Lady Gaga - ARTPOP [2012]

It was just a little too much, too soon.

The only song I like more now is "Marry The Night" but otherwise I still love about half of it.

Yeah, Marry The Night has turned into one of my favorites.

I still despise "Marry The Night"

really the only songs on that album I would ever actively choose to play are "Government Hooker" and "The Edge of Glory" (I wouldn't turn off "Born This Way", "Bloody Mary" or "You and I" if someone else played them)

imperfect metaphor but I'll be impressed if Gaga winds up more Madonna in career arc than Cyndi Lauper

you wouldn't reach over and turn off his iPod, in other words

xpost

well no, that would be rude

unless he was playing "Americano", then I would destroy the iPod to put it out of its misery

i tried hard to embrace born this way, but wasn't ever quite able to get there (despite my enthusing in the discussion thread). it's got tons of good ideas, but few of them really gel, and the sound of the thing is terribly off-putting. "highway unicorn" and "heavy metal lover" are the only songs i'm still happy to hear.

omigod I forgot about "Highway Unicorn"

imperfect metaphor but I'll be impressed if Gaga winds up more Madonna in career arc than Cyndi Lauper

― da croupier, Monday, August 6, 2012 2:29 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Does that mean that Fame Monster is her True Colors and the next one will be the one with "I Drove All Night"? Because, if so, then she's operating at a higher level than Lauper was.

(She needs a throwaway soundtrack single like "Goonies" though.)

goonies isn't throwaway

Oh wait, I guess Born This Way would've been the one with "I Drove All Night" (I should just google its real title). That being the case, she's way closer to Madonna's arc than Lauper's.

Perhaps throwaway was a poor word choice. Standalone, perhaps.

Perhaps.

As I said "imperfect metaphor" but i see her slipping into professionalism w/ wacky hair where someone like Ke$ha or Nicki Minaj seems to be doing a better job dishing out a ton of candy-pop and riling people just by being themselves.

every single off BTW is worse than any single off FM

& least when the same was true w/ justin it went in the service of his second album being undeniably better & more cohesive

BTW is certainly the only blockbuster pop album in recent memory whose album tracks I enjoyed more than the singles.

Man y'all are crazy; Fame/FM sounded so unexceptional and cookie-cutter (and also super repetitive) and BTW seemed like the first time she considered approaching something that might be on some planet "artistic" or "experimental" or some shit (even though it totally wasn't). Why does she refuse to make wacky music to fit her "wacky" persona?

i dunno, born this way is pretty arch

Isn't Kesha still at the album and ep stage? no second record from her yet, right?

i think cyndi lauper still has a p loyal following

She does. Now if only she'd record a proper album rather than collections of blues, showtunes and remakes of her old songs with trendy new artists, which is what she's been doing for the last decade-ish.

She made a pop album just a few years ago. It was terrible, but at least it wasn't any of those things you mentioned.

Born This Way is that weird case of an album that had four top-ten singles, including one number-one, and yet has somehow diminished the artist in some weird undefinable way. Like, after Fame Monster she was clearly a force of nature but after Born This Way she feels more like an ordinary musical act. And that's despite trying to seem as extraordinary as possible, keeping up the weirdness, etc. etc. I think it was just a little too soon - at least half the songs really could have benefited from a couple more rounds of work from everybody involved. (OTOH, maybe she just wanted to strike while the iron was hot - and who's to say that was the wrong call commercially?)

I have no real beef with any of the singles but the album material has never sunk its claws into me. Gonna give it another spin tonight, keep trying at it. I'm still a fan, still stoked about the new one (horrible title aside), but there was a point where I was really going out of my way to champion her and Born This Way kind of stalled that out.

yea Doctor Casino, jordan and lex all otm re BTW and FM

there are definitely moments on FM that changed me. like forever.

not sure what to say about artpop the title

That's a good insight, Doctor C. I don't agree with it at all though, mostly the part about Gaga being a force of nature. Forces of nature don't release to my ears so many crap singles.

really the only songs on that album I would ever actively choose to play are "Government Hooker" and "The Edge of Glory" (I wouldn't turn off "Born This Way", "Bloody Mary" or "You and I" if someone else played them)

This is pretty OTM, though I'd bump up all three of those "wouldn't turn off" songs to "would not skip past on my own iPod" in addition to maybe "Judas" and "Heavy Metal Lover."

