What "Went Wrong" During ARTPOP Era?

[juju 18,907]

20 minutes ago, juju said:

I think that not only was the pressure on, but Gaga had far more ideas than she knew to do with. We had the #GagaInSpace, the projects with Marina Abramović/Jeff Koons/etc, we had VOLANTIS, we had the app, we had a Gaga who was torn between doing explicitly what she wanted versus what her label wanted of her - and most of this was before the album was even released. It think, given the fragile state she was in during early 2013 following the cancellation of almost 100 shows, she was exhausted to the point that she abandoned things midway in many cases, whether it be from self-doubt or reluctance. 

Noticeably, during/after the Do What U Want debacle, she sort of retreated at the end of 2013 and early 2014, only before emerging for that performance of the title track on Jimmy Fallon in February. I feel like she took that brief period between December - following The Voice performance and the Jingle Bell Ball - and February to reinvigorate herself, hone her visions, and execute what was remaining of the era. She debuted the floor-length platinum wig, she did Roseland, she filmed one of her most epic videos for G.U.Y., and she embarked on the ArtRave. All of these things were immaculately produced and true to form for her, so by the end of the era in late 2014, she was visibly regaining confidence and trust in herself and her visions. The ARTPOP era was the first time we got to publicly watch Gaga fumble before scoring a touchdown. I think that aspect of it, in and of itself, is why the era was so special.

Going to add in regards to my second paragraph, that SXSW was also a return to form: Gaga went with a vision that she had and executed it the way she wanted to execute it. She performed a majority of songs from ARTPOP as opposed to simply the hits, and she was taking risks again with her performance art. She looked so alive, and it made for a better set, as opposed to the Jingle Bell Ball just months prior, where she was still tip-toeing between doing what was wanted of her and doing what it was she wanted to be doing.

[brownie 5]

2 hours ago, BloodyJudas said:

Let me give you my two cents:

1. People got tired of her gimmicks and controversies with the arrival of Alejandro video and that's when it all started. She was still the biggest pop star back then so the road to underperformance was really long.

2. Then came Born This Way-the gay anthem (some people got scared that they would be regarded gay if they listened to Gaga).

3. The Judas controversy was a nail to her casket. She got so many haters for it.

4.She changed her music style with BTW -it was a very epic work of art. Gaga didn't sing about parties, getting drunk at the club anymore-she started getting serious and sometimes pompous-it turned people off. Her YOUTUBE/streaming power started to decline with The Edge of Glory Video. Compare the views  BTW and ET videos have gotten.

5. She praised her back-then-unreleased work to heaven calling it the work of the millenium. She came off as arrogant, stuck-up,pompous and bitchy- and we all know she is the sweetest person ever. I have no idea why she carried herself like that.

6. Adele- she became an overnight success and she became a new sensation and I remember many poeple saying Adele's music is pure gold and Gaga's is trash. They were constantly compared plus because of 21 BTW did not seem to be a great seller as we know it is.

7.Her hip injury-there were rumors it was intentional as the shows had not sold out and we know it was bullshit.

8.She waited too long to release ARTPOP. It's a well-produced albums with many potential hits but I guess it sounded a bit outdated in 2013. It would have smashed one year earlier.

9. Applause vs Roar ( pitting two women against each other)

10. Bad management

 

 

Hit the nail right on the head. Couldn't have said it better. 

Her behavior for #5 is honestly to be expected from any major debut artist. They ALL get like that for the sophomore album, haha

[kayo 137]

humanity went wrong

[BloodyJudas 2,758]

1 minute ago, brownie said:

Hit the nail right on the head. Couldn't have said it better. 

Her behavior for #5 is honestly to be expected from any major debut artist. They ALL get like that for the sophomore album, haha

Wow that's so kind of you to say it  <3I feel like my effort has been appreciated haha Thank you! You're the sweetest 

[Arcanum 4,116]

OMG. Volantis. What a mess. 

I remember watching the video and saying WTF DID I JUST WATCH.

