Transition from TF to TFM

[chronic 244]

Something I’ve always thought about is how Gaga’s image changed from The Fame to The Fame Monster. I’ve been a fan since Just Dance, but I was just twelve years old when it came out. I’d play Just Dance and the other singles on repeat as a kid. It wasn’t until the end of The Fame Monster era that I started watching Gagadaily, and really watching interviews and performances. The Bad Romance music video would play every morning on tv while I was getting ready for school. That’s when my obsession really began. I remember being here when she dropped the very first promotional image for BTW. I even remember the ads for gold fang grills she did a collab with that were always popping up here too.   

I want to know from you guys what the transition from The Fame to The Fame Monster was like in interviews, appearances, and performances. How did she announce TFM, and Bad Romance? Did she tease any of it beforehand? It seems like such a dramatic change especially when she was just beginning to garner a massive global fanbase. To go from this sexy, sharp look to dark, and even at times, gory look. 
 

Tell me, ancestors. 

Edited 19 hours ago by chronic

[Jackaroo 2,344]

bad romance was debuted at the first-ever livestream for McQueen right? i remember listening to a low-quality leaked version before it came out.

And she once said this tv appearance represents the transition from TF to TFM with the wig being yellow with lavender blonde accent (****ing beautiful btw). 

 

[elsamars 6,086]

I miss old Gaga so much.

[hELXIG 44,336]

It somehow made sense. It's like she debuted with this very polished 'futuristic' pop star vibe with something really different, stuck with it for a sec, then really expanded on it to show us what she was capable of. I think after she cracked it with mainstream popularity (which happened FAST btw, in a few months she went from unknown to global superstar) she then felt she had something to prove. She was very intelligent and intentional with her art right from the beginning. She knew, and she would talk about it in interviews, that she had to show everybody with her second album that she wasn't a one trick pony. That's also when we started seeing more acoustic performances to prove to everyone that behind the dance music she had real talent. It was such an electric time.  She was like nothing before her, and she exploded so fast that she literally changed the whole music scene around her

I remember after Just Dance and Poker Face and LoveGame (which were kind seen as the same 'shtick') she then threw out Eh Eh which was a more sweet and relaxed sound, and then Paparazzi with a very dark, theatrical video, which was when we knew oh, this girl has some range. And then... THEN. Bad Romance came out and shook the world. That's when we knew she was here to stay. I remember it's all anyone could talk about that week. But then again, we weren't so online back in 2009 and everybody would talk about the same songs, music videos and TV show episodes that dropped that week every week   it was simpler times

In interviews she spoke her mind, was very bold, very intelligent, personable, but always made sure she had one stand out line that would 'shock' people and stick with them. The world really didn't know what to make of her and everybody was so divided

And of course after that every era she continued to reinvent herself, and we came to know her as the chameleon we expect to see today

[Jill 30,676]

19 minutes ago, elsamars said:

I miss old Gaga so much.

She wasn't old back then! On the contrary she was quite young. So you miss the young Gaga  

[Borisapillar 9,876]

I consider Paparazzi at the VMAs as the bridge between the two eras. Suddenly things began to take a much more gothic and dark turn. 
 

She also rapidly lost a lot of weight during this time. The Monster was taking over.

It was everything.

[Hadrian 1,100]

I think the transition period started when she had that purple hair in that interview where she said she was obsessed with monsters.

But it's been years and I might be misremembering 

[weed 76,364]

I felt the transition starting with LoveGame and then with the Paparazzi music video (I was very scandalized by all the kissing lmao) and VMAs performance, and then I first heard Bad Romance on the radio and I was like omg I love this song, wrote the lyrics on my arm and in the morning I googled it and I was like omg Lady Gaga, my queen forever. 

when the Bad Romance video came out I was so gagged, I told everyone about it. 

Edited 18 hours ago by weed

[elsamars 6,086]

28 minutes ago, Jill said:

She wasn't old back then! On the contrary she was quite young. So you miss the young Gaga  

Could be 

[TAIPEI 2,958]

i've been a fan since 2009, witnessing her evolution from THE FAME era to THE FAME MONSTER era, and i'll never understand how she & her team managed to make her look like a completely different person in just one year.
btw her red carpet look at grammys 2010 is one of my all-time favorites, i'm absolutely obsessed with that style!

i mean, from this

to this

is totally freaking insane.
the transformation in her styling and the use of haute couture reflect the massive surge in her popularity since rising to fame, actually she's already looks like an fvcking superstar since very beginning in her career.