In other words, I still like that album at least better than The Fame, fuiud.

yep

That's a good insight, Doctor C. I don't agree with it at all though, mostly the part about Gaga being a force of nature. Forces of nature don't release to my ears so many crap singles.

― a regina spektor is haunting europe (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Monday, August 6, 2012 7:47 PM Bookmark

YMMV I guess - - - I think this is a pretty damned solid run:

Just Dance
Poker Face
LoveGame
Paparazzi
Bad Romance
Telephone
Alejandro

I mean, the only one of those that I'd rank as sub-par is "LoveGame," but maybe it can get some bonus points for non-US "Eh, Eh" which I find very charming and hooky. Is there another pop act right now, working at her scale, with such a consistent string of singles straight out of the gate?

only like "Just Dance" and "Alejandro" from that sequence.

holy moly, well yeah in that case, definitely not your cup of tea!

Bad Romance --> Telephone is probably the best one-two of her career.

that run was undeniably huge chart-wise but i only really loved "Bad Romance" and liked "Alejandro," came around to a couple of the others after hating them initially. definitely prefer BTW's run of singles as inconsistent as it is, and enjoy BTW a lot as an album.

although Casino is definitely otm that BTW was too big to fail but managed to fail in the sense that it took the wind out of her sales, blew all that powerful momentum she'd had for a couple years.

Bad Romance --> Telephone is probably the best one-two of her career.

Yup.

took the wind out of her sales

typo or pun?

lol typo

I would like to read more about how BTW stopped her momentum or stripped her of lustre (not being sarcastic).

i mean it was the 2nd best selling album of '11 behind (WAY behind) Adele, but the fact that anyone could upstage her in her preordained year was pretty damning (xpost)

I mean, is there really a sense that BTW reduced her to an "ordinary musical act"? The album went double platinum and produced four consecutive top ten singles.

Not everyone here likes "Hair" and "Government Hooker" as much as I do but those are the kind of batshit moments I want from forces of nature, and both were the first time she convinced me she had it in her.

yeah but it was also concurrent with someone previously considered not on her level having 6 consecutive #1s (xpost)

or i guess 5 consecutive, 6 non-consecutive

oh she'll never work with Dr. Luke and has been working less and less w/ RedOne. clunkers, though, yes, probably.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

― Diary of a Whiney Kid: Dog Days (some dude), Monday, August 6, 2012 5:43 AM (13 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Can I get the underlined portion in writing?

seems like what made much of BTW ordinary was the production + lack of nuance in the songcraft. whereas those things made Edge Of Glory a success, they hindered a lot of the album.

well hey maybe you know something i don't, but iirc last year Luke signed a deal to work exclusively with Sony artists (which Gaga is not)

in a way i think BTW's performance was similar to Beyonce's B'Day -- came at a point when they seemed kind of unstoppable and there was a building expectation that they'd have a "Crazy In Love"/"Bad Romance" megahit out of the gate every time, negative reaction to "Deja Vu"/"Judas" not being that got a little over the top, album ended up with some chart-toppers and a healthy run of moderate hits anyway.

kind of surprised she didn't go with someone like 'artpop' for the LAST one since that was around the time she and kanye were buddying up and unsubtly putting themselves in the lineage of warhol

er someone = something

That's the weird thing. It's not like the revelations about either of them were really news to anyone, let alone anyone in the music / fashion industries. What kind of reaction was she expecting and how can her judgement have been so terribly wrong in the first place?

