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Celeb News: ARTPOP Official Reviews: 61/100
Member Since: 8/18/2013
Posts: 4,663
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I can't at these critics  So many pretentious reviews...
I get it's not her best album, but it's still better than 'The Fame', and that got 71, so going by that this should be 70 at least.
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Member Since: 10/19/2010
Posts: 16,335
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Quote:
Originally posted by RT Air
I can't at these critics So many pretentious reviews... |
Perfectly appropros for a pretentious album, hihi. 
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Member Since: 2/15/2012
Posts: 15,569
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Quote:
Originally posted by highwind44029
Perfectly appropros for a pretentious album, hihi. |
highwind, noooo 
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Member Since: 10/29/2010
Posts: 29,249
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ARTPOP: An Otherworldly Guidebook to Lady Gaga's World of Weird
Like the cover of her last album Born This Way, Lady Gaga may be half machine. More likely is that she's transforming into the pop alien-robot she has been selling herself as since The Fame, and for the first time, she has released an album that feels like most streamlined expression of who she is as a pop artist.
Gaga sings on the album's title track--a fluid and dreamy song that arrives at the halfway point--that her "ARTPOP could mean anything." Like a well-deserved intermission between the busier beats of the songs before and after it, "Artpop" does its best to blend in with the others, but provides that lyric as the most accurate testimony to who Gaga continues to be: an ambiguous creature whose only consistency is that her style, sound, and story will be inconsistent. At the New York ARTPOP pop-up gallery that opened the same day her album dropped, the array of personas are displayed on several mannequins that give an idea of just how many personae she has cycled through. Surrounded by images from her latest era, it's like they are simultaneously shrouding and encompassing all those pasts. Like David Bowie and Madonna before her, she will keep reinventing herself.
The album begins with "Aura," a jolting track that begins with the type of intro that could soundtrack a showdown in a Tarantino film and appropriately used in previews for her feature film debut in Robert Rodriguez's Machete Kills. The lyrics themselves are her equivalent to Bowie's "Rock 'n' Roll Suicide," announcing the death of her former selves as she enters--though he was leaving--a spacey new era. Appropriately, the Sun Ra quoting "Venus" follows and may be her oddest deconstruction of the pop song yet as she sings lyrics like "Aphrodite lady seashell bikini" followed by an effectively blase delivery of the song's title. In all its pagan glory, "Venus" is catchy and nonsensical while still touting the most common lyrical tropes of pop and Gaga by singing about sex and love.
Pagan robot pop star continues as "Venus" births "G.U.Y. (Girl Under You)," a little '80s-level futuristic ditty beefed up by a gritty beat during the verses that opens up to a lighter sound during the choruses before breaking down to some recitation of numbers in German a la the also catchy and nonsensical "Scheiße" off Born This Way. "Sexxx Dreams," a slurring and alluring song, may be her least metaphorical off the album with trap beat-driven "Jewels n' Drugs" being its only competition. The latter feels like the most out of place and Gaga is outshined on the track by guests, T.I., Too Short, and Twista, who mesh their verses more effectively with the beat than her cabaret vocals are able to.
Lady Gaga's obsession with the visual and tangible aesthetic finds its way into lyrics and album promo. Between the record release party turned art exhibit on Sunday night she called an "ARTRAVE" and the ARTPOP pop-up galleries in New York and Los Angeles as well as an app that accompanies the album, Gaga has gone beyond using just her body as a fashion canvas that does everything from wearing a meat dress to being enclosed in an egg on a red carpet. Embedded in the tracklisting, too, are odes to the fashion world ("Fashion!" and the droll and shady "Donatella") and drugs ("Mary Jane Holland") alongside critiques of critics and musings on her most enduring obsession: fame (the wickedly delightful "Do What U Want," "Swine," and lead single "Applause").
The true centerpieces of the album are the back-to-back ballads "Dope" and "Gypsy," The former is an earnest and lovesick piano bar staple that has a weak start before blossoming into an effective and belting chorus. Unlike its follow-up "Gypsy," similar predecessors "Speechless" and "You and I," "Dope" never evolves into a more danceable tune, making it a risky and throughly enjoyable throwback to her singer-songwriter roots. "Gypsy," however," does make the upbeat jump and features some Springsteen-type, Born to Run-era yearnings during the bridge. It's a freeing song and showcases Gaga at her best.
