Lady Gaga is one of the most successful and controversial solo artists ever to come out of America. Her debut album The Fame sold over 15 million copies worldwide and had us all belting out ‘just dance, gonna be okay, da da doo-doo-mmm’ and ‘p-p-p-p-p-p-p-poker face na na na na’ every time we hit the dance floor. Her second album The Fame Monster provided us with hits such as ‘Bad Romance’ and ‘Telephone’, songs which everyone knows the lyrics to whether they want to or not and Gaga’s third studio album, Born This Way, broke the iTunes record for the fastest rise to number one on the day it was released. However, I don’t think the same praise can be given for her most recent release ARTPOP.
On Twitter, Gaga announced to her 40 million fans that it would be the ‘album of the millennium’. It isn’t… and it’s not even close. The lyrics in most of the songs are uninteresting and sound like they were written in a hurry. “Touch me, touch me, don’t be sweet, love me, love me, please retweet” from the track ‘G.U.Y’ and “Walk down the runway but don’t puke (it’s OK), you just had a salad today, Boulangerie” from the track ‘Donatella’ are just two examples of the unimaginative lyrics to expect. The album is mostly made up of a mess of sounds – generic, noisy techno, electro and trance beats with some half-hearted lyrics thrown in. I saw Gaga perform ‘Venus’ on the Graham Norton Show and it was just as cringe-worthy the second time I heard it… “Uranus, my ass is famous” maybe so but your songs need to be good too! She collaborates with T.I., Too $hort and Twista for the track ‘Jewels N’ Drugs’ – it doesn’t sound like anything she has done in the past, in fact, it kind of sounds like a track Lil’ Kim would release.
However, the last three songs of the album are much better than the previous eleven tracks. ‘Dope’, ‘Gypsy’ and ‘Applause’ really do show how vocally talented Lady Gaga actually is. ‘Applause’ is by far the best song on the whole album but for the leadoff single on the album it’s nowhere near as good as the international hits she’s had before. She shows off the vocal range she has in ‘Dope’ however, the piano ballad just doesn’t seem to fit in with the rest of the album.
I am used to powerful, catchy tracks by Gaga such as ‘You and I’ which I like to sing my heart out to in the shower, but sadly, this album has not delivered anything of the same calibre. It perhaps could be described as ‘art’ but there’s no real pop. It’s not an album that I would rush to listen to again.
[rating=2]
