An Overview of Gaga pos-BTW

[Tan Fei 1,324]

Joanne is a successful era ☺

[SlayGagaloo 16,152]

31 minutes ago, ryanripley said:

it was one of the top albums of 2016 though and it came out right at the end  

If Taylor wasn't releasing, Katy would've had the best-selling Female album in 2017... It depends on the competition, but despite all the competition, Lemonade was the best-selling 2016 album 

 I know I'm mentioning Lemonada a lot but it's really impressive how well it did (she even outsold Drake's album and he had some MAJOR hits). Joanne's WW sales are less than Ari's, Rihanna's... I'm not saying 1.5 Million isn't good, but it doesn’t make her an "album seller"  IMO 

 

[Kimblue 7,334]

Just because she isn't the #1 seller doesn't mean she isn't successful. 

[ryanripley 86,575]

5 minutes ago, SlayGagaloo said:

If Taylor wasn't releasing, Katy would've had the best-selling Female album in 2017... It depends on the competition, but despite all the competition, Lemonade was the best-selling 2016 album 

 I know I'm mentioning Lemonada a lot but it's really impressive how well it did (she even outsold Drake's album and he had some MAJOR hits). Joanne's WW sales are less than Ari's, Rihanna's... I'm not saying 1.5 Million isn't good, but it doesn’t make her an "album seller"  IMO 

 

i thought joanne was like the second best selling album of 2016?

i just checked, it is  

[MaryJaneHolland 77,348]

1 minute ago, ryanripley said:

i thought joanne was like the second best selling album of 2016?

Second female

[SlayGagaloo 16,152]

4 minutes ago, ryanripley said:

i thought joanne was like the second best selling album of 2016?

i just checked, it is  

TOP 10 SELLING ALBUMS OF 2016 IN U.S. 

RankArtist, TitleSales

1Adele, 25 1,731,000

2Drake, Views1,608,000

3Beyonce, Lemonade1,554,000

4Chris Stapleton, Traveller1,085,000

5Pentatonix, A Pentatonix Christmas904,000

6Original Broadway Cast Recording, Hamilton: An American Musical820,000

7Twenty One Pilots, Blurryface738,000

8Prince, The Very Best of Prince668,000

9Rihanna, Anti603,000

10Justin Bieber, Purpose554,000

Source: Nielsen Music, for the tracking period Jan. 1 through Dec. 29, 2016.

Joanne's overall sales since release is ~562,000 

[SlayGagaloo 16,152]

Spoiler

Top-Selling Albums Globally of 2016, According to the IFPI (Physical & Digital Sales Only)
1. Beyoncé, Lemonade (2.5 million)
2. Adele, 25 (2.4 million)
3. Drake, Views (2.3 million)
4. Metallica, Hardwired...to Self-Destruct (2.1 million)
5. David Bowie, Blackstar (1.9 million)
6. The Rolling Stones, Blue & Lonesome (1.8 million)
7. Bruno Mars, 24k Magic (1.7 million)
8. Twenty One Pilots, Blurryface (1.5 million)
9. Coldplay, A Head Full of Dreams (1.4 million)
10. Pentatonix, A Pentatonix Christmas (1.4 million)

9 minutes ago, ryanripley said:

i thought joanne was like the second best selling album of 2016?

i just checked, it is  

I couldn't find the full list, but she probably was the SECOND best-selling Female (released in 2016 so we can ignore Adele's 25

So if you look at it, it's really not a big achievement (that's why I was giving Beyoncé as an example of an Album Seller 

 

[REALITY 76,493]

Y'all, was the Applause video really that messy? It's one of my favorite music videos

[Doncho 27,241]

Why so many negative comments? I think you made a pretty interesting point and I agree in almost everything. Expect for the You and I, MTN, Applause and GUY trashing lol. They may not be as "good" as her other videos but that doesnt make them a total mess. 

And I agree that Gaga should let proffesionals help her to tell a better visual story. And If I remember correctly, she said in an interview that she had no idea how big she was during TF/TFM. Ever since BTW she is more aware of the number of sales and single s success. 

[Swine 504]

8 minutes ago, Doncho said:

Why so many negative comments? I think you made a pretty interesting point and I agree in almost everything. Expect for the You and I, MTN, Applause and GUY trashing lol. They may not be as "good" as her other videos but that doesnt make them a total mess. 

And I agree that Gaga should let proffesionals help her to tell a better visual story. And If I remember correctly, she said in an interview that she had no idea how big she was during TF/TFM. Ever since BTW she is more aware of the number of sales and single s success. 

Thank you 

[ryanripley 86,575]

12 minutes ago, Doncho said:

Why so many negative comments? I think you made a pretty interesting point and I agree in almost everything.

because the OP was being negative  

[bumblebee 2,528]

Alright. I have no intention of being salty/sassy and all that, I really respect your view and it's cool to have the posts like yours from time to time so that we can have respectful debates.

So I really appreciate your attempt to create a whole overview of post-BTW Gaga, and linking her views on commercial success, her team efforts, her albums cycles, her image in the media and her career achievements, but most of what you've gathered were only observations rather than the reasons you've come to in the process of your research. Or the versions/theories.

Like, she stopped delegating the shooting of music videos to famous music video directors. We been knew. We been knew of it since Born This Way. That she was trying to make everything all by herself. That's also a widely known fact.