Though not as easily infectious and bare-souled as her triumphant EP The Fame Monster, ARTPOP digs beneath the cacophony of jumbled sounds, styles, and surface reflections BTW exploded at the seams with and is more meaningfully fleshed-out. Though she has come out strong with several massive and pervasive hits since her debut album The Fame, Gaga has truly produced an album that works well as and album from start to finish, and it celebrates all of her oddness and eccentricities along the way.
http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/...gagas_artp.php
I'm not sure if they will count this on MetaCritic. They've counted Village Voice reviews in the past though...
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Member Since: 11/12/2011
Posts: 5,343
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Quote:
Originally posted by RT Air
I can't at these critics So many pretentious reviews... |
Herein lies the inherent irony of all these reviewers defining art and postulating the mission of it, and then PRETENTIOUSLY calling ARTPOP, well, superficial and pretentious.
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Member Since: 5/16/2006
Posts: 957
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I can't at NY POST. Those are fighting words, sistahs. 
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Member Since: 2/15/2012
Posts: 15,569
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I wonder when they're going to average in more reviews. 
That 42 is gonna hurt 
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Member Since: 8/5/2006
Posts: 63,266
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64 better than 62 
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Member Since: 11/10/2009
Posts: 19,215
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I think the main fault in this album is that the "ARTPOP" concept was doomed from the beginning. She really should have called it something else.
I still think it deserves a high 60-low 70 score.
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Member Since: 8/30/2011
Posts: 6,407
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Quote:
Originally posted by umichgrad07
Wow. You basically just shaded your own fave who also has a score of 62 with Stronger and Thankful.
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The difference being that PRISM is Katy's highest score and Kelly's two scores of 62 are her lowest, and one of those 62's earned her a Grammy for Best Pop Vocal Album. Snaps for Kelly 
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ATRL Contributor
Member Since: 11/5/2011
Posts: 100,491
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VIBE: Review: Lady Gaga's Glitzy 'ArtPop' LP Is Mindless Fun
Artpop is a trip around Lady Gaga's mind better left unquestioned
Lady Gaga cannot be explained. Ever since the New York-bred artiste stepped on the scene with The Fame in 2008, things in the music biz got inexplicably weird. Between raw meat dresses, mobile amniotic sacs, hovercraft frocks, bleeding ensembles, and a blatant disregard for clothing altogether, Stefani Germanotta has given the world truly Gaga moments to keep the masses gawking, guessing, (and sometimes gagging) yet still peeking back for more.
Gaga eliciting whys with her creative expression has become expected, but when it comes to her art, it's better to refrain from askin' all them questions and just go along with it. "Each song on ARTPOP was inspired by different types of adrenalin, so it's an expression of the various rushes," she tweeted to her 40 million-plus followers a month before the big release. "I want you to feel them."
Yes, art can inspire analysis. But it's made to be experienced rather than defined, felt rather than figured out. It's just better that way. For ArtPop, her third studio album, all the same rules apply. For 15 tracks, Lady Gaga peels back the curtains on the potpourri of thoughts swirling behind her poker face for art's sake, regardless of whether or not her train of thought makes any sense to the listener.
Gaga explains everything we need to understand about her latest offering in her opening number "Aura." "Dance, sex, art… pop," she chants robotically on the Cirque du Soleil-esque cut, an early indicator of the album’s lack depth. The music is fun, sure, but unlike Born This Way (2011), she doesn't dabble too far into the deep end of the subject matter pool. She sticks to straight-forward statements and shallow metaphors paired with trance club production to discuss intimacy, art and pop culture over and over again.
Lady Gaga toys with traditional relationship roles in her almost-clever "G.U.Y. (Girl Under You)," the follow-up to the Goddess of Love-praising "Venus." "You'll be my G.I.R.L/Guy, I'm romance and love's to hold you/Know, you wear my make-up well," she sings about her guy. She celebrates carnal desires in "Swine" and "Sexxx Dreams," then her escapist tendencies in "Mary Jane Holland" and "Gypsy," the latter of which has the obnoxious singalong potential of Kelly Clarkson's "Since You Been Gone" and Rihanna's "We Found Love" during the least sober moment of a party.
