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GAFPOP |OT8| Don't Forget the self-clockiesT of 'em all_
- Thread starter Dr. Malik
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Booty Patrol
Banned
They've been releasing tracks from the album the past few months and each has done well. I'm excited to see how the album release goes. Or if one of the songs becomes a hit.
Soulscribe
Member
Because Katy Perry hadn't ascended to zeitgeist levels where Gaga pretty much was at the beginning of the BTW era, which then began Gaga's audience divide. It's a combination of mainstream being there for Gaga in that first week or so and then abandoning ship, whereas Katy kept gaining.
Meanwhile Katy now is at the mainstream forefront (where BTW started) and Gaga now has the concentrated audience. An epic flip if I've ever seen one. Gaga just wanted her fans. Lol
Soulscribe, I'm not too familiar with her but I've been enjoying what I've heard of Mylene Farmer.
Yet Katy is selling more than Gaga on her 3rd era even being released before Gaga still selling better. Gaga is fading like her shock factor.
Gaga only wanted her fans. LOOOOL sure.
<+)O Robido O(+>
Member
Hew is this infant?
Hew is this infant?
That's Mumei. All this time the mod has been a toddler.
Don't ban me
Mariah doesn't have stans that young.
What if Mumei sold his soul to be forever a toddler and be the youngest Mariah stan on earth?
You Know Nothing
Member
Ha love of hair metal bands must be disturbingly intense.
<+)O Robido O(+>
Member
They had cameras back then?
I will say, I think Christina Aguilera, while she's definitely had a more unorthodox path, is only a single comeback album away from cementing herself as an icon.
It's all there. The legendary debut, the incredible image-shattering follow-up, the high-concept album, the highs and lows, the respect for her talent, and she's really recovered well this past year -- it was her best year in probably six years, and it landed her in the Time 100 Most Influential People. The Voice, Moves Like Jagger (such a juggernaut), Feel This Moment, leading up to Say Something (which is huge/will grow bigger) -- it's all there. She just needs to connect with the general public musically in some sort of way one more time, and I think she'll cement her status.
It's all there. The legendary debut, the incredible image-shattering follow-up, the high-concept album, the highs and lows, the respect for her talent, and she's really recovered well this past year -- it was her best year in probably six years, and it landed her in the Time 100 Most Influential People. The Voice, Moves Like Jagger (such a juggernaut), Feel This Moment, leading up to Say Something (which is huge/will grow bigger) -- it's all there. She just needs to connect with the general public musically in some sort of way one more time, and I think she'll cement her status.
Soulscribe
Member
It's much more fun a narrative to declare that Gaga's down some kind of irreparable path of destruction, as if she's blissfully unaware of the impact of her decisions or like she doesn't have any advisors or team telling her the consequences of her actions. People were saying the same damn thing about Beyonce until she pounced back to snatch weaves two years later. The reason I feel like I need to defend the ARTPOP era with some of you girls is because I'm blowing a whistle on the way people like to declare KOs on things that are constantly in motion. People in here practically forgot that the 4 era existed. Now Beyonce's "the queen" again. Suddenly she's no longer "on the outs", nor is she in some kind of "creative bankruptcy" as Roy's insisted she's been in. Things shift in the blink of an eye and it's because people forget. The public doesn't keep tabs on who's been there for them last year and who isn't now. As long as they get songs that they like, they'll reward the artist. If someone isn't willing to meet mainstream halfway by releasing material that they want to hear (i.e. Gaga), they willfully take a smaller piece of the proverbial pie. That's always how it's worked. It's as easy for Gaga to bring herself back to the forefront as it would be to make a song that appeals to the world's most general pop tastes. It's not difficult, it's just not as appealing to some artists as it is to their fans. Is Gaga able to make songs as appealing to the most kinds of people as Katy's? Of course, she built her debut on that talent. Can you honestly say that she's as interested now in doing that as she was then? With the way she talks about her fans and her art and Warhol and pop art? Obviously not. I feel like Gaga's moved on past this narrative but most of us in here haven't.