 

[kayo 137]

7 minutes ago, Arcanum said:

OMG. Volantis. What a mess. 

I remember watching the video and saying WTF DID I JUST WATCH.

 

jesus that gif

[Arcanum 4,116]

Well, I think Alejandro MV was a shock but people were not ready to give her up. What I remember driving people off of her (apart from the gay activism) was her aesthetics during BTW era. The horns, the cover, the styling. It was like she brought 80's back to life in a time when 80's were still considered kitsch. She made quite a sacrifice cause media backlash was huge, but she created a cult fashion that blended to mainstream later on. All this frustration along with what you said before, caused the blast into ARTPOP era. She still has long way to go to regain her status quo in Europe. Joanne era was about US.

 

Spoiler

I have to admit tho that the memes/gifs created during BTW and AP are HILARIOUS. 

 

[Bolkins 3,831]

I was recently looking up articles from 2013 about AP and there are whole elements that I totally forget. There was the applause drama I forgot about where Gaga incentivised fans to rack up loads of views on YT/screen shot purchases with promises of M&Gs etc, the bots that would reload the video every 15 seconds, the Craig list ads 

[migamiga 12,067]

Troy left. That's the equivalent to your teacher not showing up to class. As her manager, he is point person for every single aspect of her career- the liaison between the label and her, business opportunities, collab opportunities, promo, scheduling, etc. everything went to sh*t cause no one was handling all these things. It's a lot to deal with esp when you have someone like gaga as a client

[Seeka 12,372]

6 hours ago, juju said:

I think that not only was the pressure on, but Gaga had far more ideas than she knew to do with. We had the #GagaInSpace, the projects with Marina Abramović/Jeff Koons/etc, we had VOLANTIS, we had the app, we had a Gaga who was torn between doing explicitly what she wanted versus what her label wanted of her - and most of this was before the album was even released. It think, given the fragile state she was in during early 2013 following the cancellation of almost 100 shows, she was exhausted to the point that she abandoned things midway in many cases, whether it be from self-doubt or reluctance. 

Noticeably, during/after the Do What U Want debacle, she sort of retreated at the end of 2013 and early 2014, only before emerging for that performance of the title track on Jimmy Fallon in February. I feel like she took that brief period between December - following The Voice performance and the Jingle Bell Ball - and February to reinvigorate herself, hone her visions, and execute what was remaining of the era. She debuted the floor-length platinum wig, she did Roseland, she filmed one of her most epic videos for G.U.Y., and she embarked on the ArtRave. All of these things were immaculately produced and true to form for her, so by the end of the era in late 2014, she was visibly regaining confidence and trust in herself and her visions. The ARTPOP era was the first time we got to publicly watch Gaga fumble before scoring a touchdown. I think that aspect of it, in and of itself, is why the era was so special.

This.

Gaga is very much like me, in the fact I get excited over ideas, concepts, things that are not fully fleshed out.

I have a million ideas, not that many on a page.

I also believe, Gaga rushed Born This Way because she was too excited and the VMAs made her fr too happy and she announced everything there, which means she had to release something next year, when she promised.

But everything started with just before Born This Way (during the Alejandro.Born This Way overlaps (The two videos look so similar, I swear)) and basically came to a head during ARTPOP.

[pdaines 209]

9 hours ago, bobbby said:

I know this probably something that everyone has a different opinion about but it's been bugging me lately. After Coachella, the more peripheral Little Monsters and stan Twitter at large seems to be super into Cure and the darker/pop imagery she was embracing the last two weekends—but I can't help but think that part of the reason she went the direction she did with Joanne was due to the "backlash" against ARTPOP. 

I'm not trying to do a Joanne v. ARTPOP thread, and I personally love both albums but I just genuinely am curious as to everyone's theories here. Can it really all be blamed on management / that DWUW kerfluffle or do you think there was more to it? Just a changing of what was working on radio? I'm just watching ArtRAVE Paris for the first time and am living for it, so it's just weird to think back about how the era was so high-energy, so pop, so flamboyant, but also seen as somewhat of a "flop." 