Gaga dedicates two tracklist slots in a row to high fashion, which was the biggest platform for Gaga's slowly waning "out there" image until a new wave of aesthetically adventurous pop princesses came along to match her antics tit for tat. The outcome of her efforts is a forced, over calculated and potentially skippable duo typecast for the gay, voguing Monsters. Gaga admits the thrill she gets from dressing up in "Fashion!" (“Looking good and feeling fine/Slay, Slay, Slay, Slay”) and honors Versace—the same fashion house that Kanye West recently denounced—with a snarky, sarcastic ode to "Donatella."
Aside from her surface level topical explorations, the disc has a few sonic morsels peppered in to break up the monotony of droning, pulsing club-pop tracks with a little too much Dance Dance Revolution appeal. Gaga's "Jewels 'N Drugs" manages to tap into the hip-hop vein without messy, Miley Cyrus-esque misappropriation. She enlists a the trifecta of T.I., Too $hort and Twista to help her create a trap-pop concoction similar to Katy Perry's "Dark Horse" with Juicy J. You can even twerk to it if the spirit so moves you.
ArtPop's second and final feature spot proved to be as infectious as its first. Gaga pairs up with a smooth-voiced R. Kelly for the album's second single, "Do What U Want," an upbeat rebuttal of sorts to negative comments aimed her way. "Write what you want/Say what you want about me/If you're wondering/Know that I'm not sorry," she sings rebelliously.
Gaga enters rare form and severs all ties to dance music for "Dope," a heavy-handed piano ballad dripping with drunkenness and regret. For nearly four minutes, her sound is stripped as naked as she was during her 2013 MTV Video Music Awards performance. "I promise this drink is my last one/I know I ****ed up again/'Cause I lost my only friend," she croons woefully before asking God to forgive her sins. It’s a breath of fresh air from unnecessarily super-pop tracks like the whiney “MANiCURE” and disappointingly bland title track “Artpop.”
For her final act, Gaga takes a moment to toot her own horn and take in the ArtPop phenomenon she created. Did her art and pop culture fusion album live up to all the hype that its haughty name implied? Is it worth all the “Applause” and praise she demands by the aptly-titled kicker? Maybe not, but all she really wanted was the attention. She said it herself; it’s what she lives for. No questions asked. —Stacy-Ann Ellis (@stassi_x)
http://www.vibe.com/article/review-l...p-mindless-fun
No score given. Not sure if this counts for MC
Seems like a mixed to favorable review.
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Member Since: 6/3/2012
Posts: 11,621
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Gaga no sis
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Member Since: 4/3/2011
Posts: 7,281
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Umich and DG1 doing a great Job;
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Member Since: 8/19/2013
Posts: 34,855
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That C- from the AV Club is going to bring this down even further 
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Member Since: 8/6/2012
Posts: 2,594
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Gaga recently announced she’ll be singing in space, but she needs to come back to Earth
I love Gaga, but I had to laugh at this 
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Member Since: 2/15/2012
Posts: 15,569
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Associated Press
REVIEW: GAGA'S 'ARTPOP' SUFFERS AS ART AND POP By NEKESA MUMBI MOODY
— Nov. 11, 2013 1:39 PM EST
The mission of some art, particularly the modern kind, is to provoke — to present outlandish concepts, explore untraditional ideas, challenge traditional norms — and leave you with many questions, searching for answers.
If that is the goal of Lady Gaga’s fourth album, "Artpop," then she’s already got a success on her hands. If the goal, however, is to entertain, then she fails, though at least she does it in her typical spectacular fashion.
"My artpop could mean anything, anything, I try to sell myself, but I am really laughing because I love the music and not the bling," Gaga sings in a near monotone voice, backed by futuristic electrobeat, on the title track. And there lies the ultimate problem: For all its lofty goals, "ArtPop" the album comes off as vapid artifice, with Gaga relying on familiar dance grooves and nonsensical lyrics that may be provocative but convey very little.
"Donatella" paints the picture of a narcisstic, skin-deep model, with lines like, "I’m a rich (expletive), I’m the upper class ... I smoke Marlboro Reds and drink champagne." There’s no storytelling there, though, and while the electrogroove is racing with energy, the disconnect with the lyrics makes it ultimately fall flat.
