Lady Gaga - ARTPOP [2012]

M.I.A. + Sky >>>>> Katy + Gaga as far as anticipated late-in-the-year albums go.

"Dope" has a very drunk-karaoke feel to it, which is unnerving in a way.

"like i'm looking at the wikipedia page for artpop and apparently "aura" was co-written by infected mushroom?"

zero knowledge of them but I would bet, oh, $1 that it's a sample

― katherine, Sunday, November 3, 2013 2:37 PM (4 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

pretty sure they produced the song

Our collaboration with Gaga will also expose us the an audience that haven't heard of us before. But when this new audience will come to our show expecting to hear similar songs to "Aura", they'll be disappointed.

The Infected Mushroom track "Still Love Trance" in question.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJFaNaiXuCA

Yeah this album's kinda whatever. Some good stuff, some decent stuff. *shrugs* Born This Way begged for attention by not really having any "just ok" tracks. There were either huge highs or hilarious missteps. Here there's not much that's so bad as to be fascinating in it's terribleness, but also nothing so great as to be worthy of praise and obsessive listens and I don't know if that's a deliberate response to the reception of hr last album or not. I also think she might've tinkered with the songs a bit too much. Several songs were more sparse and straightforward when she did them live a while back but they worked, now a month or so later she's added unnecessary lyrics or vocals to stuff when she should've left well enough alone, so previous straightforward tacks feel cluttered and have had their best hooks removed or replaced with ineffective ones.

This is the album in which the Big Step is required but she treads water. Dunno if the marketplace will accommodate her in 2015.

Applause has done better on radio and will probably sell more than any song from Born This Way did with the exception of the lead single, so if the goal was to play it safe and win the public back with a collection of serviceable pop songs, it might pay off in the long run.

Yeah this album's kinda whatever. Some good stuff, some decent stuff. *shrugs* Born This Way begged for attention by not really having any "just ok" tracks. There were either huge highs or hilarious missteps. Here there's not much that's so bad as to be fascinating in it's terribleness, but also nothing so great as to be worthy of praise and obsessive listens and I don't know if that's a deliberate response to the reception of hr last album or not. I also think she might've tinkered with the songs a bit too much. Several songs were more sparse and straightforward when she did them live a while back but they worked, now a month or so later she's added unnecessary lyrics or vocals to stuff when she should've left well enough alone, so previous straightforward tacks feel cluttered and have had their best hooks removed or replaced with ineffective ones.

― Greer, Sunday, November 3, 2013 8:52 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

otmfm.

^^^ yeah. Some of it's clever. Some of it's stupid. It's just as overstuffed as BTW but with fewer good songs, but at least fewer horrible unlistenable production jobs. Love "Do What U Want", think "Fashion!" is hilarious (sounds like Phats 'n' Small's "Turnaround"), like a few other songs but wish they had the big choruses they demand like "G.U.Y.", enjoy "Donatella" despite its naffness.... but wtf is "Aura"? What a horrible mess!

Essentially, this album needs some choruses.

Applause has done better on radio and will probably sell more than any song from Born This Way did with the exception of the lead single, so if the goal was to play it safe and win the public back with a collection of serviceable pop songs, it might pay off in the long run.

― Greer, Sunday, November 3, 2013 9:14 PM (10 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

ehh "Applause" is #7 and rising on Radio Songs, could conceivably get higher than #4, which is where "Edge of Glory" peaked, but not necessarily. meanwhile "Edge" and "You And I" both went double platinum and "Applause" hasn't hit that number yet.

i'm guessing "applause" won't rise much higher in its radio numbers than it has. and yeah, i doubt it will reach the nearly 3 million sales that "edge" did.

Applause will probably be double platinum in like a month. Yeah I think Edge outpeaked it on radio, but that still makes Applause her biggest/first US radio hit since like early 2011.

her biggest hit since three singles ago! wowzers!

i mean "Applause" HAS had longer legs than i expected, after it fell so far short of "Roar" initially i expected it to have faded out and been replaced by a big pusher for a follow-up by now, but instead it's still going. but there's not really any metric by which its success is impressive.

haven't heard it yet but this seems like the wrong cultural moment to put out a song called "gypsy"

Sarcasm aside, it's relevant because her last two singles bombed on radio and her last album only produced two actual radio hits. The singles run from her last album was so terribly received that it lasted for a total of 10 months before she stopped releasing singles completely. So I don't think Applause's success is impressive, but it's noteworthy in that she's getting back a radio audience she clearly lost.

gaga's entire audience is basically the core demo of radio... how bad would her first single in two years have to be to bomb at radio?

ooooh i watched hr nu music vid th thr d..... it ws sooooooooooo ....... cooooooooooollllll/fun

Which electrofunk outfit is "Fashion!" a rip of? Chromeo? Ronika? hercues & love affair?