Tricky I Shadow
Banned
WhereAreMahDragonz
Banned
Maybe not. The Frozen OST is $11.99, plus you also have to consider movie ticket sales, plus merchandise...
I can't at you pretending that Gaga is some incredible artiste who is producing this fantastic left-field music that is just too much for the public to deal with.
BEYONCÉ is a more musically interesting and creatively mature record and it's selling gangbusters, which fully puts to rest the notion that Gaga's music is just too esoteric to sell well (not to mention stuff like Lorde).
And mess @ you suggesting it would be easy for Gaga to bring herself back to the forefront by just knocking out a couple of bangers. That's like saying it would be easy for anyone to emulated MJ's success, just by writing a few songs with as much impact as Billie Jean and Thriller. It's becoming clear from her post-TFM output that Gaga hasn't written another Bad Romance because she can't, not because she doesn't want to. She spent the last two years pretty much telling us that ARTPOP is a no-nonsense, fun pop album, more like The Fame than BTW. But now that it's out, you're busy trying to reshape it into some musical statement of intent that is Gaga deliberately distancing herself from the mainstream and putting out genre-defining music as a fuck-you to the music mainstream.
Do you think that Madonna avoids revolutionising pop music for the upteenth time because she doesn't want to? Of course not! It's because she's like seventy years into her career and she doesn't have the juice left.
Oh and double mess @ you saying her talking about Warhol and pop art is somehow making her less accessible, considering that Warhol was one of the most lauded, popular, iconic and legendary artists of the 20th century. It's like saying someone's indie, alternative, and anti-mainstream because they like Radiohead and Arcade Fire and their music has guitars in it.
You are ten years older than me and I've seen pictures of you as a child.
So, yes. There were indeed cameras.
I think they'd be talking about revenue specifically with regards to the sales of their respective albums, not "everything."
Soulscribe
Member
Lol, placing BEYONCE and Gaga's work in the same category of aiming for being "creative and esoteric" is ridiculous because they're absolutely nothing alike. One is a reflective R&B album that's "out there" only in the sense that it wavers from Beyonce's past material, but as I said in my review, the sound/style in BEYONCE has already been done by many of her male counterparts, a lot of them recently. In ARTPOP's case, most of its sound/style has been done too... but by Gaga herself. The album is still pretty "out there" in comparison to her pop contemporaries, and that's evident in songs like Venus, G.U.Y, Aura. The songs are reminiscent of Bad Romance but they don't flow seamlessly like BR did, they're stylistically disruptive (whereas DWUW, ARTPOP, Fashion and Sexxx Dreams do have that seamless flow). Meanwhile a lot of songs on the album (namely Gypsy and MANiCURE) tread the line more toward safe radio-friendliness, and those songs can easily pass for Katy Perry material because they're designed moreso to reel as many people in as possible than to appeal to very specific sensibilities. You're fooling yourself if you think that because the general public insisted on comparing Gaga to Katy, and didn't like the former as much, that the album just has to be objective stank. That's EXACTLY what's wrong with the POPGAF mentality sometimes, and even though everything I've said about ARTPOP has been unwavering true (sorry) I must somehow be deluding myself because reviews have been the worst of her career. Maybe when I post my review I'll be better able to shed some light on why ARTPOP is in fact a very creatively driven album, and why it doesn't stake its claim as well as her other albums. Hint: It's more to do with context than content.