If we go to the deeper level and the backstage drama, we may stumble upon easier and, sadly, more banal explanations of what went wrong ever since Born This Way.

Gaga's music and songwriting stays out of discussion. She has always been and will always be (hopefully) independent to her very guts in terms of her music endeavors. We're talking about her image and her commercial success.

From 2008 to 2010 Gaga actually had a creative director. It was the iconic Matthew Williams a.k.a. Dada. He was behind some of her greatest and defining things, from the Disco Stick to the 2009 MTV VMA performance. Gaga and Matt were lovers and great collaborators. However, he left after the Alejandro music video, and Gaga reunited with Luc.

I think it's safe to say that 2008-2010 is the time of her visual/creative/cultural peak. It may not be her artistic peak because Born This Way was a great record and the tour was amazing, but it was in 2008-2010 that she achieved six number one songs on pop radio, delivered many of her most stunning performances, photoshoots, red carpet looks and released the Holy Trinity of her music videos.

Why did Matthew leave? We may never find the answer, but I have this insane version that it was Troy and Boomkack who sort of squeezed him out. Imma explain why.

It was only in the beginning of 2010 that Gaga emerged as an insane touring force, with the successful runs of the Monster Ball Tour in Europe, Asia and Oceania. She was heading for her summer leg in the USA. It was clear that the tickets for her show were selling as good as her records were. People around Gaga realized she was a f**king money-making machine.

While we have come to accept the insane boxscore success of Gaga as something granted, it wasn’t as evident in 2009 as it is now. In 2009 Gaga was still a beginning artists in her breakthrough year, and the history of music has rarely seen the artists gross more than $200 M with their debut arena tour. For example, in 2008-2010 Interscope made about $25 M from selling all her albums in the USA, so her debut arena tour allowed her to make nine times as much as she was making from selling albums in the states.

I think that when Troy realized it, he found some ways to make Matt leave, and then Troy and Boomkack tried to cut Gaga off the professional creative world.

I am not trying to be criticizing Gaga’s attitude, but we all know how loyal she is to friends. After Born This Way, she was paying Boomkack for directing her music videos and she was calling her “my creative sister”. She was paying Nick Knight for photoshoots. She was paying Nicola Formichetti for clothing. She was literally paying her friends for the creation of her music videos, and I think they were more than happy to get them coins which would otherwise be destined for Akerlund or Steven Klein.

That’s why the quality of her visual output fell during BTW. I think it was a planned isolation by her management, who wanted to also financially benefit from her spending money on music videos. I believe that when she tried to work with a professional director on The Edge of Glory, she didn’t feel very comfortable because she hadn’t worked with a professional video director for 1,5 years when she was filming The Edge of Glory. She had grown accustomed to this amazing lifestyle of a Rockstar who was touring the world, playing sold out concerts in the arenas for the first time in her life and paying her friends for management, direction, fashion, assistants, etc. She had forgotten what it meant to be challenged artistically because of Troy/Boomkack agenda.

 

But then she somehow began to get the idea of what was going on, and I don’t know why. Maybe it was about You and I performance at 2011 VMA. Boomkack didn’t want her to do this crazy monologue, because Adele was the it girl on the moment and all the media were milking this stupid idea that while Adele needs only her voice to catch the audience, while Gaga needs gimmicks. Boomkack clearly thought that Gaga’s 2011 VMA performance was a gimmick, but Gaga did it anyway. They parted soon.

So the main person to benefit from her sort of “isolation” since autumn 2011 was Troy, and Gaga went to the blackout and then on a tour which was her most successful in terms of average attendance. Troy also encouraged her to sell perfume. Troy was getting them coins, placing Gaga in the same condition again: surrounded by friends, touring the world, making tons of money, which clearly made him happy. Meanwhile, Gaga remained without a creative director. 

Her injury in 2013 opened her eyes on Troy, too. And that’s how she got back in the industry without the team that kept her going since like 2008. It was no wonder than that ARTPOP was a management disaster. Troy left the day before the record was released and took all his employees with him. At Gaga’s level, the absence of management equals disaster because this woman needs a whole situation room to go from her hotel suit to a coffee shop.

In 2014, she and Bobby joined Artist Nation, a management division of Live Nation, which was a step to ensure the “Troy” situation never occurs again, because her touring agency and her management are now basically the same company. After it was ensured that she was safe from being manipulated financially, she went on to find her singing roots with Tony, to take her first year off touring in eight years and to release Joanne.

But when she found herself in 2016, she realized how much the marketing/sales of the music changed and she is probably too old-school to submit to the new rules. Too old school for chasing them youtube views. I think she will continue to be marketing her music and promoting her material as if it were 2011, because that’s what she believes is an honest model.

As for her public image, I think her new vulnerable side comes from the fact that Joanne is her first pop record after the departure of Troy, and she still has these emotions from being treated like a cash cow, and she just tries to show that she is a human as well. 

[ryanripley 86,575]

15 minutes ago, bumblebee said:

*i removed it all so it won't take up space*

1

this is probably the best and most unbiased point of view on this topic and is probably what the OP tried to say but allowed their thoughts of joanne being boring to spill out, causing negative reactions

10/10 gif use, grammy award for best ggd comment of the year

[Doncho 27,241]

32 minutes ago, ryanripley said:

because the OP was being negative  

Its called being realistic 

[ryanripley 86,575]

1 minute ago, Doncho said:

Its called being realistic 

trashing gaga's work isn't being realistic