CEREMONY | artRATE: the ARTPOP rate

[Ophelia 3,772]

NOOOOO the breakdown at the end always makes me turn tffff up 

[Railing 2,175]

2 minutes ago, Cruelty said:

she didn't almost make the messiest music video of all time for this song just for it to be ranked 12

[heygurlhi 3,200]

tad low for mani baby 

 

[Ororo Munroe 61,788]

I remember watching her perform Manicure for the first time on ITunes Festival like it was yesterday… and I still think that it’s one of her “hits that got away”, it was made for radio… 

[Donatellah 930]

Those who did MANiCURE so dirty need to be man cured so badly

[Cruelty 5,887]

11 DONATELLA – average 7.23

The highs: 11 x 1 [ @HIMe]

The lows: 1 x 3 [ @Agunimon @nodandsmile @bionic]

“I am so fab! Check out, I’m blond! I’m skinny! I’m rich! & I’m a little bit of a BITCH!” So begins ARTPOP’s tongue-in-cheek tribute to Donatella Versace and everything she represents. Over a sawtooth swagger, Gaga constructs a sonic portrait of the legendary fashion designer, who is raised up to the pantheon of the gods alongside Venus and Aphrodite who appear elsewhere on the album. In that respect, ironically it’s pop art rather than ARTPOP, the fashionista elevated to goddess status just as the Campbell’s soup can was put in the art gallery. Like The Fame, the song at once celebrates and excoriates materialist culture and the fashion industry; as did that album, ‘Donatella’ intertwines an innate campness with a sharp ability to parody the pop culture which surrounds it.

Ultimately though, ‘Donatella’ is a celebration of a pioneering icon of her craft. Gaga spoke very favourably in 2013 about Versace, describing the song as “about being a fearless female & not caring what people say about you”. It’s a sister to ‘Do What U Want’ in that regard, although whilst ‘Do What U Want’ is more passive, content to let the press say what they want because it doesn’t affect her, ‘Donatella’ is more reactive, aggressive, turning the press commentary on its head & living up to this distorted version of Gaga that they expect her to be. As Gaga said, “instead of hitting back at everybody about it, I’m sort of making fun of what they say about the both of us”. Donatella represents fashion, & pop culture, but more importantly she represents “being able to turn what people say about you: your blondeness, your money, your weight, whatever that is, & turning it into something positive”.

For the parody to work, it does rely on constructing quite a vapid lyric. Given its placement in the back half of the album, I’d have hoped for ‘Donatella’ to engage more critically with the impact of clothing-as-fashion & materialist culture. But the back half of ARTPOP is about descending into hedonism to mask your trauma, it’s about keeping yourself perpetually stimulated so you don’t focus on what’s really happening to you, & ‘Donatella’ works well as part of this arc. Musically, I think it’s a masterpiece. It’s no secret that the majority of ARTPOP wasn’t tailormade – ‘Donatella’ started life as a premade Zedd beat, & if you listen to Anjulie’s ‘Karma Bitch’ (which was written over the same instrumental), you’ll see how skilled a topliner Gaga is. This sassy little masterpiece lands as your 11th favourite from ARTPOP. Oh, & Donatella’s verdict? “Of course I love the song!”

Comments:

Spoiler

@Bronco This is definitely a guilty fave – the chorus is brilliant gym music

@Poltergeist Super fun and catchy, quirky and iconic.

@ALittleMonsta a song about unapologetically being that bitch, shes a fashionista. a little bit of criticizing the fashion and beauty industry and we love that. this form me got my typing attitude very gay

@TheSine Learned what a black card was from this song.

@HIMe The last minute is a career highlight.

@Onlygaga A BANGER

@Ultimecia NASTY beat. With two choruses stacked one on top of the other, this is pure madness – this is ARTPOP!

@27monster27 An underrated appreciation for fashion and mockery of the press. This song is The Fame meets Zedds EDM style. Lady Gaga gives her dedication to fashion while also making fun of how the media sees her, among other things.

@allanrocks It has such iconic lines. But the chorus is annoyingly bad. 

@Julien Lockhart GAY

@Gangie One of the best produced and mastered songs she’s ever put out

@huttont So fun and campy. Artrave made me into a fan 

@Helxig Love this song to pieces but a couple of lyrics could've been slightly less cheesy (I get that it's campy and satirical, don't come for m, I still gave it 9)

@dimitristhe If the “Yas, Gaga. You slay mama” gays ever made a song, this would be the end product. So sassy, yas!

@Zeitgeist ITS CAMP I like it idc

@Scarlet Bitch so gay

@ARTGOD A good EDM banger with tight production and a banging chorus. I like the sentiment and the lyrics too. My problem with it is that in the context of the album it feels a bit generic and like it doesn’t go far enough.

