What happened to this fanbase?

[xeynuraf 191]

but people fail to realize she MUST sell, otherwise the label will cut short her stream of money and she'll have to struggle again... not mentioning she'll be forgotten if she disappears from charts/radios

somehow it's hard to understand for some people tho

So you wouldn't be ok with Gaga by herself and a microphone and a small production?? Wouldn't that be enough? If she disappears from charts/radios you wouldn't enjoy her music anymore?

[Dominic 11,922]

So you wouldn't be ok with Gaga by herself and a microphone and a small production?? Wouldn't that be enough? If she disappears from charts/radios you wouldn't enjoy her music anymore?

I wouldn't enjoy the floppy quality demos, lack of promo, bad quality production, no music videos and nothing else to highlight what a performance artist she is no. 

This is a business at the end of the day and whilst nice fluffy things like "music not the bling" are cute it does not run a business; money does. 

I want her to succeed because I want her to be able to express herself creatively and not be limited by lack of sponsor or 'bling'. 

I hate how self righteous people can be when talking about the music not the bling. 

[Creyk 17,805]

I wouldn't enjoy the floppy quality demos, lack of promo, bad quality production, no music videos and nothing else to highlight what a performance artist she is no. 

This is a business at the end of the day and whilst nice fluffy things like "music not the bling" are cute it does not run a business; money does. 

I want her to succeed because I want her to be able to express herself creatively and not be limited by lack of sponsor or 'bling'. 

I hate how self righteous people can be when talking about the music not the bling. 

I totally agree with everything you just said

However, she will probably retire to have kids after the next era so luckily it doesn't matter how successful she will be. (but I wish her the best and to sell like 21)

[Whispering 18,865]

Never said she has to be defined by pop, I only stated that being successful really does count (also for Gaga personally, and stronger than you think)

I mean, I really don't have to be 100% right about what I said, but neither do you

If you think that Gaga doesn't care to be considered a legend (of pop, music, whatever), then it means her convincing methods are really working and you are missing the big picture...

I guess the entire C2C era has nothing to do with damage control and she truly did it only because she loves/sings jazz since she's 13... 

it's good to realize that Gaga is not just pure-heart artist, she's also a businesswoman and she has a brand to promote and make money of it

and to sum it up nicely, I bet she'll really make sure she's on top next era and we shall see how she "doesn't care about success at all" ;)

No one is 100 per cent right when it comes to guessing what Gaga will do next. I never stated they should be. I did ask "what if" questions, instead of stating what Gaga "has to do". The only person in this situation who is 100 per cent correct is Gaga, if she is following her own artistic path. 

I don't know exactly what Gaga is thinking, since I'm not someone who is close to her in her personal life...therefore, you don't know either. I know one thing for certain, adults grow, change and evolve throughout their lifetimes. They change their direction and priorities continuously through their lifetime, especially if they are the type of individual that are open to exploring different parts to themselves.

C2C has been great for Gaga, but we know that NOW. No one knew how that would turn out and that it would be that well received...especially some of the solo numbers Gaga is doing in concert! Yes, Gaga really was in a jazz band in her school years. She really was in jazz completions with her vocals, starting around the time she was 13. She and Tony had planned to do a complete album together long before the ARTPOP era ever even began. 

Of course she is a business person, but tbh, it's clear that that is her weak spot. I hope she does well next era, but if she chooses to do something unconventional and that won't be well-received by the pop world, then that is her choice. Gaga doesn't "have to" do anything but follow her artistic vision and give her label two more albums....eventually. 

[Brooke Hoegan 1,018]

So you wouldn't be ok with Gaga by herself and a microphone and a small production?? Wouldn't that be enough? If she disappears from charts/radios you wouldn't enjoy her music anymore?

If the music is listenable, I'll still be here, at least to some extent. But let's not act like:

1) Gaga as a whole concept / persona is only about music. That's a lie, she has that whole fanbase because she can actually put on a show, visuals are inseparable from who she is, it's been like that from the very beginning. So let's not act like taking away foundations of 'Gaga' and still taking about Gaga.

2) She disappears from charts/radios and the music is actually good. It's not happening like that, everything has a reason.

[Whispering 18,865]

but people fail to realize she MUST sell, otherwise the label will cut short her stream of money and she'll have to struggle again... not mentioning she'll be forgotten if she disappears from charts/radios

somehow it's hard to understand for some people tho 

It's not hard to understand. The question I asked is, what if This is not Gaga's main goal and priority anymore? What if she wants to do something different for a while? What if she doesn't care about competing in the pop world anymore? 

Once again, we don't know what Gaga wants at this exact moment in her life for sure, because none of us know her personally. There is no fan or any group of fans that know what she "has" or "must" do. The only thing she has to do, for sure, is give her label two more albums. What she wants to do and what the label will accept is between artist and label. We don't have a say on that, other than to decide to buy the music or not. That's where our involvement with Gaga's artistry starts and ends. 

