The Death of “Lady Gaga”: A Retrospective Look At Her Career

[Reject False Icons 4,424]

Whew it’s definitely a very interesting topic to go further than the very common fan worship. Also it should be known that it hurts to realize that some things you loved in the past are more complicated than what you thought they were

Also wow Rob is one of those douchebags who said Nelly was a sell out when she did Loose

[GagaSine 7,464]

Imo Gaga has never done anything that isn't pop or has a pop flavour. The non-pop elements is what has always drawn me to her, I wish she would fully commit to doing something decidedly not pop, even just for a song/album but the fact that she never has tells me she does in fact love pop and is committed to it, even though it may not satisfy pop stans' tastes.

[VoidTwo 259]

5 hours ago, enissa11 said:

hahaha i got the mayhem reference there 

Actually it popped up in my mind without references, I thought it would have been a good "shock value" example 

[Suuus 5,632]

Gaga said in a interview that she doesnt hate gaga anymore so your wrong on that one

[Sneaky Oliver 20,081]

I really thought you were going for one point and I came here to applaud you but I’m not a huge fan of this “lost her drive and passion” narrative. I appreciate your vision and how you wrote that is very smart and well put together respectfully. I do think the character Lady Gaga died in a sense of the early perception Stephani had about herself and who Lady Gaga was or was supposed to be. During the Manifesto of Chromatica, she said that Lady Gaga is the mystery, she’s the enigma. Lady Gaga is all about the search for who Lady Gaga is, something she will never figure out for good because that would mean she’s over. 

During BTW campaign she stated multiple times she had mastered the art of fame and it really felt like it; like she knew everything about Lady Gaga, she could even predict she would decay in the next era to come. The ARTPOP situation really made her think the search was over which means Lady Gaga was over as well. 

During Chromatica campaign she talked about how she hated to be Lady Gaga and she was yet to discover she still is and will never ever stop being Lady Gaga because it’s her enigma, it’s what everyone goes through in life: the search for who we really are and this process of making sense of things is the essence of what Lady Gaga is for Stephani. 

I do believe you’re right about her most stripped down sound at the beginning and her first songs were indeed stripped down ballads. But in the Manifesto she says sound is her life force and Lady Gaga is the mystery that carries the sound, that explains why her sound shifts so radically. She’s yet to fully comprehend what sound Lady Gaga is carrying. 

[HEARTSTOP 3,109]

When will people understand that what she does is mostly based on what she feels like at the time. 

"Joanne was rebranding to run away from costumes"... girl, Joanne was a whole damn costume, just not avant-garde. It's what she felt like.

[Dr Fudge 8,339]

An interesting take on her career, but I like what another member commented in which Gaga is like an onion. She has so many layers that exist simultaneously. Coupled with the fact that people change as they get older, I don’t necessarily think she is being disingenuous as an artist who is different now compared to who she was at the beginning of her career. Life changes people and it’s a sink or swim world we live in. She takes care of her mental and physical health and wants a long lasting career, so she’s mindful of the choices she makes.

[LaLa 18,545]

50 minutes ago, Reject False Icons said:

Also it should be known that it hurts to realize that some things you loved in the past are more complicated than what you thought they were

This is such an important point imo. I think so many (online) fans were young or VERY young when they became Gaga stans, and that can really impact their perspective on how she's changed over the years.

Like, I was 23 when I started stanning (and Gaga was too), and while I was definitely dazzled by her art and under her spell, I could watch interviews and recognize that she was a "normal" woman putting on a performance to some degree. 

But I can see how if someone was like 10 or 12 years old and watching the BR video or Alejandro or seeing her do interviews with the prosthetics and the wigs and outfits and thinking "wow, is she even human". And taking everything she said very literally. 

So that when they grow up and see things from a new perspective, and Gaga herself has pretty much stopped living her art every single second in public, they can think she's changed so much or was faking something then, or is faking something now... but I really don't see it that way at all. It was always much more complicated, as you say.

[PropaGaga 2,948]

You can't make the kind of pop music she makes, with those visual and sonic references, without genuinely loving pop music and pop culture. There is something to be said about the way she's deconstructed the idea of what and who "Lady Gaga" is over the last several years. A common misconception is that this started with Joanne, but she had been talking about that sort of change as early as the "Alejandro" promo cycle and how she was unable to Just Be when Steven Klein had her wearing what was essentially a bare face and no wig and no outrageous clothing during a key scene.

During her Howard Stern interview in 2011, she spoke about how Bowie retired his Ziggy Stardust persona and how his fans hated it, and explained that she wasn't always going to be the same artist she was in that moment because she wanted to constantly evolve, or "rebirth":

She also spoke about wanting to strip down during ARTPOP:

"For ARTPOP, I, in the most metaphorical explanation, stood in front of a mirror and I took off the wig and I took off the makeup and I unzipped the outfit and I put a black cap on my head and I covered my body in a black catsuit and I looked in the mirror and I said: 'OK, now you need to show them you can be brilliant without that.' And that's what ARTPOP is all about. Because I knew that if I wanted to grow, if I really wanted to innovate from the inside, I had to do something that was almost impossible for me." 

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2013/sep/03/lady-gaga-people-think-im-finished

All this during what were some of her most "pop" moments. She's always been open about who she is and what her goal as an artist was, but some fans just never listen.

[Agunimon 20,167]

15 hours ago, Rahrahbitchson said:

off topic but getting hit with this when you share something about your day / mental state to a friend really breaks my heart. happened to me a few months ago and honestly I have never looked at them the same since or reached out to them.

[Paco 3,040]

You talk a lot

[jackoajl 413]

It's an interesting read, you made me think a lot about the current Gaga.

[Rahrahbitchson 12,585]

1 hour ago, Agunimon said:

off topic but getting hit with this when you share something about your day / mental state to a friend really breaks my heart. happened to me a few months ago and honestly I have never looked at them the same since or reached out to them.

Well he wasnt your friend baby 

[thisguyN 616]

I think many of you here has created a übermensch type persona around Gaga, put forth complicated storylines and motives behind a person’s career.

jeez, it’s just that she is not the person 10 years ago she was, just like we all aren’t. And apart from age, she also had management changes, a different team around her, delving into acting, change of music scene in general... 

it’s not like there’s some type of deep philosophy going on. She’s just a person making music, and style and delivery changes of course in time. 
just like she said during ARTPOP - “everyvody, calm down, it’s just pop music, not brain surgery”

[WORLDofGAGA 2,274]

I don’t know how people can say CHROMATICA was JUST to satisfy fans when it’s her most personal raw album, it digs deep, much more than Joanne in my opinion. I think the whole Chromatica era would have been completely different if it wasn’t for covid, we even had leftovers from their promo plans, e.g Oreos, don perignon.