"Fashion!" is hilarious (sounds like Phats 'n' Small's "Turnaround")

OK, officially interested now.

this album is bloody exhausting, i cba

ooooof after "do what u want" taking my anticipation levels high again this is some crash. harsh-sounding slog, generally uninteresting ideas (apart from maybe the recurring use of that weird popping sound from faulty mp3s circa 2001). agree that it has similar faults to BTW but fewer highs (and "do what u want" aside, much lower highs). a few songs did pique the interest but the only new one i feel like wanting to return to is "swine"

"jewels n drugs" is really no "cake like lady gaga"

"cake like lady gaga" is probably better than a good 80% of the album tbh

Lady Gaga, Manager Troy Carter Split

"How dare you neglect to tell me the songs on my new album were not up to snuff or that the whole thing needed more work! You're fired!"

haha so i just got to the title track on this and it's by far the worst song so far

What's funny is if you read that link, they divide up the creative side of things as 95% Gaga and 5% her manager (he was, in turn, 95% of the business side), so if they parted due to the fabled "creative differences," that's some pretty hilarious math.

creative accounting differences

honestly listening to this album was like a hammer in my brain, i don't know if i can do it again

This would make an okay The Fame Monster-sized album, but I stress the "okay" part of that statement.

Also, I feel pretty comfortable declaring "Aura" to be the worst song she's ever made.

she has been interviewed by Howard Stern for the past two hours and is unfailingly thoughtful and likable.

Hopefully that will be available after the fact. I'd like to hear it.

Just played through this on Spotify. In addition to "Do What U Want", I really, really liked "Swine", "Sexxx Dreams" and "Jewels N' Drugs". Half of the album is decent/listenable, and then you have the horrorshow nightmare that is the first three songs which, as a whole, are so terrible that I don't see why anyone coming into this album not determined to play the whole thing wouldn't turn it off and proclaim it one of the worst things released this year.

^^^

Here's the Stern interview: http://soundcloud.com/howardstern/ladygagainterview

Ryan made me elisten to some of this last night

so the chorus of sexx dreams is p next level

verses eh, but that chorus .....

It's risen a bit in my estimation. I still have the same problems with it I had before, but after sitting with it a bit, it's a really...funny album I guess I'm realizing? It's knowingly ridiculous and indulges in that for a laugh as opposed to seeming as deathly serious as she did with a lot of Born This Way. Plus it passed my "music to clean the house to" test.

No.1 in the UK

The 999th number one album in the UK, in fact.

What will be #1000? Fire Music by Robbie Williams? Running On Empty by Jake Bugg? JLS' Greatest Hit? It's a thrill a second here.

yeah i'm just giving the album a chance to grow on me and it's doing that pretty well.

Ryan thinks one of them is her new Bad Romance, i forgot what it's called

gun or something, young gun, i don't know

maybe guy?

Not going well, all things considered

http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-11-19/lady-gagas-25-million-art-machine-cant-buy-a-real-hit

Ouch:
http://www.kingsofar.com/interscope-loses-25-million-promotional-bet-on-lady-gaga-artpop-bomb/

$25m figure has been disputed apparently. I naively assumed that Business Week wouldn't just pluck a figure out of the air. Sales figures still bad though.

dunno if selling less than three of the biggest names/campaigns of the year is so disastrous in itself

still - i remember arguing against gaga's career going downhill circa BTW because it was just one blip, wasn't that bad an album etc, but two consecutive commercial underperformances, the second of which is also a significant artistic decline...hard to ignore that. and i don't hear ANYTHING on artpop that could turn it round, esp now they blew "do what u want" as a promo single...

and it's not even weird or deliberately abrasive enough to be classed like yeezus or blackout - poor sales but in a way those add to the album's narrative, they had a point besides spawning hits. artpop's concept is boring and her execution of it self-important and stupid (also, largely hookless).

though i think my only other keeper off it apart from "do what u want" is "swine" which is probably the legit oddest thing she's ever recorded

but seriously...like, "cake like lady gaga" is better than 90% of this