"Jewels N’ Drugs" features T.I., Too Short and Twista, and the rappers are the most interesting part of this wanna-be gangsta ode to the love of the drug trade — and that’s not saying much. It sounds rather ridiculous with Gaga intoning: "Jewels n’ drugs, play that hustle, smother ‘em, if you wanna be bad, ain’t nothing if it ain’t family, we know how to make that money." Clearly, Pusha T and Rick Ross have no competition when it comes to drug lore.
"Sexxx Dreams" is an apparent girl-on-girl fantasy that’s strikingly unsexy thanks to Gaga’s unimaginative delivery: "I was thinking about you, hurts more than I can say, and it was kind of dirty, all night, and the way you looked at me, help." Yes, help is definitely needed on this track (it’s as if she never listened to a Prince song).
R. Kelly teaches her something about sexy (and surprisingly not complete raunch) when he appears on one of the album’s few bright spots: the midtempo groove "Do What U Want." But from that high the album veers to another misstep with the insult-driven "Swine."
The few moments that resonate are when it seems like we’re hearing something that gives us true emotion from Gaga, or Stefani Germonatta. On the melancholy ballad "Dope," Gaga soars as she admits her failings but begs for one more chance from her loved one, singing, "I need you more than dope." It’s powerful and touching, and is truly heart-stirring.
"Gypsy" is another strong song, as Gaga explains her love of her whirlwind touring life to someone who wants to see her more stationary: "Don’t want to be alone forever but I can be tonight," she sings.
But rarely do we get that kind of heartfelt sentiment. Instead "Artpop" draws from familiar themes we’ve already heard on "Born This Way" and "The Fame," and it sounds like someone who is stuck very much in the same place artistically — ironic, given how badly Gaga wants to be seen as an artist. In the end, "Artpop" is a piece of pop art that ultimately fails in its mission.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/revie...rs-art-and-pop
Does not count for Metacritic, though.
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Member Since: 1/26/2012
Posts: 9,236
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Quote:
Originally posted by ClashAndBurn
Associated Press
REVIEW: GAGA'S 'ARTPOP' SUFFERS AS ART AND POP By NEKESA MUMBI MOODY
— Nov. 11, 2013 1:39 PM EST
The mission of some art, particularly the modern kind, is to provoke — to present outlandish concepts, explore untraditional ideas, challenge traditional norms — and leave you with many questions, searching for answers.
If that is the goal of Lady Gaga’s fourth album, "Artpop," then she’s already got a success on her hands. If the goal, however, is to entertain, then she fails, though at least she does it in her typical spectacular fashion.
"My artpop could mean anything, anything, I try to sell myself, but I am really laughing because I love the music and not the bling," Gaga sings in a near monotone voice, backed by futuristic electrobeat, on the title track. And there lies the ultimate problem: For all its lofty goals, "ArtPop" the album comes off as vapid artifice, with Gaga relying on familiar dance grooves and nonsensical lyrics that may be provocative but convey very little.
"Donatella" paints the picture of a narcisstic, skin-deep model, with lines like, "I’m a rich (expletive), I’m the upper class ... I smoke Marlboro Reds and drink champagne." There’s no storytelling there, though, and while the electrogroove is racing with energy, the disconnect with the lyrics makes it ultimately fall flat.
"Jewels N’ Drugs" features T.I., Too Short and Twista, and the rappers are the most interesting part of this wanna-be gangsta ode to the love of the drug trade — and that’s not saying much. It sounds rather ridiculous with Gaga intoning: "Jewels n’ drugs, play that hustle, smother ‘em, if you wanna be bad, ain’t nothing if it ain’t family, we know how to make that money." Clearly, Pusha T and Rick Ross have no competition when it comes to drug lore.
"Sexxx Dreams" is an apparent girl-on-girl fantasy that’s strikingly unsexy thanks to Gaga’s unimaginative delivery: "I was thinking about you, hurts more than I can say, and it was kind of dirty, all night, and the way you looked at me, help." Yes, help is definitely needed on this track (it’s as if she never listened to a Prince song).
R. Kelly teaches her something about sexy (and surprisingly not complete raunch) when he appears on one of the album’s few bright spots: the midtempo groove "Do What U Want." But from that high the album veers to another misstep with the insult-driven "Swine."
