Lady Gaga - ARTPOP [2012]

Start at G.U.Y. and never look back.

Mentioned to Chris on twitter that the erotica comparison is still a rough one for gaga, suggesting she's achieved ditahood in half the time and a third of the hits. Also despite Gagas obv desire for Madonna parallels, a better one might be cyndi Lauper, another broadway influenced weirdo who also was showing strain by album 3 and a half, despite having better pipes and more acclaim for subversive than Madonna, who critics liked far less before success made her undeniable. In that sense, the Madonna might be Katy perry, still on her true blue.

Lauper never had an imperial phase though, right?

the cracks def showed on True Colors (which we may have discussed on the NJ thread but disqualified cuz it didn't go triple platinum or something). And I don't remember any articles devoted to analyzing What "She-Bop" Means in academic journals.

True, but Gagas was in itself secondhand. Obv all parallels like this aren't note for note - sadly we've yet to see Gagas Vibes.

my beef with Chris' argument is that even in 1992 Erotica had its defenders: the album's commercial disappointment influenced the daily press, which reacted by thinking she was due for a fall. Whereas no one has claimed ARTPOP is 5-star masterpiece.

Academics jumping the gun totally suggests she's a Lauper mistaken for a Madonna.

i had a half-formed thesis a few years ago that in our age of quirky squeaky-voiced pop queens we had a lot of Laupers and no Madonna but i couldn't bring myself to flatter most of those gals with the Cyndi comparison

It might be cool to put together a list of imperial phases or even discuss what an imperial phase is: Elton 1973-1976, Madonna 1984-1991, Diddy 1994-1999. In the podcast with sw00ds and Chris about Pet Shop Boys a few nights ago, I said Macca & Wings from 1974-76 when even a song about a doorbell got to #3.

multiple xps

divahood in half the time and a third of the hits might be appropriate for an era where that point is debated via messages limited to 140 characters

imo the main thing that sets Madonna, Cyndi, and Gaga apart from their respective contemporaries is (and this sounds corny) individuality and a willingness to play with melody. All these girls singing Dr. Luke songs are basically just working from a recipe. Even if I like some Katy Perry and Ke$ha songs, or any of the other artists who engage in that heavily streamlined, almost stamped out in a machine shop, type of single, I get the sense that they're going to regret not working harder to record different kinds of songs and release different kinds of singles.

oh I dunno: one of the problems with an album like Usher's Looking 4 Myself is that it's designed to be marketed to different audiences, therefore he throws every trend in there hoping everybody bites.

I said dita-hood not divahood.

The problem with aggressively aping an arc is you burn through it quicker. Just as rock bands try to make their sgt peppers by album three, unable to solidify their status with a Beatles for sale, gaga didn't bother creating remotely as massive a big-beyond-her-persona songbook as Madge, jumping straight to personas and outrage and like yo you forgot "angel" not to mention having a sense of humor .

Honestly the jig was up with gaga when she did that Danny zuko character at the vmas.

Have there been any bonus tracks pop up for this album yet? I just checked the Japanese/Asian versions and all they come with is remixes for Applause and a dvd of the iTunes Festival performance.

I think it's a colossal misread to think Gaga doesn't have a sense of humor, especially this go around where she's singing about strutting for Greek deities, equating love with twitter retweets and doing drunken jazzercise routines with R. Kelly on SNL.

it was definitely a reductive way to phrase it and yeah, she's getting better, but there's just something relatively guarded about her compared to '80s madonna, and the fact that you said "esp this go around" suggests you know what i'm talking about

part of why i think perry, kesha, minaj, and swift are all more plausible "new madonnas" than gaga (though kesha and minaj are definitely falling behind in that race) is that all of them get closer to madonna's "why are you offended? i'm just being me, having it all" energy, where gaga is more "are you offended yet? please be offended" - the dita thing.

I also disagree with Artpop being her Erotica. I think Born This Way was her Erotica: technically successful, mostly due to previous career highs, but seen as disappointing and not up to the artist's standards, home to a couple of hits as well as some forgettable duds and the beginning of a strong backlash of public opinion due to oversaturation. Artpop is more her Bedtime Stories; the attempt at reclamation of public interest and a return to a bit of a safer lane for the popstar, destined to very limited commercial success because it's coming off of an album where a lot of public goodwill was squandered.

god, if she's already at bedtime stories on album 3.5...

if this flops maybe she'll go straight to confessions on a dance floor

She said in the recent Stern interview that she's been talking to Rick Rubin about an album of stripped down ballads sooner or later, so what would that be?

if it gets delayed, it could be her A Hat Full Of Stars

part of why i think perry, kesha, minaj, and swift are all more plausible "new madonnas" than gaga (though kesha and minaj are definitely falling behind in that race) is that all of them get closer to madonna's "why are you offended? i'm just being me, having it all" energy, where gaga is more "are you offended yet? please be offended" - the dita thing.

