A 2024 perspective on Gaga's career

[eifulien 2,414]

So, monsters, since we’re in 2024, let’s look back at Gaga’s career and analyze how your perspective and attitudes have changed/evolved throughout the years.

I’m picking up this moment because I’ve realized Joanne is exactly in the middle and I find it a very interesting and suitable point to split Gaga’s journey into two halves.

What do you cherish about each half? What do you dislike about each half? What are the highlights of each one? What has been the most important shift in your attitude towards Gaga or a project of hers? What about your relationship with the fandom?

I hope we can have meaningful contributions in this thread. Please, try to abstain from the “I ain’t reading that” commentary. Feel welcome to share your story if you feel like it. 

My take:

Spoiler

I really appreciate Gaga’s music in the first 8 years of her career. My favourite album of hers is still ARTPOP. Do I feel as attached to it as I did back in 2013/2014? –Absolutely not. However, I truly appreciate it for its sheer ambitiousness. A drawback is that I feel like it was, as of now, her last truly passionate pop album.

My appreciation for Born This Way (which wasn’t little back then) and for The Fame Monster has grown even more. They definitely deserve to share the crown for best Gaga album. BTW is just insanely bold and powerful in its message, while TFM feels super exquisite in its pop delivery. The mixing and mastering of BTW and AP definitely remain a sore point since for me they are the highlight of her pop music.

Cheek to Cheek era and tour are surprisingly the absolute high point in the first half. After setting previously unseen levels of expectations with her first 3 releases and failing to meet them due to the GP’s narrative during the AP era, she took the world by storm with her vocals and expertise in jazz. I really love this “second phase” of Gaga’s career that started with the fall of AP and led to CTC, AHS and the Oscars performances, and ultimately ended with Joanne, the Super bowl and the tour.

In regard to Joanne, while 4 years ago I couldn’t vibe with the record at all, lately I’ve started seeing how the people saying it’s aging like fine wine may be right after all. I appreciate the fact that with this record she faced some family trauma that had been haunting her all her life and established crucial boundaries. As of now, I see Joanne as the album and time in her life when she freed herself from the constant need to rebel against her father and his ways. It seems like she found acceptance within herself and started her journey to healing in spite of her dad (as she faced the tough reality post-Joanne that there’s no healing a man who simply doesn’t want to be healed).

Gaga’s second half is way more uneven and uneventful for me. I can summarise it as distancing. I loved her in ASIB, the soundtrack is extraordinary. It was a new peak for her objectively. However, I feel like it brought for the first time fans that weren’t really into her as an artist. To this day I find myself mildly annoyed when someone says  “I like her later stuff like Shallow” –Ok. You want a prize for that or what?

Chromatica, initially, made me ecstatic about her music trajectory (despite her worst lead single). 4 years later I still like the record but it has succumbed to the bottom with The Fame. These 2 albums have the largest amount of songs I just don’t care about. Revisiting Zane Lowe’s interviews for Joanne and Chromatica I definitely vibe with her state of mind during the former. I guess it was the pandemic, covid and all the chaos around the release, but I feel like she struggled to explain the album and its meaning. A lot of things lost their meaning when we were hit with the virus so my guess is that she really felt uncomfortable talking and promoting her new work under those circumstances. What’s more, there’s no denying that the record feels quite confused. At the musical front, it’s such a rush, but the lyrics are such a downer. I value the honesty but why did she sacrifice the message to fit it into the pop formula (I’m looking at the stark contrast between 1000 Doves and 1000 Doves piano demo which belongs to the supreme tier in her discography).

Moving on, I’m largely indifferent to Love for Sale, unfortunately. I couldn’t vibe with it the same way I did with CTC. But that’s alright, maybe eventually it will find a place in my playlists.

The House of Gucci film: I can’t stand it, it’s terrible and it’s what led to my distancing from Gaga as a fan. I went to the theatre to see it and well, it’s so bad, that her good acting can’t save it. It’s a pity that a lot of her time nowadays is sacrificed to her acting career. I will always see her as a music-first artist. So it sucked to realise that we are getting less music only for her to be a part of a project like HoG. I was like “nope, I’m out”.