Edited 17 hours ago by TAIPEI

[Killa 18,133]

58 minutes ago, Borisapillar said:

I consider Paparazzi at the VMAs as the bridge between the two eras. Suddenly things began to take a much more gothic and dark turn. 
 

She also rapidly lost a lot of weight during this time. The Monster was taking over.

It was everything.

Yes the whole coming in wheelchair dramma, the Blood and over the top performance was unhinged enough to make sense. Honestly st the time It was like what can She even do tò impress US again?

I think the McQueen Atlantis show was like a week or 5 days before.  And there was a leak maybe 2 weeks before. I Remember having Heard a bit of It, Little snipet

[Savage 1,795]

For me it felt like the shift occurred on SNL, where I believe she wore the long blond almost curly wig (See her performances of Paparazzi and LoveGame) for the first time—it’s the wig that she used for the first couple of Monster Ball theater shows. She was promoting two songs from The Fame on SNL still but played a little snippet of Bad Romance (which the world didn’t know) at the piano during the LoveGame performance. And back in 2009 TFM was being promoted as a re-release, not a new era. It blended until it didn’t and we realized in like 2010 that this would be considered its own thing. The tour, the look, the music, all of it. All of a sudden we were in this fandom of an A-list superstar, as if she had been around for years. This was very different from how The Fame era felt imo. The fact that the new songs were also being sold as a separate physical EP helped this transition of thinking from TFM being a rerelease to it being LG2. (Streaming wasn’t a thing.) By Born This Way, we all pretty much recognized she was putting out LG3. (Everyone but Wikipedia.)

Edited 16 hours ago by Savage

[PunkTheFunk 125,389]

I didn't read all of that but wishing you all the best with your transition

[gagzus 17,791]

i remember vividly she started out in early 2008 and it took till early 2009 for her to become actually mega famous, despite what everyone says it wasn't fast she spent a year of opening for other people and still performed in bars and nightclubs until she went on her own tour. Just Dance caught on in Canada in mid-late 2008 but didn't take her to big heights internationally until about i'd say March-April 2009? I remember specifically she had released music videos for ALL the singles bar Paparazzi before she was to the point of inescapably famous. I remember an older gay who was entertainment manager for a gay club in Newcastle here in the UK, and he told me (after around about the time Joanne came out) that she had came to the UK once in 2008 and she wanted to be paid the equivalent of $300 to do a set in the bar and they turned her down bc they said they and their customers would have no idea who she was plus she wasn't "gay enough" for them. Which is wild in hindsight.

People didn't take her seriously whatsoever in interviews or anything, she made her own clothes and accessories with her friends, then she got friendly with actual fashion people and showed her love for fashion and then her fashion changed. (She had spent a whole year almost wearing the same 3 outfits and hair i remember specifically- the oragami dress in white and black, her long hair with layered bangs and hair bows, Chanel heels and sunglasses and the disco stick and the album cover glasses sometimes too and that was it.)

She then became less bubbly of a person, became more serious about her outfits and music as art, around Paparazzi was when he image started to change. She tweeted the lyrics from the title track on Twitter, she announced the title, did festivals in europe and then the VMAs was the true turning point. Her tan disappeared, she became more reserved and less "fun" i guess and depressed. In hindsight it's kinda sad.

In this time she also changed culturally how red carpets and fashion worked, she is credited for bringing back Four on The Floor disco structure to pop music, beginning the electronic music revolution (that in turn made DJs bigger and gave them their success in the early 2010's) and she was the first artist that showed celebrities could care about fashion so fashion houses allowed rental and gifting of their fashion to celebrities BECAUSE of Gaga and Alexander McQueen specifically. Then nobody ever wore jeans on the red carpet again.

[gagzus 17,791]

Also people often forget Bad Romance was deeply debated about whether it was good or not and the album started all the “oh she’s just a Madonna wannabe” stuff.

Even online on this fanbase on GagaBoards you had people hating Bad Romance and the album’s drastic change from this almost modernised electropop sound into this heavily 80s/90s  eurodance inspired music. It was like whiplash when her vocals suddenly dropped an octave in her music because of using less auto tune and stuff.

Bad Romance DID NOT get its flowers till after ARTPOP but before Joanne because of Billboard specifically hailing it as THE song and THE video of the 2000s in a list they did. That’s where it originates from.