Okay, you're insinuating that by me saying she can bring herself back to the radio format that she has to make songs like Thriller, which completely reshaped pop music and culture. No. Katy Perry is at the forefront. Rihanna's at the forefront. Maroon 5 is. These are musicians with a marked DEDICATION to releasing material that can be consumed by as many people as possible. You can see this because it's obvious that their teams have watched out for radio style trends and have evolved their sound accordingly. When the market was sorely lacking slow-jam R&B, Rihanna corresponded. When the market was lacking an EDM staple, Rihanna corresponded. When the market was lacking a low-tempo ballad, Rihanna responded. I think Gaga went in to the studio and thought "I wanna make a dance album because that's what i've always made, and people will hopefully love it because dance music will never be out of style." She says that ARTPOP wavers more closely to The Fame than Born This Way because of it does, but its not so much in its radio-friendliness as it is in its light-heartedness. She even said before BTW that that album would be filled with number one records. Now THAT was a deluded statement because she made assumptions that the market wanted 80s arena-pop songs. They didn't really. She never really said anything about ARTPOP that leaned toward the idea that "oh radio is gonna eat this up." She's called it a raver album, called it immature... nowhere has she said that the songs were made for radio. Of course she doesn't have to say it for it to be true (or vice versa), but my point is this: What largely made us send ARTPOP out for public execution wasn't so much in the content of the album but in the context that shaped it. We thought it would be different than what it was. Whether you wanna use the word "better" or "more radio friendly" or "more accessible" or "more like Bad Romance" is up to you, but the bottom line's the same.
Yes, primarily because she doesn't want to. Because deciding that you want to change pop music (or in some cases, accidentally doing so) involves HEAVY assignment and delegation of talent and research, and it follows a very specific kind of recipe that's grounded in the fact that you WANT to go through these hoops in order to come up with an output that can change trajectories. Except as you can tell with Madonna, she just kind of wants to make the kinds of songs that inspire her at the time, and can satisfy her fans. Not everyone wants to sprint to hell and back figuring out how to change music forever, most of the time artists just want to make music they like.
It's a go-to assumption on our part that everyone in pop music is aiming for the same pie piece and if they don't get it, then they must have failed. It just doesn't seem to me that Gaga OR Beyonce were trying to reach for the same pie piece that Katy Perry did this year, even though I don't think Gaga tried hard enough to make that point to the public. She kind of went along with it, thinking she'll be fine. I can't even guess at how surprised or not surprised she was at the results.
Talking about art in general versus not talking about it at all, and in the context of POP music.... obviously the former is inviting potential backlash because to a lot of people it's not relevant, or can be a distraction.
It's like when Mariah Carey or Christina sings a pitchy note and we all jump on them for weeks, call them flops... meanwhile we don't really bat an eyelash at the singers who lip sync. That's because the lip synchers aren't inviting the same kind of criticisms. They're waived. Gaga's inviting those criticisms because she insists on doing a bit more than shutting about just playing the music. The music will be there regardless, and I appreciate that there's someone out there who's trying to do more than just what's in their job descriptions. Even if she hits the mark with most people (like yourself), she's still thinking, and attempting. I give her props for putting herself out there as opposed to just treading a line and making another Just Dance.
Soulscribe
Member
Ooo I'm liking her quite a bit. Oh @ I gave Dusty a try but can't quite get into her, though I did like a couple of songs.
Godels, Imma give Kate Bush a try. Hopefully she's on Spotify.
Howling @ your only defence being, 'literally nobody else but me understands why Gaga is the best musician in the world'.
The problem with your line of thinking is that you haven't given up on the dream, that most of us have, that Gaga is a totally purposeful, creatively in-control person who intends everything that she does. Venus doesn't flow? It's because she didn't want it to, not because it's badly written. Aura sounds half-finished? Intentional. No Bad Romance-quality bops on that album? Intentional.
You are deluding yourself, sorry 'bout it.
No, I didn't say that. I said it's like saying that all somebody has to do to have as strong an impact on pop music as MJ is to write songs like Thriller or Billie Jean, ignoring the fact that doing those things is the hard bit, not intending to do them.
This is what I said before; you exist in a world where whatever Gaga does, it must be because she intended it and not because she was trying to do something else but failed (or, I suppose, because of outside meddling). You don't seem to realise that you're putting her in the same league as the greatest artists of all time (in any medium); perhaps even unique among humankind, in their ability to only ever achieve what they set out to do in the first place. Gaga is not that person, sorry.
So you don't think that creative burn-out is real? You think that if an artist is capable of X at some point in their life, then they're capable of it throughout their life? You have a task explaining the history of art, then.
Well, but artists can be (relatively) high-brow and successful. Take Kanye West, for instance. Okay, not enormously high-brow, but moreso than Gaga, and successful to boot.
