An old quote that explains Gaga's inconsistencies

[Head Empty 24,856]

"I love to lie. I repeat a lie over and over again, until it becomes a reality".

It is a principle that Gaga has repeated and paraphrased many times, especially during the beginning of her career, and to this day still seems to hold somewhat true.

She started explaining this during The Fame era. She told the people who were interviewing her that she didn't write "The Fame" while she was actually famous. She wrote it about that inner sense of 'fame' she felt when, despite the fact that nobody knew who she was, she was already walking around NYC like the biggest star on the planet. It was a lie that she told herself in order to become who she always wanted to be.

"People say Lady Gaga is a lie, and they are right. I am a lie. And every day I kill to make it true" (Gaga in an interview for Independant, 2009).

She built upon this idea constantly, and noteably also during the Born This Way era. During this era Gaga was taking her creative vision to a new extreme with more otherworldly esthetics and sounds. To explain these new, sometimes creatively challenging ideas she repeated her old mantra, although reworded it into a phrase that has since become notorious within the fanbase: "I live between reality and fantasy at all times". The era was a huge rejection of the politics, beauty ideals and other injustices that reality had brought into the world, with Gaga at the center trying to embody the opposite of what the world is telling her to be. Her infamous monologue in the Marry The Night music video even underlined these thoughts further with an equally striking quote: “It's sort of like my past is an unfinished painting, and as the artist of that painting, I must fill in all the ugly holes and make it beautiful again”. Once again openly denouncing the truths that life had thrown at her, and replacing it with something more fitting within her vision.

The ARTPOP era - I believe - brought to light the biggest lie of all. The premise of the era was clear from the get-go: ART and POP don't have to be separated, meaning that a commercial artist can exist in the same space as a fine artist, without having to sacrifice credibility or integrity on either front. Despite this strong mission statement that only seemed to back up Gaga's idealistic creative views, the gap between truth and lie, reality and fantasy, started to show up big time.

The original idea for ARTPOP was scrapped. The original performance that was supposed to launch the ARTPOP era into the world at the 2013 VMAs - including dopplegangers-Gaga's on the red carpet - was rejected and replaced by a lukewarm version of Gaga's original vision. The entire creative treatment for Venus as a single was scrapped to make room for an alledgedly more financially viable single. And recently we even learned that Gaga was creatively stifled by her management while writing the album, and had to take on a ton of sideprojects she didn't even support (like the fragrances). And all the way through this Gaga kept on a straight face, and worked her way through it as if this was what she herself had planned all along - probably hoping to convince herself that that was true.

This leads me to believe that the lines "We could, we could belong together, ARTPOP" were nothing more than a lie, and a wish that Gaga was repeating to herself over and over again, until it would hopefully become a reality. And sadly, for the first time in her career, the uncensored truth behind Gaga's lie mercilessly came to light following the firing of her old manager. The girl behind the aura could no longer keep up with the fantasies and hopes she was trying to live up to.

And in hindsight, I think this had been going on for quite a while before the ARTPOP era had even started, judging by the fact that Gaga was already writing songs like Scheiße and Governement Hooker - both songs about lacking freedom and power - long before we began seeing big signs of Gaga not being in control. And thus making some of the "betrayals" fans like to talk about a case of corporate intervention rather than Gaga being cheeky or fickle. She was simply lying in hopes of making things become a reality.

Now, as for after the ARTPOP era, I think things on this topic start to become a bit more unclear because Gaga hasn't shared as much of her personal thoughts as she used to. I personally believe Gaga is someone who is inherently optimistic and idealistic (and at some points maybe naive), so I think she won't ever become a true "realist" in the sense that she'll stop her wishful thinking. But the past two years she has been relatively blunt about simply doing what she wants to do without strategically planning everything - and rightfully so - which reduces her need to lie about or justify her choices. By ridding herself of expectations and rules that she had set up for herself in the past and just following her heart in the moment, she no longer needs to lie to herself or the people around her about her intentions.

We'll see how everything developes during the next couple of months. I think that the ARTPOP era has taught Gaga a lot about how she wants to "design" her own life, and in the end made herself as well as her team a lot stronger.

I've been thinking about making this topic quite some time, which probably explains why it became so long. I tried my best to organize my thoughts but I apologize if any of it isn't clear or maybe if it's convoluted in its own right .

Thanks for reading either way, and please share your thoughts below 

[Red 97,630]

I don't agree, I don't think she "lies" on purpose, she just simply hypes things in the wrong time and sometimes concepts get scrapped and things do not go as planned, you know.

[ViviLittleM 3]

"Je déteste la vérité"

iconic

[Head Empty 24,856]

4 minutes ago, Red said:

I don't agree, I don't think she "lies" on purpose, she just simply hypes things in the wrong time and sometimes concepts get scrapped and things do not go as planned, you know.