Wait, isn't this a case of a popstar receiving good advice and then electing to follow it? I mean, how many times have we gone through the 'shouldn't someone have told them that was offensive?' Or 'Why didn't they listen?' I'd rather hold her to her last judgement, not her initial one.

yeah obv the initial idea was terrible on every level and i guess at least she recognised that and didn't go through with it anyway for the clicks? hard to take someone to task for something they DIDN'T release.

the putative theme of the video makes it more ~shocking but the actual problem isn't a complex theme clumsily handled, it's megastars continuing to work with known predators no matter what the actual content produced is like, so, like, beyoncé working with richardson on an actually released product is more problematic to me i think, even if that video is very innocent (and artistically better)

it's funny to me because the whole idea was clearly to be provocative and controversial, from writing the song to putting R. on it to having Richardson do the video (Gaga says she didn't know about the allegations against TR but even so his work is known for being sexual and 'edgy'). obviously it's possible to go down that road without going this far -- i still think the song itself is pretty brilliant -- but it definitely feels like Gaga knew exactly what she was doing and can't go oh, sorry, didn't mean to offend.

It's virtually impossible for anyone with a tangential interest in fashion to have not heard the allegations against Richardson. Nobody as embedded in the culture as Gaga could have avoided them for several years, not be aware of why he has been dropped by so many high-profile clients, not know why UK fashion magazines refuse to work with him, etc. Pleading bad judgement rather than ignorance would be better.

i get the impression that a lot of people in show business 'know' about how Richardson operates and just don't think it's that big a deal and maybe the people who have complained aren't ready for how the fashion industry works or something. i mean, the guy still has tons of huge clients, the pushback on a major scale has been relatively recent.

There's definitely a lot of that. A friend who's now an editor at a magazine that refuses to work with him mentioned that when she started in the industry about ten years ago it was widely known that he was sexually abusive and the only thing the company she was with at the time did was to make sure that they only gave him expendable models they didn't mind not seeing again. A lot of clients dropped him quietly as they didn't want to look uncool by stating their reasons in public but there has been a fairly significant shift away from him for a couple of years. The public pushback has been going on since at least 2010, though.

yeah it's def been a public topic of discussion for a while. feels like the tipping point of celebrities even thinking about being wary of him has been in only the last year though.

the thing is, there's no way to know without a lot more information and/or business-side reporting a) how many other people almost did ridiculously offensive projects but scrapped them before anyone saw, and b) how much gaga was even involved with getting terry richardson on board, or who contributed what creative input. (for all we know the thing wasn't scrapped because of the r. kelly stuff earlier this year but because of some more mundane disagreement behind the scenes, like with joseph kahn and edge of glory.)

yeah when the video got shelved right after the Voice's big R. piece it seemed very obviously about that, although that was before the "getting impregnated while unconscious" plotline of the video was revealed.

was that before or after she and r kelly did that jfk-marilyn thing on an awards show?

and while yeah, obv it's not as "wtf" as if she released it triumphantly, i don't feel like patting her on the back for (at best, giving her the benefit of the doubt) realizing she'd filmed a rape joke with two rapists and then tweeting about being betrayed.

sorry, not tweeting - blogging this, which makes even less sense with the alleged context

https://littlemonsters.com/post/52c9ee5da296c8b7228b4f86

It is late because, just like with the Applause video unfortunately, I was given a week to plan and execute it. It is very devastating for someone like me, I devote every moment of my life to creating fantasies for you. All my my most successful videos were planned over a period of time when I was rested and my creativity was honored. Those who have betrayed me gravely mismanaged my time and health and left me on my own to damage control any problems that ensued as a result. Millions of dollars are not enough for some people. They want billions. Then they need trillions. I was not enough for some people. They wanted more. I am very grateful to the photographers and designers who have always stood by me to make sure my fans are never aware of the things that happen behind the scenes, but unfortunately after my surgery I was too sick, too tired, and too sad to control the damage on my own. My label was not aware that this was going on. The next few months of ARTPOP will truly be its beginning. Because those who did not care about ARTPOP's success are now gone, and the dreams I have been planning can now come to fruition. Please forgive me that I did not foresee this coming, I never thought after all the years of hard work that those I called friends and partners would ever care so little at a time I needed them the most. Give me a chance to show you the meaning of seeing art all around you. Open your hearts to me again that I may show you the joy of us coming together through our talents, that we are stronger as a unit than when we are alone. Let me be for you the Goddess that I know I truly am, let me show you the visions that have been in my mind for two years. I love you. Forgive me monsters. Forgive me ARTPOP. You are my whole world.

sounds like narcissistic lunacy, a string delusional non-sequiturs arranged around a persecution complex. is this how celebrities are expected to communicate? has she always been bonkers?

