Artpop Lady Gaga

Although not perfect, it definitely takes home the award for most underrated album of the decade

If you got rid of 'Sexx Laws' and 'Jewelz and Drugs', this would be a perfect album without a weak spot. Completely underrated, in my top 10 (the only pop album in my top 10). Feels like a prequel to Bowie's "Diamond Dogs". The way I hear it the lyrics are more cynical of the fashion lifestyle than celebratory. The world of excess that lead up to his post apocalyptic masterpiece. Songs like 'Aura', 'Venus' and 'Artpop' are some of the most interesting pop songs ever written, perhaps one could say they transcend from pop to actual art. The concept of the album works very well, it is beyond pop. 'Dope' by the way, I still don't know if I've ever listened to it without crying. If you have any understanding of addiction you know 'you' is 'yourself' it's an addict's pleas to themselves. Personal favorite 'Swine', if you know why, we should get to know each other...much, much better.

I absolutely love this album! Gaga's always had a more daring, experimental feel to her music than her fellow pop stars and it really shines in this record. The production is top-notch (via. DJ White Shadow, Zedd, Madeon, etc.) and ultra modern. Although I think Born This Way had better individual songs, this album flows nicer as a whole.
I want to list my favorite songs but I love them all too much so I've ranked them from best to worst instead...
1. Do What U Want
2. Applause
3. Sexx Dreams
4. Manicure
5. Venus
6. Gypsy
7. G.U.Y.
8. Swine
9. Artpop
10. Aura
11. Dope
12. Fashion
13. Mary Jane Holland
14. Jewels & Drugs
15. Donatella

My all time favourite lady gaga album ! Been out for a while now and I still constantly listening to it, not really a fan of a minority of the songs but the amazing ones blow them away !! A must for lady gaga fans if you not got it by now !!

One of the most underrated albums of this century so far, Artpop, is my favorite Lady gaga album. It is often criticized that the album doesn't give Lady Gaga new fans. Of course that isn't correct. It has many great sounds and elements which easily gave her new fans. It is less about dance music and it includes also rap in a couple of songs. It is also her most personal album. I have the version with live DVD and she opens up about some of the things he has gone through during her life. "Swine" is a fantastic song. The songs is musically just amazing, including synthesizers exploding the song. It is how she feels no good inside. My number one of the album.

"Applause" is a good song but it isn't one of my TOP 5 songs of the album. "Aura", "Venus", "G.U.Y" (Girl Under You), "Do What U Want" (featuring R. Kelly), "Donatella", the title song, "Mary Jane Holland", "Gypsy", "Manicure" are all better than "Applause".

Lady Gaga's style changed a little bit and she was more original than she used to. Maybe that's why critics and some of the fans didn't like it. I have noticed how most fans want to hear the same album over and over again. It is not that I have liked every album Lady Gaga has released: I wasn't very happy with "Born This Way" although it had many good songs. But Artpop is simply amazing.

This is her best album and her most misunderstood. It happens though when the album is very "daring" and "experimental". It can be misinterpreted as "try-hard" and "uninspired". For example Kate Bush released "the dreaming" back in 1982 and critics couldnt "get" it cause it was ahead of it's time... Only after years they "got" it. Or Madonna's "Erotica". Some albums need time to be appreciated. ARTPOP has already started to shine 5 years after its release. Imagine later.

This album is strange, noisy, non sense and ...different from all rest of musics that s selling nowadays, Artpop is not pop...and that s great! She clearly wanted to be distant from that teenage fever of born this way era, changing her image and she got it!

“I’m not a wandering slave, I am a woman of choice.” If it wasn’t clear enough, Gaga reminds the listener of ARTPOP who’s in charge within its first couple of minutes. Her third studio album, decidedly geared for club exposure, had large shoes to fill: Gaga promised something brilliant, incredible, amazing, show-stopping, spectacular, never the same, totally unique - setting herself and fans up for disappointment. ARTPOP is certainly no Hounds of Love. Now, it’s also far from the disaster-meme it’s been turned into upon closer inspection. Gaga oozes confidence amongst a busy soundscape ready to take over at any sign of vocal weakness. Luckily, she’s not known for those. ARTPOP’s Achilles’ heel is ambition: execution doesn’t always match the vision - which might in itself not have been 20/20 from the jump.

There’s no denying Gaga’s work ethic. More than that, as said by the popstar herself only recently, “My biggest enemy is me” (911, Chromatica). Her grit is a double-edged sword: it makes the highs all the more rewarding and the lows more excruciating. The latters then don’t sound like flukes: they sound like someone buried under the music before they could get out in time to prevent, uhm, ‘choices’ to pile on top of one another. The R&B-synth pop ‘Sexxx Dreams’ is the sound of Gaga trying. A lot. The mix of spoken word with the singing, a skit-like interlude and figurative lyrical misfires point to something that didn’t come naturally. In another context, “we’re both convicted criminals of thought” - which some have interpreted as a George Orwell interpolation - could fly under the radar. Here it sits with lines like “Wanna meet at my place?”, “Damn, you were in my sex dreams” and “Let’s keep it naughty”. It sticks out like a cold sore - which for some reason I just googled, don’t do it. ‘Swine’ sounds like a lot of ideas coming together as well but the pay-offs are high in this case. The emotional baggage at its root makes it all the more potent across its dynamic ebbs and flows. The track acts like a big middle finger to the abuses of the patriarchy - in particular her rape by an older producer when she was 19. Her vocals are incredible as vehicles of anger, disgust and determination atop mean electronic arrangements. A truly great blend of EDM, dubstep and pop music, ‘Swine’ is also catchy as hell.

Ultimately, Gaga opens lead single and album closer ‘Applause’ with the lines: “I stand here waiting for you to bang the gong / To crash the critics saying ‘Is it right or is it wrong?’”. So let me ask you: which is it?

Best songs: Aura, Venus, G.U.Y., Do What U Want, Donatella, Fashion!, Applause.

RATING- 5 / 10
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Track Picks:

Aura
Jewels 'N' Drugs
Swine
Donatella
Gypsy
Applause
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