I feel like “Phase 4” of Gaga’s career will start with the Joker 2 movie this year. It’s very sad that each “phase” brings us fewer pop/solo releases but I’ve come to accept it and I have moved onto other artists. I do love spontaneity and that’s something Gaga just lacks in her music releases. So I don’t expect it of her. Everything is very carefully planned which, on the bright side, absolutely brings a ton of advantages. We just need to face the fact that in the first 8 years she gave us LG1-5. In the next 8: we have LG6.

I will do a follow-up post about the fandom and my attitude towards it later cause it’s already too much. Let’s start the conversation first.

[r4therupbeat 1,587]

11 minutes ago, Son of ARTPOP said:

Everything is very carefully planned

You are correct. However since she changed management her team now is incapable of delivering what's planned and we have had not a normal era roll out since BTW. it's beyond embarrassing 

[eifulien 2,414]

8 minutes ago, r4therupbeat said:

You are correct. However since she changed management her team now is incapable of delivering what's planned and we have had not a normal era roll out since BTW. it's beyond embarrassing 

Well, would you really call it that way? I don't think we are able to see the full picture. There must be a sh*t ton of details and decisions behind the scenes that we just take for granted. Besides, would you really call the Joanne era a poor execution (in the long run)? I would agree for ARTPOP and Chromatica and we know that they happened during unforeseen and quite extreme circumstances. I'm not one to keep track of every single minute detail of an era rollout but Joanne was overall good. It was mostly our dissatisfaction that she so heavily emphasised on promoting Million Reasons. Apart from that we got the Dive bar, the televised performances, the music videos, the tour. It was just not to the fandom's liking (at least the majority of it back then). 

 

When I said carefully planned, I was referring to the concept of the album and its presentation to the world, the GP, the fanbase. She's has always made an event of her work. She treats it as one body, a timestamp in her life, an artistic statement and she's out there to talk about it, she wants to deliver the message. Let's make a quick comparison to someone else. Let's take Lana, she's released 3 full-fledged albums since Chromatica. Her albums aren't really eras in the same sense as Gaga's. She just writes, records and puts it out and moves on. I love this spontaneity but I also can't expect it from Gaga. These are just two v. different models, both are valid and have their advantages and drawbacks.

 

[Stephen 30,295]

I will say it's clear to me since ASIB she has made acting half of her career. I think she will always act from here on out, and it's just as important as her music (if not more so, especially as she's still trying to establish herself as a movie star).

I'm so happy for her to live this dream. If you told me back in 2010 that she would be an Oscar nominated actress I wouldn't have believed you. She's so incredible. 

[eifulien 2,414]

4 minutes ago, Stephen said:

I will say it's clear to me since ASIB she has made acting half of her career. I think she will always act from here on out, and it's just as important as her music (if not more so, especially as she's still trying to establish herself as a movie star).

I'm so happy for her to live this dream. If you told me back in 2010 that she would be an Oscar nominated actress I wouldn't have believed you. She's so incredible. 

I'm glad you're able to appreciate her acting career. I definitely admire how talented she is. It's just that acting/movie roles don't do it for me. I feel the magic in music, in acting - not really. I was reminded of that recently when we had the usual run of the Home Alone films around Christmas. SO-MANY-ICONIC-SCENES. And it's all because of the score. It really is the music from those scenes that guides you and sets the mood it aims for. Genius work. And for me it further proves that I'm in for the music. 

[HelloHangoverz 15,612]

When it comes to the first half, I think the memory that stands out most for me is hearing the Alejandro demo when it first leaked as 'Don't Call My Name' all the way back on 2009 YouTube. I cherish that memory, it was the moment I think I knew I was ****ed for life lol

[HelloHangoverz 15,612]

50 minutes ago, r4therupbeat said:

You are correct. However since she changed management her team now is incapable of delivering what's planned and we have had not a normal era roll out since BTW. it's beyond embarrassing 

Well Bobby spent 18 months planning a proper rollout for Chromatica, it's not his fault Covid ****ed it up

[Linus Gaga 7,988]

15 minutes ago, HelloHangoverz said:

Well Bobby spent 18 months planning a proper rollout for Chromatica, it's not his fault Covid ****ed it up

I think we all appreciated that they planned that much for the era, but disappointed they didn't try to do a plan B to adopt to the covid situation, while all other artists was doing greenscreen and backyard online concerts.

