remember that weird period where the industry wanted to milk the longevity of a hit album and added these weird EPs/albums/non one knew what to call them? Gaga, Kesha, Lana all did them...
It was very K-pop of them, like how a lot of artists do a "re-package" of an album and have a new single and a few new tracks and it just extends promotions basically, but the U.S. had no idea how to actually pull it off successfully lol
I consider it a separate work tbh. TFM stands alone as its own work and its own collection of songs. Each album has a different theme/concept, different imagery, and a different era. They just added a deluxe version that included The Fame bc she obviously was catastrophically bigger than she was a year before when The Fame first came out.
I remember she said the same thing when it was coming out...it stands as its own work, she didn't want to add filler songs to make it a full length album and didn't want to pick a few to tack on to The Fame as a rerelease.