The few moments that resonate are when it seems like we’re hearing something that gives us true emotion from Gaga, or Stefani Germonatta. On the melancholy ballad "Dope," Gaga soars as she admits her failings but begs for one more chance from her loved one, singing, "I need you more than dope." It’s powerful and touching, and is truly heart-stirring.
"Gypsy" is another strong song, as Gaga explains her love of her whirlwind touring life to someone who wants to see her more stationary: "Don’t want to be alone forever but I can be tonight," she sings.
But rarely do we get that kind of heartfelt sentiment. Instead "Artpop" draws from familiar themes we’ve already heard on "Born This Way" and "The Fame," and it sounds like someone who is stuck very much in the same place artistically — ironic, given how badly Gaga wants to be seen as an artist. In the end, "Artpop" is a piece of pop art that ultimately fails in its mission.
http://bigstory.ap.org/article/revie...rs-art-and-pop
Does not count for Metacritic, though. |
 Yes, i think so.
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Member Since: 2/20/2012
Posts: 24,225
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This seems about right compared to The Fame Monster and Born This Way.
Now The Fame just needs a Metascore of 54.
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Member Since: 1/1/2013
Posts: 17,232
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Rolling STones Reviews 'ARTPOP"
Quote:
Lady Gaga is at her peak when she's playing the neon queen of all the world's outcasts. And with her constant prodding, her Little Monsters have filled the biggest big tent in modern pop. But in the five years since Stefani Germanotta's arrival, weird has become the currency that overwhelmingly fuels pop culture – from seapunk Tumblrs to American Horror Story. So for Gaga to stay on top in 2013, she has to keep cranking up the cray.
For better and for worse, Artpop meets the mandate. It's a bizarre album of squelchy disco (plus a handful of forays into R&B) that aspires to link gallery culture and radio heaven, preferring concepts to choruses. It's sexual but not sexy, filled with bitchy fashion designers and one-liners like "Uranus/Don't you know my ass is famous?" and "Touch me, touch me, don't be sweet/Love me, love me, please retweet." Gaga wants us to believe the LP was inspired by Marina Abramović, Jeff Koons and Sandro Botticelli; at its best, it sounds like it was creatively directed by RuPaul, Dr. Ruth, and Beavis and Butt-Head.
Artpop opens with four tracks of thumping futuresex/lovesounds where Gaga vows to lay her intentions, and body, naked. She cops a drag queen's arch humor on intergalactic journey "Venus," examines sex and power on gothy grinder "G.U.Y" (which stands for "girl under you"), and woos a lover whose "boyfriend was away this weekend" on the slinky "Sexxx Dreams." Yes, we can read her poker face.
But just as Artpop gets into a groove of high-tech Pop&B, her creative impulses splinter. She plays hook girl for Too $hort, Twista and T.I.'s thugged-up, self-parodic "Jewels N' Drugs" and falls for her own cutesy wordplay on the glammy "MANiCURE." The Rick Rubin-produced "Dope" is a turgid ballad about the slippery slopes of romance and drugs that lunges for Elton John and crash-lands near Meat Loaf.
Gaga's previous albums – 2008's electro-pop romp The Fame and its brilliant follow-up EP, The Fame Monster, and 2011's inventively nostalgic Born This Way – were largely the result of partnerships with producers RedOne and Fernando Garibay. Paul "DJ White Shadow" Blair worked on most of Artpop, but there's a pile-up of names in the credits including Zedd, Madeon, David Guetta, Infected Mushroom and Will.i.am. In the past two years, Gaga has split from her longtime stylist/choreographer and manager and canceled a world tour to recover from a serious hip injury. Could Artpop simply be a distraction obscuring the drama behind the curtain?
Ironically, Gaga redeems the LP with a pair of tracks that strip away the artifice in favor of plain sentiment: "Do What U Want," a spectacularly growly and groovy R. Kelly duet, and "Gypsy," an Eighties-style anthem where Gaga admits her love of performing and love of love often clash. "I don't want to be alone forever, but I love gypsy life," she sings without abandon. Neither track is subtle, but they work because they weren't born from the chilly conceit that art and pop need an arranged marriage to get busy.
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http://www.rollingstone.com/music/al...#ixzz2kXK9QQ00
3/5 Stars
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Member Since: 8/31/2012
Posts: 13,110
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60 that should help its Metacritic score in the end.
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