Lady Gaga has another stage name now.
She is someone you will never find on the net.
You never her.
I write in different languages. The music you heard is not what I am all about.
It is very little.
I resent being analyzed.
alot of you and the people who are running Google are on a powertrip.
I just want to do music for people who don't analyze it, but just enjoy it.
I am moving right now.
I am moving to a nice house on a lake and awaiting my Avalon 747 which should be here soon. I am in a place where I can't record. It is very noisy. That is why I have to move.
People are just sitting back, smug and analyzing and correcting me...with no knowledge of what I know or what I am doing.
I am not here for people to judge. I am not a little girl. I do know that men enjoy picking on women like they are little girls who need to be corrected...but I am not interested in this game anymore. I don't care if some of you will never find me.
You don't post really nice comments and there always has to be some kind of negative stick.
YOU will never FIND MY NEW STAGE NAME.
YOU CAN'T JUST ABUSE ARTISTS..AND YOU ARE ALLOWING THIS TO HAPPEN IN THIS UNMODERATED ABUSE BOARD, CALLED "I LOVE MUSIC." WHAT A JOKE. HARDLY ANY OF YOU RESPECT ARTISTS.

my favorite inane thing she has posted on littlemonsters.com was "Would you critic an English paper if you did not speak English?"

I am moving to a nice house on a lake and awaiting my Avalon 747 which should be here soon. I am in a place where I can't record. It is very noisy. That is why I have to move.

these have the feel of haunting last words

god she is so over

#buyartpoponitunes

http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/6487693/lady-gaga-r-kelly-obama-selma-50th

I stand by anyone who has ever been the victim of sexual assault: pic.twitter.com/67sz4WpV3i

— Lady Gaga (@ladygaga) January 10, 2019

Swine is really the only one off this I still listen to. The rest I can take or leave, even Applause, and I don’t think I’ve listened much to her material after that since (The Fame/TFM obviously still classics).

#2 in the iTunes store right now

Lady Gaga’s fans think ‘Artpop’ never got enough respect. So they’re changing that

The applause for “Artpop” lives on, reassuring what some of Lady Gaga’s fans already knew about the divisive and overlooked album: It was ahead of its time.

The pop star’s third studio album, released in 2013, landed at No. 2 on iTunes’ album chart Tuesday after #buyARTPOPoniTunes went viral on social media. The hashtag is part of a fan-powered movement for the “Applause” singer to release the second volume of “Artpop.”

And even Gaga is on board.

“The petition to #buyARTPOPoniTunes for a volume II has inspired such a tremendous warmth in my heart. Making this album was like heart surgery, I was desperate, in pain, and poured my heart into electronic music that slammed harder than any drug I could find,” Gaga wrote on Twitter late Monday.

“I fell apart after I released this album. Thank you for celebrating something that once felt like destruction. We always believed it was ahead of its time. Years later turns out, sometimes, artists know. And so do little monsters. Paws up.”

is this the one that goes ga ga ooh la la

Recently discovered the fantastic version of the title track (with Elton John) from the Muppets show.

it just was/is not a very good album

weird that that itunes/social media thing even got a writeup, temporarily rising to a semi-impressive-looking ranking on itunes in the middle of the week (or at all, as digital album sales are in the toilet nowadays) isn't hugely meaningful these days. this is the same platform where decades-old songs routinely rise to the top 10 just by being part of a discount promo

also, its best track is no longer on it