Lady Gaga - ARTPOP [2012]

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HAS had longer legs than i expected, after it fell so far short of "Roar" initially i expected it to have faded out and been replaced by a big pusher for a follow-up by now, but instead it's still going.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

i dunno if it's the case in every country/market but iirc it was decided that "Do What U Want" is now the 2nd single instead of "Venus," which is great news obviously but yeah i dunno if that or anything else on the album offers potential for a huge turnaround.

her commercial decline isn't really that unusual or extreme imo, but having multiple #1s right at the start of her career and getting all these Madonna-type comparisons set some pretty lofty expectations that maybe could never be fulfilled.

Amusing to me that even in 2013, some journalists can't reconcile the fact that an album can reach number one without being a "hit," as many traditionally understand it. More like, I dunno, a base hit.

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

― lex pretend, Wednesday, November 20, 2013 4:55 AM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

that song was awful cmon

i like this album the more i listen to it

not saying it wasn't xp

"cake like lady gaga" is arguably the only actively fun song she's done since the fame monster though

it's the kind of awful that makes you return to it rather than just boring awful like most of the album

specifically, the $25 million figure comes from a Katy Perry stan with an Examiner account (a penny-per-click site with minimal, if any vetting) whose "byline" is a photo of a girl she stole from somebody's flickr.

lmao those examiner articles have been hilarious. best music writing 2013.

also "do what u want" sounds so good on the radio despite the lack of "we don't give a fuuuuuuck"

I have decided I rather like this. The lack of hooks is less disappointing than the lack of lyrical content at this stage. It was always going to be another album about the intersection of art, gender politics, fashion and celebrity but it is strange that someone so adept at curating their visual identity, so heavily embedded in all four spheres and that is either working with or biting from some really heavy hitters in the culture industry has nothing of interest to say about any of it.

"cake like lady gaga" is arguably the only actively fun song she's done since the fame monster though

I think "Do What U Want" and "Sexxx Dreams" are both actively fun

also "do what u want" sounds so good on the radio despite the lack of "we don't give a fuuuuuuck"

― dyl, Wednesday, November 20, 2013 7:30 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Kells sounded fantastic going "we don't give a whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat" on SNL so i was very disappointed to hear the radio edit that just kind of awkwardly silences the first second of "fuuuu" and the last second of "uuuuck"

heard 'mary jane holland' at a bar last night and it sounded good as background music for a bar

I think I've decided I like this whole album now if I just don't play the first two tracks.

In which Chris Molanpny wonders if the album really flopped.

haha his assertion that Erotica is in retrospect a middling 3-star Madonna album will not go over well with ilx