[CharlieQuinn 1,721]

First half: ambition, energy, power, dedication, discipline, determination, little monsters,  

second half: Hollywood, make-up, Superbowl, ASIB, 

Edited January 7 by Charliie

[Maxine Puth 9,052]

1 hour ago, Stephen said:

I will say it's clear to me since ASIB she has made acting half of her career. I think she will always act from here on out, and it's just as important as her music (if not more so, especially as she's still trying to establish herself as a movie star).

I'm so happy for her to live this dream. If you told me back in 2010 that she would be an Oscar nominated actress I wouldn't have believed you. She's so incredible. 

Hot take, and I don’t mean this to come off as rude or anything, but it’s weird to classify Gaga as “trying to establish herself” in the movie scene when she’s only filmed 3 movies In the span of 7 years. With only 2 of them being out right now. Meanwhile you have people like Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Lawrence, etc. who have put out 5 movies each in the last 6 years. Gaga didn’t jump from full time musician to full time actress, she went from full time musician to part time musician, part time avon lady, part time actress. 

[r4therupbeat 1,587]

1 hour ago, Son of ARTPOP said:

Well, would you really call it that way? I don't think we are able to see the full picture. There must be a sh*t ton of details and decisions behind the scenes that we just take for granted. Besides, would you really call the Joanne era a poor execution (in the long run)? I would agree for ARTPOP and Chromatica and we know that they happened during unforeseen and quite extreme circumstances. I'm not one to keep track of every single minute detail of an era rollout but Joanne was overall good. It was mostly our dissatisfaction that she so heavily emphasised on promoting Million Reasons. Apart from that we got the Dive bar, the televised performances, the music videos, the tour. It was just not to the fandom's liking (at least the majority of it back then). 

 

When I said carefully planned, I was referring to the concept of the album and its presentation to the world, the GP, the fanbase. She's has always made an event of her work. She treats it as one body, a timestamp in her life, an artistic statement and she's out there to talk about it, she wants to deliver the message. Let's make a quick comparison to someone else. Let's take Lana, she's released 3 full-fledged albums since Chromatica. Her albums aren't really eras in the same sense as Gaga's. She just writes, records and puts it out and moves on. I love this spontaneity but I also can't expect it from Gaga. These are just two v. different models, both are valid and have their advantages and drawbacks.

 

well because I did in fact keep track of every detail daily, the Joanne era was mishandled too. The lead single, music videos were trash, every time a Million Reasons would go no1 on the US iTunes there would be something missing and there were countless threads on what her team should do, from lyric videos at the time, Spotify and radio placements etc and things would happen 2 weeks too late as per usual. I could go on if you want me to. 

You can't compare her to Lana because Lana constantly writes and records, different genre and timeless not date music. All of Gaga's albums have been great from start to finish minus a couple of fillers on ARTPOP. It's the handling of the music what's incredibly sad because she is the most talented artist alive atm.

[r4therupbeat 1,587]

Just now, r4therupbeat said:

well because I did in fact keep track of every detail daily, the Joanne era was mishandled too. The lead single, music videos were trash, every time a Million Reasons would go no1 on the US iTunes there would be something missing and there were countless threads on what her team should do, from lyric videos at the time, Spotify and radio placements etc and things would happen 2 weeks too late as per usual. I could go on if you want me to. 

You can't compare her to Lana because Lana constantly writes and records, different genre and timeless not dated music. All of Gaga's albums have been great from start to finish minus a couple of fillers on ARTPOP. It's the handling of the music what's incredibly sad because she is the most talented artist alive atm.

 

[r4therupbeat 1,587]

1 hour ago, HelloHangoverz said:

Well Bobby spent 18 months planning a proper rollout for Chromatica, it's not his fault Covid ****ed it up

interesting how it ONLY affected Bobby's plans when Dua, The Weeknd, Doja etc got their biggest eras and longest charting singles because their teams were quick to adapt to the situation minus the touring aspect

[HelloHangoverz 15,612]

3 minutes ago, r4therupbeat said:

interesting how it ONLY affected Bobby's plans when Dua, The Weeknd, Doja etc got their biggest eras and longest charting singles because their teams were quick to adapt to the situation minus the touring aspect

girl the entitlement. we get what we get. stop being a karen

[r4therupbeat 1,587]

2 minutes ago, HelloHangoverz said:

girl the entitlement. we get what we get. stop being a karen

stfu and get off my mentions then. if you are happy with 1 performance (mtv) per era you clearly are not a stan