[Tommy Monster 846]

I support what I personally like, you don´t need to agree with and like everything she does, that would be kinda boring  

[monsterdreams 1,529]

We all now stan for the one true queen Asia Kinney 

[PartySick 159,860]

Well we're not called Monsters for nothing  

But the vast majority of us are supportive of Gaga and each other, it's just the broken wheels that make the most noise  

[BlondeQueenOfGGD 25,454]

At this point, what fanbase? Lol

[Whispering 18,865]

At this point, what fanbase? Lol

The ones that bought 2.5 million albums to put Gaga's last solo album in the top 10 albums of the year, and the ones who spent money and time to go to Gaga's solo tour, that also ended up being in the top 10 of the year. 

[Jjang 2,262]

A used to be mega - famous pop star that devoted her entire artistry to prove that pop is still worthy suddenly turned into a singer that covers Jazz standards using the excuse that she was never truly happy creating pop music. This contradiction was bound to leave a handful amount of people skeptical about her artistic integrity.

As fans, we are not obligated to support everything she comes up with and as a result many fans lost interest, others criticized this phase and some loved it. 

Pretty understandable to me.

[Rock Jock 993]

 

[Hexxx 2,244]

Obviously a lot of people were let down by the sound of ARTPOP. then she went into jazz which some fans were not here for. fans are now worried about the sound of Gaga's next upcoming album. 

This is basically it

[Didymus 34,379]

A used to be mega - famous pop star that devoted her entire artistry to prove that pop is still worthy suddenly turned into a singer that covers Jazz standards using the excuse that she was never truly happy creating pop music. This contradiction was bound to leave a handful amount of people skeptical about her artistic integrity.

As fans, we are not obligated to support everything she comes up with and as a result many fans lost interest, others criticized this phase and some loved it. 

Pretty understandable to me.

Agreed & disagreed

She made a series of conflicting statements about pop in the ARTPOP/C2C era.

"I will always be a pop artist"

"I came in through pop music, but I never really belonged there"

"Interscope edited my vocals on every album, they take the vibrato out"

"Jazz was the pop music of the past"

etc.

It seems to me that she took the opportunity for C2C to just focus on singing. She expressed to love to be able to just use her voice. But at the same time, she said very recently that she first and foremost considers herself to be a songwriter. This in itself is not a diss at C2C, but definitely a reference to the idea that C2C was a way to regain critical and financial success, reinvent herself once more and taking a little break from having to crap out artistic ideas in the Interscope machine.

All the comments about the negative side of her pre-C2C career had to do with her label, her manager(s), her team, her friends and the general atmosphere of the industry. In early 2014, she proved to be so artistically sincere that she doesn't even release some of her music because she'd hate to see it go "through the machine". I agree that you could easily say that this actually proves she's not authentic, but just remember that apparently her songs were edited and reshaped to death to fit the mould of what Interscope wants Gaga to be like. Under her new management she feels free to have a voice again (literally and figurately).

However.. This wouldn't be a classic Didy post without a critical note. Under that new management she proves to be more moneyhungry than ever and in the course of these past three years she has publicly turned her previous claims and promises upside down. She is able to say "I never change my art for anyone" and "I can't decide the way my vocals sound on all of my released work" in one breath and that in itself shows she has been lying her way through her career to keep up the idea that she is an authentic artist who creates the whole spectacle herself (skillfully hiding the fact that she has a whole creative team behind her that actually creates most of the options Gaga just chooses from - very à la Madonna).

To summarize: her lies and inauthenticity (only in the sense that her unspoken and fanbase supported "I'm better than my competition" façade fell through with a dramatic bang) did come to the surface during ARTPOP and C2C. From the shockingly offensive (in its basicness and desperation) provocation of DWUW (and I'm not even talking about the cancelled video) to the sudden turn from anti-Hollywood outcast to Malibu celebrity and the general disappointment in the, ironically, art-less ARTPOP album/era (lazy references to artists and world-famous artworks aside), she has definitely stopped being the woman she swore she was. This isn't a problem in itself, but it makes the divide between the fans who scream "where is the Gaga we love(d)" and the fans who come up with all sorts of entertaining excuses to explain away Gaga's fall from grace (not just in a commercial sense) so much wider. It's like the situation before ARTPOP times ten. The true fan camps are showing their faces: (1) the people who want a complete, artistic, innovative and creative vision from Gaga; (2) the people who want Gaga to be on top, usually implying that she needs to scale back her weirdness and appeal to the masses; (3) the people who decide to love whatever decision Gaga makes and think of her as absolutely blameless.

The fact that she already seems to have had her peak ànd the fact that we still seem so early on in her career is what turns this fanbase into a landmine. Commercially she declined, artistically she declined (just generally speaking, I love ARTPOP as an album) and the way she presents herself changed dramatically. So basically all camps should be worried and are and all have a completely different take on what's happening, why it's happening and what Gaga (or her fanbase) has to do to turn it around again when her next pop era begins. And those takes clash constantly.

That's just the way I see it.