Her instagram makes her look like an influencer who runs a podcast on wellness and corporate trends in luxury goods. Very Elizabeth Holmes but slightly Call Her Daddy.
Those songs are duds but I still find them infinitely more listenable than Sour Candy or Sine From Above.
ARTPOP definitely has some abysmal lows, but Chromatica doesn't have anything as great as Venus, Applause, Fashion, etc.
It's hard to place Chromatica next to her past two efforts. While sharing most of the gripes others have with the album, I have absolutely hammered plays for this project. The stan goggles were out, and truthfully no matter what happened part of me was always going to bop. I've probably listened to it more than both ARTPOP and Joanne for that reason. I'd feel weird knocking it as her lowest effort when it has gotten so much attention from my Spotify. Regardless, I don't think she has a bad album at all.
I echo though that Gaga’s one of the artists not to take seriously 80% of the time in interviews. I recall a particular interview in her prime when she said she doesn’t care about money, which was a huge eye roll for me even as a teenager. Not saying she’s inauthentic, but she does tend to get in deep in her own dramatics. She even confirmed as recent as last year that her being lovey dovey with Bradley was intentionally done to sell the movie dddd
That's exactly what I've been thinking. The songs came from such a dark place, a place she's still trying to navigate her way out of, so maybe it's been hard for her to return to them and live in them longer. But again, she did say that she felt "so alive" creating the 911 video so...I don't know. That said though.....I wish she'd give us something other than these sponsored posts. Some communication and connection with her fans would make it a tiny bit better.
It really made me roll my eyes in that Billboard article when he was talking about how their plans were foiled, and said "This isn't an album for Gaga to play songs on the piano over Zoom to promote". As if that was the only option.
Artpop is messier as a whole but you remember its lows as well as its highs. I forgot Sine From Above existed until this page reminded me. I think that says it all.
As far as ARTPOP vs Chromatica.....I prefer ARTPOP, but the album's flaws are almost opposite of Chromatica's. ARTPOP could have benefitted from some more fine tuning and polishing.....Chromatica as a whole is way too polished and overproduced.
The removal of Do What U Want really blew a hole through ARTPOP for me. It’s definitely her worst without it and I really wish that when they removed the R. Kelly version they replaced it with the Xtina version (which something that should have been done immediately back in 2014). I still stand by what I said about this era’s complete 180 on the whole “music not the bling” schtick being jarring. And yes, that was ARTPOP’s schtick — it’s literally a lyric in the title track at the literal center of the album. Like, she gave an entire speech around not wanting to just slap her name on any old thing for a check and how she has to protect her “integrity as an artist” at all costs. I get people say things in the past and can change their minds and shouldn’t be held to that standard, but I mean....there’s a pretty clear difference between a gradual change in opinion and full on hypocrisy. I don’t know. It doesn’t really affect me and I don’t particularly care one way or another, but it has been a strange sight to behold. Anyway, overall I still think Chromatica is a good album.
