Album Review: Lady Gaga - ARTPOP

Lady Gaga
ARTPOP
Rating: Yeah Daddy Make Me Want It

After her relentless descent into performance art overkill after the release of her last record Born This Way, Lady Gaga (nee Stefani Germanotta) seemingly forgot what she did best, which was create decent and catchy pop tracks. Instead of nurturing that talent, she did everything possible to show that she was an "ARTIST," directing over the top, nonsensical art-house-esque videos, showing up everywhere in increasingly bizarre outfits, taking on new personas seemingly every hour, doing everything but making truly memorable music. Born This Way was an overblown, turgid mess of insipid platitudes masking as life lessons, while the music itself was merely rehashed idea from The Fame only covered up with as many bells and whistles as possible. Of course, Born This Way was a huge success, but painted Gaga into a corner, making her feel like she had go even bigger each time, but there was no real purpose behind any of it rather than just show, being all surface and no meaning. Of course, being Lady Gaga, she announced the follow up to Born This Way as her grand artistic statement ARTPOP, stating in the press release that it "musically mirrors Gaga's creative process" and that the result is a "'rage" of electronic passion and fury, defining each artistic process from beginning to end, ARTPOP could mean anything." Which in Gaga-speak means nothing, but purportedly everything.

Based on the release of a teaser single, and lead track "Aura," I was hoping this was actually going to be a more revealing Gaga as one of the main lyrics is "Do you wanna see the girl who lives behind the aura?/Behind the aura, behind the curtain, behind the burqa?," which portends that she is going to possibly lay herself bare.



Unfortunately, this rather decent lead track is not indicative of what the rest of ARTPOP provides. When first single "Applause" was released, it again was Gaga commenting on her fame, and more to the point the perceived adoration of her core fans, her "little monsters." But instead of it being a self-aware commentary, it came across as a ridiculously self-centered and clueless. The rest of ARTPOP is still Gaga at her most elusive, maddeningly all over the place thematically, and still reusing former melodies and ideas, attempting to camouflage it all in today's EDM/Dupstep/Trap stylings. Like pop masters before here like George Michael, Gaga has this desperate need to be taken as a serious artist, when in fact, if they concentrated more on just making great pop tune rather than trying to make some obtuse artistic manifesto, they would likely be taken more serious.

With all that said, ARTPOP, for all its eyerolling bloated excess, is a far more engaging record than Born This Way, and in fact contains some of her catchiest tracks since The Fame. For me, when she lets down all the pretense and just focuses on killer hooks and choruses, and not so much on all the musical bells and whistles, she shines and still can create some wonderful pop music. The best tracks on ARTPOP are the ones where she almost doesn't seem to be trying. "G.U.Y.," despite some silly lyrics, is a pretty killer pop/EDM track, with a very catchy chorus;



"Sexxx Dreams" pulses and throbs with energy, and for a song that is about sex is actually fairly low-key and contained;



her collaboration with R. Kelly, "Do What U Want," which on paper sounds like a disaster, is actually a fairly decent slow grind electro track;



and even more surprising is title track "ARTPOP" which is just a very good synthpop track, with one of Gaga's best vocal performances.

Of course, Gaga can't just work on tracks like this, she has to try and throw everything but the kitchen sink into the mix, and sometimes it works, like on the furious electro-squeal of "Swine,"



or the silly but fun "Venus."



But often you are left with monstrous head scratchers, like her misguided attempt to merge rap, trap, and pop on "Jewels & Drugs;" the over the top vocal histrionics of "Manicure;" and the double dumbness of tracks "Donatella" and "Fashion!" that seek to be wry commentary on the world of fashion but merely come across as misguided and bland; and even worse is piano ballad "Dope," which focuses on Gaga's most strained and mannered vocal yet.



ARTPOP is surely not the disaster that Born This Way was, and is certainly a more focused and fun record. Hopefully, Gaga will calm down a little after all this ridiculous pretense and will merely sit down and write a hook filled album full of songs that play to her strengths. ARTPOP is a strange little record, but one that gives a little hope that she might come to her senses.

Rating Scale:

Chilfos: masterpiece; coolest thing I've heard in ages.

Woof Daddy: excellent; just a hair away from being a masterpiece.

Grrrr: very good; will definitely be considered for my top releases of the year.

Yeah Daddy Make Me Want It: good; definitely invites further listens and piques one's interest for more material.

Meh: not horrible, but certainly not great; could have either been polished, trimmed, or re-thought.

Jeez Lady: what the hell happened? Just plain bad. They should hang their heads in shame and be forced to listen to Lady Gaga ad nauseam as penance.

Tragicistani: so bad, armed villagers with pitchforks and torches should run the artist out of the country for inflicting this abomination on the human race.