CEREMONY | artRATE: the ARTPOP rate

[KubaM316 13,267]

Just now, SharkmanthaC said:

@PartySick wanted me to let everyone know that he is threatening all of you because you didn’t allow Dope and Swine to be Top 2.

*we're

[heygurlhi 3,200]

1 minute ago, Poltergeist said:

I'd hope for Gypsy or DWUW to go next, if I even believed this was possible

DWUW is winning

[Cruelty 5,887]

I WANNA BE WITH YOU – average 7.39

The highs: 11 x 1 [ @Shadow]

The lows: 1 x 3 [ @heygurlhi @Stephen @The Fame Monster]

We first heard the song which would become ‘Dope’ in September 2013, when Gaga debuted ‘I Wanna Be With You’ during her iTunes Festival performance. This Disney-esque ballad was presented as Gaga’s sentimental ode to her Little Monsters, celebrating her enduring connection with her fans, although I suspect that it was actually written for Taylor Kinney & retroactively applied to us. ‘Dope’, into which the song would evolve, is explicitly written to Gaga’s loved ones, & lines such as “I’d rather be poor and happy than rich and alone” make infinitely more sense in that context.

There’s clearly a special place in Gaga’s heart for ‘I Wanna Be With You’, as although it didn’t appear on ARTPOP, it was deemed strong enough to be performed live. & yet, given that the chaos of the ARTPOP era saw Gaga begin to withdraw from her Little Monsters for the first time, there’s a sense of tragic irony in being denied the chance to officially hear this song ostensibly about Gaga’s love for us.

Personally, I think Gaga rarely sells saccharine, & with ‘I Wanna Be With You’ lacking the empowering force of something similar such as ‘Hair’ or ‘Bad Kids’, this song ultimately feels cloying & insipid. As it fulfils the same function as ‘Gypsy’, it’s also understandable why the track was rewritten for its eventual inclusion on ARTPOP. However, ‘I Wanna Be With You’ is fondly remembered by Gagadaily. Overall it scored higher than ‘Dope’, although both songs had a good number of fans & detractors, & has performed amazingly well to kick off your ARTPOP Top 10!

Comments:

Spoiler

@Poltergeist The track #13 we've deserved! A beautiful, strong ballad, the climax is everything.

@ALittleMonsta this got me emotional the studio version got me emotional and my parents didnt like this but its okay. this is a disney song,, this is a passion for love and the happy version of dope

@Onlygaga Beautiful

@allanrocks So much better than Dope.

@Julien Lockhart I cried a lot lmao

@ImMatt It's great. Possibly a little sugary for Gaga. I can imagine it being on a Disney soundtrack

@JazzGa I do not like these lyrics better than the ones for Dope << Too cheesy, and not even true these days (she clearly does not wanna be with us rn lol)

@Gangie Simply beautiful

@huttont A cute ballad. I’m glad it was reworked into Dope for the album. I could see it working really well on another album though 

@marrytheminogue Much better than dope

@Auralegends I value this equally to Dope.

@whoresup Deffo think it deserved a studio release and if she ever puts out a deep cuts type album this should be on it. I remember being disappointed that the album version was Dope and not this. 

@ARTGOD Good vocals, but the lyrics are cheesy and feel straight out of Born This Way. I don’t think this song would’ve fit the album at all.

@Bronco I need this more than Dope

[Cello 50,753]

23 minutes ago, Ororo Munroe said:

Fashion! deserves to be top 6… 

 

23 minutes ago, Cruelty said:

13 FASHION! – average 7.14

The highs: 11 x 4 [ @Railing @littlepotter @Stephen @sillynate]

The lows: 1 x 3 [ @HIMe @Modern Ecstacy @chromaticathong]

It feels like a mistake eliminating ‘Fashion!’ this early. It’s so fun! Gaga’s vocals glide ethereally over a silky disco backing, as she boasts, “look at me now – I feel on top of the world in my fashion!”. Cleverly sequenced alongside ‘Donatella’, the song celebrates the importance of fashion, written by a woman who’s been lucky enough to wear some of the world’s greatest designers.

& yet things aren’t quite that simple. As I said when we eliminated ‘Dope’, the back half of ARTPOP is all about descending into hedonism to mask your trauma. It’s a horrifying autobiographical tale about a woman falling apart at the seams in the glare of the public eye. If ‘Fashion!’ were just about dressing up and feeling good, it would be in the brighter, falling-in-love first half of the tracklist.