@Ivy A little harsh sounding, sometimes a skip but still fun

[Ophelia 3,772]

*insert the booty and middle finger pic from MV plot here*

Edited November 11, 2023 by Ophelia

[PMM 2,109]

MANiCURE that low?  surprised 

[Ororo Munroe 61,788]

noah fence, but G*psy and Sexxx Dreams deserved to go before Fashion! and Manicure, like… c’mon… 

[Smother Em Eh 6,867]

@Cruelty

I submitted my rates before the deadline. Why aren’t I listed as a participant in here??? 

[PMM 2,109]

donatella is a fun song

where is swine? i can see y'all sneak it 

[Cello 50,702]

32 minutes ago, Cruelty said:

JEWELS N’ DRUGS – average 4.88

PLS omg the score 

[Donatellah 930]

donatella hate is so 2018

[Ororo Munroe 61,788]

Donatella is HIGH 🏕️ 

[Cruelty 5,887]

10 SWINE – average 7.26

The highs: 11 x 4 [ @Bronco @ALittleMonsta @TheSine @LG6IsHere]

The lows: 1 x 4 [ @Joshua81 @JustTea @nodandsmile @Scar97]

Abrasive & electrifying, ‘Swine’ kicks off the much darker second half of ARTPOP. Written explicitly about rape, Gaga has described it as an “exorcism”, a song “about rage & fury & passion, & I had a lot of pain that I wanted to release”. ‘Swine’ translates Gaga’s pain into an intense industrial workout with prolonged dubstep breakdowns. Sexual abuse can often make the victim’s body feel not their own, but ‘Swine’ fires these feelings straight back at the abuser. Gaga’s fiery accusation “you’re just a pig inside a human body” transforms the perpetrator’s body into something common, something animal, something which notoriously likes to roll in its own sh*t, whilst also employing the vernacular senses of “pig” to lay bare her rapist’s bigotry and misogyny and ugly soul.

The song is most famous for its Doritos-sponsored SXSW performance, which saw Gaga vomited on by performance artist Millie Brown atop a bucking mechanical bull (I mean, what a sentence. What an artist). Controversially, I think this was one instance where the treatment overshadowed the song itself. To me, this is symptomatic of the ARTPOP era as a whole; all the POP is in the music, all the ART is in the promo campaign, and I only rarely see them truly working cohesively. However, Gaga convincingly explained that the idea of the performance was to regain power from her abusers, illustrating how nobody “could […] ever degrade me as much as I could degrade myself, & look how beautiful it is when I do”.

‘Swine’ remains a fairly polarising track, partly because it’s the most obvious victim of Gaga going in & gutting the album’s production in its final weeks in the studio. This is perhaps the only moment where DJ White Shadow’s production doesn’t quite cut it; it’s an odd choice not to have Zedd produce the breakdowns if you’ve got him in the building anyway. & yet there’s a lot to say for ‘Swine’, the album’s clearest instance of Gaga’s mission statement of “pour[ing] my heart into electronic music that slammed harder than any drug”. When ARTPOP leans wholeheartedly into Gaga’s emotions, be they passion or fear or fury, it truly comes alive. Because those emotions are something we can all understand, rather than Botticelli or Abramović or Koons. Equal parts empowering & uncomfortable, ‘Swine’ lands just outside your ARTPOP top 10.

Comments:

Spoiler

@Bronco Best ARTDROP

@ALittleMonsta this is a rage song about what gaga has gone through with her body and how she felt about it. this song is about morality, and rape, and the performance was one of the higlights of the era, and when it was brought back to life like a year ago by twitter conservatives, it was truly a highlight. shouldve been a single like gaga wished for it to be, i used to whip my hair crazy to this

@Onlygaga Love the intensity of this song, perfect way to express how she felt!

@Werewolves Wanted F*ck you pop music! This is ARTPOP!

@Ultimecia F*** YOU POP MUSIC. THIS IS ARTPOP!

@allanrocks This song makes me feel uncomfortable. Is it good? I don’t know.

@Julien Lockhart the song is sick on a live performance but the studio one is meh

@JazzGa Don't really like the faux-industrial vibes of this one. But this song is important. This is a WAY more empowering way to talk about sexual assault than the coded and semi-glamorized lyrics of Monster. 

@HookerOnAChurch One of the most underrated songs in Gaga's whole career

@huttont Her vocals are amazing but the song hurts my head so I don’t listen to often

@Joshua81 The worst Gaga song ever in my opinion

@Bowman Its fun it's weird but its Gaga

@TwistedTeeth The best words that I can use to describe Swine's production is that it's very raw and grungy. It's one of the most unique dubstep/ EDM tracks I've ever heard, this would be perfect to play at a rave and dance to, but certainly one of Gaga's more dark songs.

@Auralegends Great screaming song

@Smother Em Eh Have to be in the mood but I LOVE the wild and rage like energy and tone of the song.