― da croupier, Thursday, November 21, 2013 9:23 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Madonna, for better or worse, toyed with the idea of embodying or being associated with the dangerous Other in a way Swift and Perry never will for fear of alienating their core fanbase aka middle America.

yeah, i'm not really suggesting that any of these people ARE the new madonna, just that there's reasons they fit the bill more than gaga (not in the least, in perry and swift's case, commercially)

also, re: her being a cyndi or a madonna, can you more easily see gaga hoofing it for conglomerates in 20 years or winning a Tony for Best Original Score?

Greer, the problem with dealing in perceptions is that you bump into the million-strong ILX minority that has always thought Erotica her best.

I'm aware of the existence of that contagion here.

contingent*, actually nevermind, I was right the first time.

Artpop is more her Bedtime Stories; the attempt at reclamation of public interest and a return to a bit of a safer lane for the popstar, destined to very limited commercial success because it's coming off of an album where a lot of public goodwill was squandered.

"Applause" wasn't "Secret" although "Do What U Want" may prove her "Take a Bow" (sub Kels for Babyface).

part of why i think perry, kesha, minaj, and swift are all more plausible "new madonnas" than gaga (though kesha and minaj are definitely falling behind in that race) is that all of them get closer to madonna's "why are you offended? i'm just being me, having it all" energy, where gaga is more "are you offended yet? please be offended" - the dita thing.
― da croupier, Thursday, November 21, 2013 9:23 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Madonna, for better or worse, toyed with the idea of embodying or being associated with the dangerous Other in a way Swift and Perry never will for fear of alienating their core fanbase aka middle America.

― Greer, vendredi 22 novembre 2013 02:33 (2 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Rihanna is probably the closest to being the "new Madonna". She's had tons of hits. She's seen as some sort of bad girl with a big sexuality. She changes her look a lot. But somehow she's nowhere near having the same cultural impact.

rihanna's a little too moneyball for madonna imo (though she certainly merited being on that shortlist i wrote) - amazing career longevity, but only one multi-platinum album

well, these days having more than one multi-platinum album is basically enough to make you the new MJ. it was funny how Rihanna just reached 10 million albums sold while her singles sales are at least 7 or 8 times that.

I'm not sure what moneyball means, but imo the problem with Rihanna (especially compared to Madonna) is she's not really interesting.

the comparisons to previous eras don't really make much sense for any of this era's pop girls imo. reading through this thread there was a lot of hmm that makes sense if you kinda squint but not really. none of them fit the madonna arc or the cyndi arc exactly, and i don't think any of them really could in this age.

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.

this is v otm. and of course there's no obligation for gaga to say anything of interest but the vast chasm between her talk and her walk is more and more apparent.

also neither born this way nor artpop are her erotica, in her fucking dreams

Nobody ever will have another Erotica anymore than any old religion will ever have a new holy text.

^^^^^

Who needs the Bhagavad Gita when we've got Dita?

Col. Sanders couldn't have said it better.

of course no one can fit anyone's arc exactly - how could they? it's in how they're similar AND how they differ that comparing arcs can be interesting and informative (to pop music history nerds of a certain stripe at least). i don't get when people are like "ah but cyndi never popped out of an egg" as if that means gaga's career isn't evolving in a form closer to cyndi's than madonna's.

though yeah, because every person and every life is a unique snowflake, gaga's having more hits (if minor compared to madonna) on album 3.5 than cyndi was at that time. I just bring it up in the context of "this is gaga's erotica," which both accepts her desire to be compared to madonna while also undermining it by suggesting the bloom came off the rose far more quickly.

it'd be tempting to also point out that gaga can't be "the new madonna" when part of madonna's appeal was her relative unprecedentedness, but as I was a wee babe for her first few albums, does anyone a lil older know who cynics were comparing her to during the part of her career where she could have been written off as a prefab pixie?

I don't know if she was compared TO anyone but certainly she suffered initially from invidious comparisons with Cyndi, who had a hand in writing a few songs on the duet and chose covers that Rolling Stone editors loved in their original forms. Maybe David Fricke and Parke Puterbaugh thought she wasn't as smart as Debbie Harry or Chrissie.

yeah i def know the whole critical stance on cyndi vs madonna at the time, which is part of why when people say "katy can't be madonna, she's too stupid, safe and prefab" i think it's worth remembering that's how madonna was seen by critic-types compared to cyndi at least initially (though i too think katy is stupid, safe and prefab compared to even early madonna)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Pn0JKmy5-M

This is her The Civil Wars after her Einstein on the Beach, or her Banality after Luxury and Degradation, whereas Kanye just released his Made in Heaven this week.

if this flops maybe she'll go straight to confessions on a dance floor

― da croupier, Thursday, November 21, 2013 9:26 PM (2 days ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

The sooner the better.

Finally listened to this. First impression was that it's more enjoyable than this thread would have one believe, but certainly underwritten, even moreso than BTW. Lots of hooks that I enjoyed sitting in songs that were otherwise kind of ordinary or even a drag. But I didn't hate it. Will give it a few more spins. Would be bummed if I had to give up the ghost on her completely.