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Celeb News: ARTPOP Official Reviews: 61/100
ATRL Senior Member
Member Since: 3/22/2012
Posts: 53,769
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The reviewers that won't count seem to be keeping it a little more harsh. 
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Member Since: 4/12/2011
Posts: 3,256
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I'm scared of Chicago Tribune, Telegraph and new York times reviews. Fingers crossed
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Member Since: 4/12/2011
Posts: 3,256
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And most of all pitchfork. I wonder if they'll write one at all....
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Member Since: 12/27/2011
Posts: 20,704
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Born This Way's summary on Metacritic:
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The reigning pop queen releases her second studio album
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ARTPOP's summary on Metacritic:
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The third studio release for the dance pop artist
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Member Since: 12/27/2011
Posts: 20,704
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I'm expecting Rolling Stone to give it a good review. They love Gaga.
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Banned
Member Since: 12/3/2011
Posts: 19,217
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Quote:
Originally posted by Rivington Reject
I'm expecting Rolling Stone to give it a good review. They love Gaga.
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+1
Perched for they're review 
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Member Since: 10/3/2010
Posts: 50,276
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Ooh it's doing well so far. I hope it remains above 70. 
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Member Since: 8/18/2013
Posts: 7,220
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Quote:
Originally posted by Rivington Reject
Born This Way's summary on Metacritic:
ARTPOP's summary on Metacritic:
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The decay 
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Member Since: 4/12/2011
Posts: 3,256
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Quote:
Originally posted by Rivington Reject
Born This Way's summary on Metacritic:
ARTPOP's summary on Metacritic:
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It's so fascinating. Which artist in the sands of time will be ever called queen of pop before her second album is even released!
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Member Since: 4/11/2012
Posts: 19,069
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Quote:
Originally posted by Rivington Reject
Born This Way's summary on Metacritic:
ARTPOP's summary on Metacritic:
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dd at even her stans within Metacritic being lost this era.
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Member Since: 8/10/2010
Posts: 14,634
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Quote:
Originally posted by Monster Megamind
And most of all pitchfork. I wonder if they'll write one at all....
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They don't even acknowledge her existence it's amusing.
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Member Since: 8/26/2011
Posts: 1,029
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Pitchfork did give The Fame Monster a decent review.
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Member Since: 8/10/2010
Posts: 14,634
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Thank goodness USA Today don't count.
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Member Since: 5/27/2010
Posts: 37,025
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Quote:
Originally posted by ManyUses
Pitchfork did give The Fame Monster a decent review. |
Not just decent, really good for pop girl standards.
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Member Since: 8/10/2010
Posts: 14,634
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Quote:
Originally posted by ManyUses
Pitchfork did give The Fame Monster a decent review. |
They paid her dust after that era.
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Member Since: 4/12/2011
Posts: 3,256
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Quote:
Originally posted by Monster
They paid her dust after that era.
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She deserved it though
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Member Since: 8/26/2011
Posts: 1,029
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Quote:
Originally posted by MrPeanut
Not just decent, really good for pop girl standards.
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7.8  For some reason, I thought she had a 6.0 or something.
Quote:
Originally posted by Monster
They paid her dust after that era.
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You're right Telephone was number 55 in the year end list for 2010...and that's the last we've heard of them in regards to Gaga.
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Member Since: 4/12/2011
Posts: 3,256
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Quote:
Originally posted by ManyUses
Pitchfork did give The Fame Monster a decent review. |
And their praise for Bad Romance. I got tears when I read that!
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Member Since: 8/19/2013
Posts: 619
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Why haven't they added BB's review to Metacritic yet?
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Member Since: 4/12/2011
Posts: 3,256
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Remember that "Simpsons" Treehouse of Horror
where the Krusty the Clown doll was trying to
murder Homer? Turned out the problem was the
doll had a switch on its back set to "evil" and
with a flick of the wrist, it could be reset to
"good." It feels like sometime late last summer,
someone flicked a similar switch on Lady Gaga.
For about a year, she was nothing but a lot of
talk and a badge-- only without the badge. She
filled her résumé and interviews with style icon
namedrops-- Andy Warhol and his notions on
celebrity, the denizens of New York's downtown
arts scene, and avant couture designers like
Thierry Mugler-- but her singles betrayed none of
the artistry that she insisted was part of her
package. "Poker Face" had about three big hooks,
but next to her other singles-- which ran the
gamut from forgettable fluff ("Just Dance") to
"Muffin Top" ("LoveGame")-- it seemed like a
fluke. Then, between the VMAs and "Paparazzi",
she came into her own. And on "Bad Romance",
the lead single from The Fame Monster, she
became kind of awesome.
