![]() This might be the most sacred song on the record. So here, we rank the songs that made ARTPOP a singular piece of pop evolution that’s forever tattooed on my “gay-ass” heart (and Gaga’s arm). With the album back in the limelight, fans are remembering - or maybe just realizing - its influence and the original discourse it opened. I get to feel the full spectrum of emotions again: sad, joyful, energized, horny. I listen to ARTPOP and I hear hype and experimentation, rules broken so that another musical pathway could be forged. Art that was ahead of its time without trying to be. There is rare art like this out there, art that’s beautiful - scarred by mainstream criticism, maybe - that mustn’t be lost. Gaga responded to the album’s newfound acclaim with grace: “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.” She thanked her fans with a simple message: “Paws up.” The hashtag #buyARTPOPoniTunes trended across the internet, and the original album rose to the platform’s top-three spot, almost eight years after its debut. Recently, after a fan created a petition for Lady Gaga to release an ARTPOP “Act II” - a move fueled by longtime Gaga collaborator and producer DJ White Shadow’s April Fool’s joke that there are outtakes in the vault still to come - ARTPOP surged once again (as it should!). The only awards nod the album ever received was a Billboard Music Awards nomination for Top Electronic/Dance Album. ARTPOP has been resurrected, but it never actually died, though it did rebel against all the preset industry standards for mainstream music at the time. Illusion, masks, bareness, posing: all are exercised as ideas, without Gaga really settling on a preference.” Various reviews at the time said that ARTPOP’s message was fuzzy - a seemingly random album, thrown together and tossed into the pop abyss hoping to land, and that for some, failed. In 2013, Kitty Empire wrote in the Guardian: “The bloopy title track boasts the great reveal that ‘my Artpop could mean anything’ and the impression of a pop star scrambling, post-hoc, towards coherence never goes away. Kelly feature that Gaga would later remove from streaming services, not to mention its scrapped Terry Richardson–directed video), this album is the one that day-one fans appreciated, danced to, and exulted in both then and, almost more crucially, now. In November of 2019, Rose Dommu wrote in Paper, “ ARTPOP has been something of a barometer for how invested and well versed Little Monsters are in Gaga’s discography” - a response to a Gaga tweet that same week, in which the pop star claimed, “i don’t remember ARTPOP.” Dommu is right: Despite being widely labeled a critical and commercial “flop” at the time (and despite including an R. And then there are songs like “G.U.Y” and “Applause” - audio feasts that flex the strength of Gaga’s beats their choruses build with futuristic sonics before painting a wild sky of lyrical magic, doing what she does best: tell stories. ![]() The bitchy, campy “Donatella” is not just a reference to the Versace designer, but an ode to silliness as well as owning yourself with pride. Her passion and sorrow are exhumed in “Dope,” as Stefani sings about her addictions at the time. It’s also some of the singer’s most revealing work. It’s hot, it’s fashion, it’s robotically synced to Lady Gaga’s artistic intentions. ARTPOP, though, remains one of one in her catalogue - and from the lustful “Sexxx Dreams” to the rawness of “Gypsy,” it epitomizes the mission of its Mother.ĪRTPOP showcases the most extreme, weirdly gobsmacking of Gaga’s creative ability it honors pop music in a way that other albums of its generation do not. Though that’s what Lady Gaga has always done as an artist - she translates emotional labor into better listening experiences her music is spiritual to the point of ecstasy, with lyrics that evoke memories and fantasies of romance or sex or agony. In many ways, the album reinvented electronic-pop music. ARTPOP has, for nearly a decade, occupied a peculiar spot on the pop-disco shelf. Released on November 6, 2013, it surpassed the already-ambitious pop achievements of The Fame (2008) and Born This Way (2011), with an album cover that depicted Lady Gaga, nude, sitting with a blue orb between her legs like the goddess Venus, waiting to watch people fall in love. Miss Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta shifted space with ARTPOP. Lady Gaga’s most misunderstood album has been resurrected, but it never really died.
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