FWIW: I became somewhat of a dormant Little Monster during ARTPOP, so a lot of this is just trying to retrace what happened while I was pretending to not be a super gay Gaga fan for a few years there. 

 

Edit: Also, oddly enough it seems like a lot of people at Coachella loved Sexx Dreams and Venus (non fans) which adds to the confusion about why that era wasn't lit then. 

 

2

It all boils down to internal negativity and label infighting. I honestly think she was just going through a lot of stress at the time, she bought into the negativity cycle and literally went through a semi-public breakdown not quite on the level of Britney circa 2007.

It started when Gaga found that she was unable to deliver on the hype that she had generated about new music tech, a new app, a new age of music, etc. Then Applause was leaked and she had to release it early and then it was compared unfavorably to "Roar" and Gaga let the negativity get to her.  

The media helped. They issued criticism. They loved creating stories. Gaga found for the first time that she wasn't in control of the narrative and didn't like it. She bought into the idea that she wasn't in control of the narrative, and that is why she wasn't. 

Then album sales were strong, but not really comparable to Born this Way's first week. Then there was more and more drama. DWYW video never materializing. All kinds of internal label pressure that we weren't privy to. Publicly, it was a mess. Who knows what was going on internally, for them to show as much sausage as they did? 

Finally, when GUY was released, it was with an extremely expensive music video, which got a lot of global youtube views, at least in the first week or so. But, US streams and sales were weak enough that it barely touched the Hot 100 at all, and radio never picked up the song at all. It's not clear whether Gaga's team even promoted the song to radio. 

In the end, Gaga wasn't trying. She wasn't promoting her work. She wasn't pushing a media narrative. The media panned ARTPOP as a flop, and she hid. 

I don't think the public ever got tired of Lady Gaga. I think she just got tired herself of trying to BE Lady Gaga. 

As it happens, she took her break, and now it seems like she very much wants back into her former status. 

[pdaines 209]

37 minutes ago, Seeka said:

This.

Gaga is very much like me, in the fact I get excited over ideas, concepts, things that are not fully fleshed out.

I have a million ideas, not that many on a page.

I also believe, Gaga rushed Born This Way because she was too excited and the VMAs made her fr too happy and she announced everything there, which means she had to release something next year, when she promised.

But everything started with just before Born This Way (during the Alejandro.Born This Way overlaps (The two videos look so similar, I swear)) and basically came to a head during ARTPOP.

 

I LOVE Born This Way. It's one of my favorite albums of all time (for pretty much everything EXCEPT the title track and maybe You and I, which are both just kind of OK). I just can't imagine Gaga making that album ANY better by spending more time on it. 

I won't dispute that her problems started with Judas, but she was still cranking out top ten hits regularly, and I think she could easily have made DWYW and GUY top ten hits if she had promoted them properly and not been in the midst of a mid-life crisis. 

[ProdigyARTPOP 3,882]

It was the media during 2013/2014 , look up "Lady Gaga Is Over" on Google and you'll see. I blame Troy

[FrankMonster 468]

5 hours ago, WohnJayne said:

I was recently looking up articles from 2013 about AP and there are whole elements that I totally forget. There was the applause drama I forgot about where Gaga incentivised fans to rack up loads of views on YT/screen shot purchases with promises of M&Gs etc, the bots that would reload the video every 15 seconds, the Craig list ads 

I totally missed the Craiglist ads, what was that about?

[FrankMonster 468]

So many things went wrong. After all the "Lady Gaga is Fat, Hip injury - that media said it was for cancelling the tour early due to low sales-" press she got, she had it hard on ARTPOP. Applause did great considering the major leak and pit up against Katy. Somebody mention how she could have gone #1 doing the Youtube awards with Applause instead Dope and might be right, but tabloids would have found a way to drag her. Then DWUW came and the way she promoted it when she released for me it was genious, that twitter rant was epic, the song was epic. Then R. Kelly drama, Terry Richardson drama, video drama...