Much like ‘Donatella’ before it & ‘Mary Jane Holland’ after, ‘Fashion!’ is about wilfully losing your identity & becoming someone else. Gaga explained that the track is about “being able to put something on & feel like a totally different person”, with the song celebrating how “I feel alive when I transform”. Because fashion is armour, right? Just as ‘Donatella’ triumphantly chanted “all of the day, I’m gonna wear designer & forget your name”, ‘Fashion!’ captures the feeling of putting a nice dress on & temporarily leaving your pain behind. But what about the rest of the time? What happens when the fashion comes off, & leaves behind Stefani, a confused, lost, hurting woman? There’s a reason this song comes in the downward-spiral half of the album. There’s a reason she’s “looking good” but only “feeling fine”. There’s a reason she’s dressed as a condom in the Muppets performance of this song, you guys – it’s something you wear for protection!

& this is the ARTPOP era in microcosm. Gaga put out a searingly honest record about her unhealed wounds, & was then expected to go all round the world for a whole year singing those songs of pain before she’d even properly healed. So what do you do? You put your armour on. The ARTPOP promo campaign was a dizzying array of sensations, ART ART ART FASHION FASHION FASHION, piling looks upon looks so we’d never the sadness at her core. As we know, in December 2013 this finally broke her. But beneath the bright exterior of ‘Fashion!’, there is the acknowledgment of a woman in an absolute tailspin, putting her armour on without fixing the wound that was already there.

‘Fashion!’ was tested on US radio stations in early 2014 (because almost everything on ARTPOP was considered as a single at one point or another), & I think with an edit or two it would have made a nice choice. The song moved up & down the leaderboard several times as the votes came in, but sadly fell a few places close to the end of voting, & ends up as your 13th favourite from the ARTPOP album. You can now all argue about ‘Fashion’ (Confessions of a Shopaholic) vs. ‘Fashion!’ (ARTPOP) for the next 5 minutes, whilst I format the next elimination post.

Comments:

  Reveal hidden contents

@Poltergeist I hate myself 10 years ago for hating on this one. A beautiful gem, the bridge is everything, both vocal and instrumental wise.

@Onlygaga Possibly my fave out of all of her discography!

@27monster27 Another underrated song. Fashion! reminds everyone of Lady Gagas (arguably) most well known love, fashion. In the disco-infused song, she views fashion as its own performance and show cases it in an epic way. Rather than just talk about runways, she envisions a world on Mars where all fashion is just as exquisite as what she has to offer.

@allanrocks One of the top songs in the album for me. Very well produced. I wish she would officially release the version featuring RuPaul.

@Juliandante Just like with Sexxx Dreams, I found myself listening to this songs many years after its official release. It's a really fun song, with a trendy instrumental, in a good way, of course. I believe this could be re-released today, and people wouldn't guess it had been released almost 10 years ago. That happens when you release something trendy, but in a timeless way.

@JazzGa One time I heard a reporter describe Gaga's vocals on Fashion! and Applause as "vampire David Bowie vocals" and I feel like that is so accurate and a very flattering comparison! Who wouldn't want to be/be f*cked by a vampire David Bowie, right?

@TwistedTeeth I love how experimental the production is on this song. Everything about it just exudes positivity and elegance. It's empowering and inspires you to feel good about yourself no matter what you're wearing. It's just extravagant!

@jackjackjackjack13 Don't get me wrong, the song is good but I would've expected something HUGE when I heard that will.i.am are one of the collaborators on this track (I mean, Scream & Shout was a hit then and I was expecting something like that) and then I get to hear this track and was like "Whaaaaa..."

@whoresup The sheer campiness of this song makes it enjoyable for me. Will.I.Am with Gaga should have been a nightmare but this is okay. So much more personality and fun compared to Donatella. 

@dimitristhe That’s cute, nothing else. Oh, almost forgot that this song has her longest note ever. Weird right?

@TXNNXTUS Incredible anthem for fashion

@Scarlet Bitch so gay

@Nirvana Looking good and feeling fine... Finding comfort in things like fashion when everything else in life is falling apart. 

Your LIACP moment 

[Donatellah 930]

periodt

 

[Poltergeist 2,955]

Just now, heygurlhi said:

DWUW is winning

Love your PFPs lately, but nope 

[Donatellah 930]

I Wanna Be With You?

more like I Wanna Bore You

 

[Ororo Munroe 61,839]

1 minute ago, Cello said:

 

Your LIACP moment 

I didn’t mean to… 

[heygurlhi 3,200]

predicting top three : 3applause -2 DWUW -1 VENUS (should be DWUW but y'all are haters )

[Donatellah 930]

Just now, heygurlhi said:

predicting top three : 3-aura -2 DWUW -1 VENUS (should be DWUW but y'all are haters )

yes

[Cello 50,753]

8 minutes ago, Cruelty said:

So now we have our top 10! Which one do you think we’re losing next?