Oh I agree on that last part as well, as those things happen in any big undertaking. I just think it's a combination of these things. The Fame Fragrance is the best example of this. All the way through the campaign Gaga was very adamant about the project being something she wanted to do. She even said it had been something she had fantasized about doing for a while. Only to admit a few years later that she hated everything about it .

[Spock 20,290]

*waits for LG5 to become a "reality"*

[Red 97,630]

Just now, Totodile said:

Oh I agree on that last part as well as those things happen in any big undertaking. I just think it's a combination of these things. The Fame Fragrance is the best example of this. All the way through the campaign Gaga was very adamant about the project being something she wanted to do. She even said it had been something she had fantasized about doing for a while. Only to admit a few years later that she didn't want to do a fragrance in the first place .

Would you buy a fragrance of a person that said she didn't want it to exist and is just doing in because the corporations obliged her?

[Benji 20,113]

Inconsistencies don't equate to lies though. Gaga's "lying" is more about her pretending to be strong and powerful when she knows she isn't. Lady Gaga has always been a bit of a character / persona for her to play with, regardless of what many people say.

[dannydevito 10,658]

3 minutes ago, Red said:

Would you buy a fragrance of a person that said she didn't want it to exist and is just doing in because the corporations obliged her?

yes i would

[Gagadonna 10,801]

It's getting worse than during the waiting-for-ARTPOP Era

[littlepotter 74,825]

Great post! A lot of thought went into this. I think you might be onto something, though I'm not sure she's just deliberately lying.

[crisTEAne 21,059]

i disagree. your perspective is "realistic," gaga's perspective is artistic. the MTN monologue is the epitome of that: it's a postmodernist/metamodernist episteme according to which there is no objective reality and everything around you is fragmented. her "lie" is the truth because that's the prism through which her "real" life experiences are filtered. neither me nor she can explain it any better: it's a philosophy (and a literary theory, of course), just like ARTPOP. you can't say that ART and POP can't belong together or that the gap between high and low art is real, because that's not how she or, for that matter, warhol, the father of the movement sees it. she believes in and lives the warholian ideal. 

it was a nice read nonetheless.  

[ItsTommyBitch 12,640]

1 hour ago, Spock said:

*waits for LG5 to become a "reality"*

How many must die for this to come to fruition though

*insert that Gif of gaga in that red fame monster era costume with her hands in the air dramatically turning to face the camera* 

^ Does anyone have that gif? I think she's at a piano

[kabirartfling 9,063]

No lies detected 👏👏👏

[Versace 7,951]

Well for me it's that 

With the first album (The Fame) she planned the concept and everything and was able to embody Fame (whether it be inner or outer) into the music and then release, so it felt like a genuine album cause the sound and the theme were one and the same, from the lyrics to the production and even to the visuals. 

The Fame Monster also felt genuine cause she was talking about how Fame comes with dangers and fears even though at the beginning of the era , we were like the **** is she on about, what happened to her. Shouldn't she be loving all the fame and attention she's getting. We get to hear the music and we're like oh ok now we get it and as the era progressed we saw how fame has changed Gaga and brought out a darker side we haven't seen in  TF era.

Even though the first two albums were based on hypothetical claims 

TF: "I am famous whether you see it or not" 

TFM: "Fame changes you, it's not always good" 

We see evidence of them in Gaga, in the music, in the era 

so they are more of claims rather than lies, that you as a listener need to be convinced of 

 

Born This Way, is kinda tricky, I see the self-empowerment and equality side of it but this whole BTW is the album of me living between reality and fantasy. Bitch where, what do you mean, she starts to get more cryptic, as if she's trying to come off mysterious, which sometimes makes her seem pretentious. I hear songs such as Mary The Night, Born This Way, Hair, Bad Kids, The Edge Of Glory, The Queen and that's it, that's where I hear the self-empowerment message, the core component of the album. While some of the other songs slay, I fail to see their relevance to what Gaga says this album is about. 

ARTPOP now even though I enjoy this album so much, every claim Gaga makes about this album is nowhere to be seen outside the title track and maybe Venus, nothing screams to me this song is about pop and art belonging together and I said this in a thread I made recently. ARTPOP is a bunch of regular pop songs hiding behind an artistic exterior that no one but Gaga highlights, Gaga tries to make the songs on ARTPOP seem as if they are better than the regular basic pop tracks you guys hear nowadays. I feel if more time was spent to make better pop songs ala the ones on TFM, it would have been better. Cause really I see no diff between a track like Just Dance and Applause. ARTPOP is basically a POP album with an artistic philosophy that no one cares about lol. 

So as you can see Gaga makes claims that have been 100% true in the first two albums , 60% true in BTW and 20% true in ARTPOP. 

Gaga, should just release an album and shut up lol and be like yea I just made a bunch of songs showing off my vocal and writing skills. We all know both us and the public would love that the most.