Except that there's a SCREAMING false dichotomy in suggesting that she either has to make another Just Dance or she has to make half-baked music like ARTPOP. There are plenty of artists making exciting, coherent, finished-sounding, thought-provoking pop music, that don't have to feign the excuse that they are 'making music for themselves instead of the charts' in order to cover their tracks when a wheel comes off the project. And ultimately, if the music was on the level, the inane pseudo-intellectualisms that come out of her mouth wouldn't be as grating (again, look at Kanye—pretty insufferable, but good enough at what he does that many people can overlook it). But because there is such a disconnect with where she sees herself as an artist, and where, looking at the music, she actually is, she invites the criticism by saying it.
Ooo I'm liking her quite a bit. Oh @ I gave Dusty a try but can't quite get into her, though I did like a couple of songs.
Godels, Imma give Kate Bush a try. Hopefully she's on Spotify.
You don't like Dusty?
What did you listen to?
Also, listen to this.
Kate Bush is an excellent example of somebody who took creative control of their career, did their own thing, was great at it, got success and plaudits for it, and is rightfully iconic and legendary for it.
Could your fave write and sing a duet between a swan and a snowflake with her choirboy son, and not only have it be good, but fantastic?
No, not ever.
Could your fave write and sing a duet between a swan and a snowflake with her choirboy son, and not only have it be good, but fantastic?
No, not ever.
Soulscribe
Member
Eh whatever, I stand by everything I said. You're just as convinced that ARTPOP is unfinished as I am that ARTPOP is purposeful. At the end of the day we can both be wrong or right. I've never positioned her as the best musician of all time though, not sure why you drew that conclusion; she's far, far from there (though she has the talent and potential to get there if she keeps it up). I'm just defending what I feel is an unfair assertion because I think it warrants defending, that's all.
Lemme go listen to Kate Bush and my BEYRTPOP playlist.
@Mumei, I listened to some of her greatest hits (You Don't Have To Say You Love Me, Son of a Preacher Man (which I knew), I Only Want To Be With You) and liked a couple. I can recall more of her songs than I thought I would. I'll probably listen to more from her when I get the chance. Wishin' and Hopin' is adorable though.
Lemme go listen to Kate Bush and my BEYRTPOP playlist.
@Mumei, I listened to some of her greatest hits (You Don't Have To Say You Love Me, Son of a Preacher Man (which I knew), I Only Want To Be With You) and liked a couple. I can recall more of her songs than I thought I would. I'll probably listen to more from her when I get the chance. Wishin' and Hopin' is adorable though.
that's funny cuz I'm getting baby Dusty Rhodes tea from your avatar Mumei
Prof. Beef could speak more to this probably.Start with Hounds of Love; that's her magnum opus. She really hit her stride and flowered creatively with The Dreaming (her fourth studio album); you might want to listen to The Whole Story (her first Greatest Hits album) to get a taste of her earlier stuff before you embark on it because it's definitely more patchy and less refined. But, Hounds of Love, The Sensual World, and The Red Shoes are IMO the centrepiece of her career.
I don't know what impression you'll get of her from listening to just her studio output; I've actually only really explored her A/B-side singles extensively out of her studio repertoire, and the rest I've listened to has been mostly live performances at concerts or on her television show.
godel-sis, do you know Mylene?
WanderingWind
Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
Y'all hooked me up with a couple Lana mixtapes. I have been listening to pretty much nothing else since.
But I missed one. There was one with a black cover and she's holding some rose in her mouth. Some unreleased stuff that was really awesome. Anybody know what that was called?
But I missed one. There was one with a black cover and she's holding some rose in her mouth. Some unreleased stuff that was really awesome. Anybody know what that was called?
That's just a fanmade cover for the unreleased tracks and it doesn't belong to any mixtape IIRC. It's an awesome cover though and it's the one I use for all my unreleased Lana songs.
It's a bit longer. Although I was PRESSED they cut out Drake's last rap in Mine. I was about to show my rapping prowess in front of everybody and it just didnt happen
WanderingWind
Mecklemore Is My Favorite Wrapper
Well now I am sad.
WhereAreMahDragonz
Banned
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