Having taken her self-focused art project to the far end of the conceptualist spectrum on the 2013 album Artpop, the singer was left with diminishing sales and the awareness that her music had been eclipsed by an image that was spiralling into parody. Her ardent support for LGBT rights had been dismissed by some in the community as an attempt to be an unelected white knight on their behalf. Her dips into surrealism, such as the so-called flying dress (actually an “electric-powered hover-vehicle”) were starting to look like sub-Björkian stunts. Worse, her primary musical themes – marginalisation, identity, the right to be a weirdo – were tired, and Artpop’s singles failed to become the hallmark songs of their year, unlike the brilliant Bad Romance and Paparazzi, which defined 2009.