The rest of The Fame Monster-- out late last year,
while we at Pitchfork were wrapping up our 2009
content-- isn't as strong as its lead single
(although the Queen-like "Speechless" comes
close), but it at least stakes a claim that Gaga is a
potential new Madonna rather than simply a new
Katy Perry. If I had to guess, I'd say once she
became hideously popular Gaga was able to take
more control of her career, the early result being
"Bad Romance", arguably the best pop single and
best pop video of 2009. And the video is part of
the package: Like Madonna or Prince, it's
impossible to separate the song from the
performer. But unlike those artists, Lady Gaga
isn't particularly attractive, and she uses this to
her advantage by suppressing her vanity and
making herself a slippery figure. She's still
largely unknowable and also almost
unrecognizable from moment to moment, as she
contorts, disguises, masks and maims her face
and body like a Matthew Barney or David
Cronenberg creation.
Gaga comments on fame as she becomes more
famous: It's in her record titles-- The Fame , The
Fame Monster, "Paparazzi", "Beautiful, Dirty,
Rich", "Starstruck". It's also in her wearable art,
and the way she deconstructs her own look--
rigid, robotic dance moves as if she's a puppet on
a string, moving in crutches after being damaged
by her outsized fictional celebrity in the
"Paparazzi" clip. In "Bad Romance" she alters
whoever Lady Gaga the Pop Star might be into
any number of female types-- at times recalling
Britney Spears, Madonna, an Anime character,
Angelique, Christina Aguilera, and Amy
Winehouse. In that sense, she's a perfect 21st
century pop icon-- a regular person willing to
manipulate herself into whatever it takes at any
given moment to be a star.
And yet, unlike the empty fame*****s climbing
atop the shoulders of reality TV and tabloid
journalism to notoriety, we know next to nothing
about her personal life. In that sense, she's the
anti-Kanye, the anti-Eminem, and the anti-
Winehouse-- the twists and turns of her private
life don't inform her art. Rather, she is whoever
she wants to be at any time, and her art is as
much the manipulation of that image and notions
of modern celebrity as it is music or fashion. And
it's refreshing to have a big pop star
communicating to us from afar, like pop stars
used to.
Everything about "Bad Romance" is big but oddly
clean and direct-- whooshing synths, jarring
rhythms, and stratospheric choruses. It's not an
earworm so much as something designed to just
take over a listener, to force them to pay
attention the way Gaga's image seems to have
done to people in recent months. Sure, the
choruses were also skybound on "Poker Face"
and "Paparazzi", but they seemed bigger by
working as a counterpoint to other elements of
the song-- the odd way Gaga makes her voice go
deep and guttural, the terrible sing-speaking she
has ideally abandoned. "Bad Romance", on the
other hand, has two volumes: 10 and 11. In that
sense, it's almost template breaking-- reminiscent
of stadium house with Gaga as a new KLF,
****ing with us from the inside. (No surprise that
it sounds so European either-- it comes across
like futurist pop music without any hints of hip-
hop's influence.)
Elsewhere on The Fame Monster, she morphs into
other stars-- Freddie Mercury on "Speechless",
ABBA on "Alejandro", Madonna on "Dance in the
Dark", Britney Spears on "Telephone", Kylie
Minogue on "Monster", and Christina Aguilera on
"Teeth". Yet instead of hopelessly retro, it comes
off very modern, in part because U.S. pop and
hip-hop is currently drawing heavily from
Europop, hi-NRG, and dance music. It's almost as
if we're experiencing a sonic present that's
whitewashed most of the influence of backbeat
sample-based hip-hop-- from Kanye and Cudi to
Jason Derülo and the Black Eyed Peas, it's all
presets and synths and dance. All of a sudden,
Eminem's claim that "nobody listens to techno"
seems like a hell of a long time ago.
Where a lot of The Fame felt like rote pop with
overt "comments" on fame, Gaga's recently
acquired actual fame allows her interactions with
an audience to become a theatrical experience.
Her music, meanwhile, has become subtler, more
playful, and more well-rounded, extending the
electro-pop bubble she lived in on her debut. And
instead of shoehorning references to celebrity
into some tracks, she's borrowing elements and
templates and simply focusing on quality control.
The weird result is that, despite her flitting
between personalities and personas, her music
feels more like her own here than it did on her
debut LP. The songs feel like they were written
for Lady Gaga rather than simply for any modern
pop star.
Whether Gaga can keep up the streak is another
matter. Maybe she'll get chewed up and spat out
in the end, or maybe her chameleonic image
changes are just Madonna's career at the speed of
the Internet era and we're seeing all of her ideas
at once. But all of a sudden, for a brief time at
least, she's the only real pop star around.
Those were the days...
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