The ones on the right need to be gone 

[Space Cowboy 11,666]

*manifesting ARTPOP title track for number #1*

[Cruelty 5,887]

9 GYPSY – average 7.90

The highs: 11 x 6 [ @Batwings @Ultimecia @androiduser @jillianwoj @highongaga @Nite]

The lows: 1 x 2 [ @TMM90 @bionic]

Whilst I’m not convinced that ‘I Wanna Be With You’ was written about Gaga’s Little Monsters, ‘Gypsy’ is definitely for us. Written for Born This Way & then reshaped for ARTPOP, the song espouses the beautiful message that “I don’t wanna be alone forever, but I can be tonight”, optimistically suggesting a sense of gradual spiritual recovery after the nadir of ‘Dope’. Don’t get me wrong, it’s definitely also for Taylor Kinney, but I suppose for a couple of years Taylor was sharing Gaga with all of us. & that’s the point of ‘Gypsy’ – when Gaga misses Taylor, she has us to keep her company, & when she misses us, she has Taylor. ‘Gypsy’ is the story of Gaga realising she has the best support network in the world, & in turn accepting her identity as a wanderer.

If ‘Gypsy’ was made for us, it was a wonderful present. The thunderous instrumental sounds like Springsteen produced by Avicii, as Gaga plants her feet on the ‘road to nowhere’ & blazes a trail through the night. Although it received a euphoric live outing—as the show closer for the artRAVE tour—‘Gypsy’ wasn’t received too favourably outside of the fanbase; it’s listed on a hype sticker as ARTPOP’s third single, but US radio stations didn’t respond favourably to test plays. These days, the song is also doomed by its unfortunate title.

& yet ‘Gypsy’ still holds a special place in many of our hearts. Although the production is rooted firmly in early-2010s EDM, the piece is lifted by the idiosyncratic lyrics. It’s refreshing to hear a musical behemoth speaking openly about how isolating life can be as a top-level popstar on tour, & it’s comforting to genuinely feel that Gaga’s loneliness was alleviated by meeting new fans every day & feeling welcomed by every country she visited. The global rundown of Gaga’s touring haunts (“Russia, UK, Paris, I’m Italian, Asian”) also feels like a subtle, savvy shaping of Gaga’s legacy as a live artist. A euphoric coda to the journey of ARTPOP (before the encore of ‘Applause’), the live anthem ‘Gypsy’ lands comfortably in Gagadaily’s ARTPOP top 10.

Comments:

Spoiler

@Bronco I’ve gone from not caring for this song to essentially having it as a personal anthem.

@Lukasson Good song, favourite tour finale yet.

@Born This Way I think my most unpopular Gaga opinion is that I don’t like Gypsy.

@HIMe Hair’s ugly stepsister

@Ultimecia One of the greatest Gaga songs of all time.

@27monster27 The only song to sit inside the late 2013/early 2014 EDM trend due to its sound, the Avicii-esque anthem recounts Lady Gagas love of being on the road to see her fans. With loving lyrics she expresses how she feels like a traveler as she (at the time) had no actual home. In spite of this Lady Gaga says how she loves this life over the hopeful instrumental.

@allanrocks Love it and I live for it.

@Head Empty This is the wrong side of camp for me. The acoustic version is beautiful though.

@Juliandante I really don't like it.

@ImMatt A strong song, makes me dream of the tour (which I didn't attend 😢)

@JazzGa Beautiful song and production, great chord progression! This one begs to be banged out on the piano. The outro is really fun to sing as well! Also in major need of a lyrical update... "I'm i'm i'm i'm i'm i'm a nomad nomad nomad I'm" would be alright or maybe "i'm i'm i'm a wand'rer wand'rer wand'rer i'm"

@Gangie Beautiful and nostalgic

@huttont I want to love this song so much but the slur and the attachment to Taylor Kinney makes that difficult. Although, I always get misty when she lists all the countries and sings “be my home just for the day”

@Joshua81 I don't get why everyone likes this, it's meh to me.

@Bowman Yeah it's fun, it was the best one live at the artrave 

@Tobcho She did it, kids. She did what she started with several tracks on Born This Way, marrying rock to solid hook to EDM and mining the story down to its core. I lived this song for years. She sat at the piano in London and right before the chorus, she looked at me and my partner at the time. I carry this moment as a badge to this day. 

[KubaM316 13,267]

Just so you know: yes, I do think that IWBWY is amazing and it's such a great song and I love it, but imo Dope in between Mary Jane Holland and Gypsy is totally needed and ARTPOP wouldn't hit the same without that

[Juanlittlem 34,430]

1 minute ago, heygurlhi said:

predicting top three : 3applause -2 DWUW -1 VENUS (should be DWUW but y'all are haters )

DWUW will be out soon, and ARTPOP is in the top 3for sure.