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Lady Gaga's decline: The Psychology Behind It
I found this article explaining the psychology behind Robin Thicke's career downfall, and I realize there was some of it that applied to Gaga too. I realize that not all this is completely accurate but it's at least worth noting. Plus, I realize that Gaga isn't at the Bionic stage of her career with ARTPOP, but it's still a significant sales decline from her previous efforts.
Quote:
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[Blurred Lines] was his first proper taste of mainstream attention. What happens to the average person’s brain when they experience fame as an adult?
Psychologically you think you’ve made it. You’re experiencing this huge rush. You’re surrounded by all these temptations and you’re probably going to submit to everything and sleep with as many women as you want. That filter might not be there yet. You might not have got to the point where you evaluate, come to a standstill and ask yourself if your choices are what you really want to do.
How does fame affect your ego in the long term?
That’s going to cause the celebrity to have a dilemma. Everyone has two senses of self—a personal self and a public self. With validation it’s harder to evaluate, to see the private side behind the public side.
What happens if you struggle with that?
Your public and your personal sides can start to merge, which is a big problem. Believing your own propaganda precedes your downfall. They’re only as good as the person in their life who can tell them they’re being ridiculous. All celebrities need someone in their life to keep the private self in check. You need anchoring.
Have you dealt with celebrities who struggle with this balance?
Most of the celebrities I’ve worked with are vulnerable people who think that a certain part of themselves is fraudulent. They’re concerned that people believe in the public self they’ve projected for themselves. They worry, ‘People think I’m someone, but actually I’m someone else.’
And that can undermine the validation you get and make you insecure.
Exactly. If you buy into the public persona, you’re not actually taking account of who you are.
Okay. If there are underlying traits of misogyny or arrogance in your psyche already, would these be affected by fame?
Yes. If you’ve got men or women throwing themselves at you, it’s the human condition to want to give in. The inflated ego as a result of the fame makes you believe in this public self and makes you believe you’re invincible—but no, you’re not. We all have good and bad aspects of who we are, and fame will only play on these.
How exactly?
If they buy into the public life, a male artist can be inclined to think they can do whatever they want. There's a whole history of male celebrities who have been abusive to their female partners because they can. The whole issue with our Yewtree investigations – we’re seeing now the repercussions of fame on male sexuality. Thankfully, it’s meaning that everyone is seeing that they can’t actually do what they want.
Yeah, there’s a photo of Thicke groping a fan while he was still married (a "source close to him" said he "did it as a joke").
He’s a celebrity who, unfortunately, has bought into his public persona, and his self is his public. He believes he is invincible—at this point, anyway. He thinks he can do whatever he likes.
After all this backlash, what could he be feeling now? He’d been working on his career for over half his life, then it all blows up in his face.
I should hope he’s looking for another agent! Psychologically, he might finally have to grapple with the two senses of self. If not now, then soon down the line—if he survives, that is, and I think he’s a survivor. He’s going to have to really weigh these two identities up, the public and private. The private person might be very vulnerable. On the other hand, is Robin Thicke having trouble sleeping at night over it all? I don’t know if he is. It’s hard to tell. His inflated sense of self could still make him believe he’s now on the ride – that he’s really going somewhere.
Did you see that his new album is named after the wife who left him?
No. But oh gosh, how interesting. Many male celebrities—Johnny Cash and Elvis, for example—take on too much of that public self and think they can do anything. But then they find out they can’t and it all crumbles.
What happens to the brain when your fame is suddenly taken away?
I’ve worked with a lot of people whose fame has been taken away, and they dissolve. They’ve got too much invested in that public self. Psychologically, they go through hubris—“I thought I could be somebody, but I’ve been picked up and dropped back down.”
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