Musically I Feel Like Gaga Gave Up on Mayhem

[Blackout19 14,910]

3 hours ago, Poltergeist said:

I think her skipping Chromatica on The Mayhem Ball means something different, hopefully 

[NemoMyName 1,934]

Sorry but is everyone forgetting that The Dead Dance it's literally a tie-in song made and released exclusively to promote Wednesday S2? 

[Addison Rae 17,864]

i had this sentiment during the chromatica era. i don’t get how u can see her interviews talking about mayhem and feel she gave up. if anything she finally found her spark again and remembers who tf she is this era

[AsleepOnTheCeiling 6,832]

3 hours ago, River said:

1. The fact that she needed to make a promo deal with both Mastercard and Netflix to release 2 music videos and singles, tell u that after Disease didn't perform well, her promo budget has been cut by interscope.

2. Gagacabana and Coachella are costy, she got paid of course, but for the basics.. so any promo, outfits, dancers + outfits for them, staging, band etc. was on her and on her promo budget from interscope.

3. the tour, everything costs money.

She basically from budget pov, she can't release new singles and new videos. there's no money for that.

Promo budgets don't get cut mid album cycle. This budget has been set years in advance contractually, and if anything got a bump w an addendum to the contract before it's release. 

3 hours ago, Bronco said:

Honestly, I think we overstate Gaga as a music video artist/visual artist. 

She had a run of good videos between Paparazzi & You & I at a time when music videos had become the big IT thing in the industry, but outside of that window when the industry was obsessed with music videos and pumping millions into them - she's not really been a video focused artist. 

She's a theatrical artist, her primary selling point and focus point has been live performance. So I think the only thing we've missed out on this era is the frequency of promo performances she used to do - but realistically, those slots she performed in are largely gone. 
Late night tv shows are less popular these days and they're not spending the same $$ to book musical guests. We've lost so many of the big award show stages/seen the remaining ones decline in relevance and as a result pull stunt bookings to try and make teens turn in. 
There's little to no musical spots on morning tv circuits anymore. 
The big shows like X Factor/Idol/America's Got Talent are either dead or irrelevant. 

Largely agree, but you're downplaying the key role she played in music video as a medium in the mid/late 2000s. She's widely credited for bringing theatrics, narrative driven storytelling, and choreography back to music videos at the time and was also a driving force behind the popularization of YouTube. So to imply her MVs were luck or anything of the sort is a mischaracterization. 

2 hours ago, Ladle Ghoulash said:

Yeah, this is right on. Also, tbh, the MAYHEM Ball itself is enough visual and narrative for the whole era. I don’t know how someone could say she “gave up” on an album/era for which she created one of her most intricate live shows of all time.

This. Visual storytelling has been at the core of the entire album and she's sprinkled things here and there for well over a year. Disease, Abracadabra, and the Dead Dance all got MVs. She released Dead Dance and the bonus tracks on streaming in the summer. Disease got two ballad mixes with live video during it's single run. Abracadabra had a Behind the Scenes video, rehearsal video, and fan video. She did a SNL slot that's available online as well as several festivals. She has a 70+ date tour that she's somehow found the time between to film the Dead Dance video as well as fly to LA for a Grammys performance. She did a Super Bowl performance as well in that time. She did Coachella before the tour. 99 posts on Instagram since the start of the era and 90% of them are her promoting the album or some aspect of the era. But somehow she gave up because she didn't release HBDYWM as a single for the Swifties. Even if you approached the tour as a 9-5 job, she would have worked 14 weeks of Mon-Friday over the past year. Then you consider that she spends a month or two on even rehearsing the tour, two weeks to put it together, 5 days per mv from conceptualization to shoot plus 2 weeks of rehearsal, and you're at 31 weeks. That's still not counting time for the festivals, any promo between, tv appearances and awards shows, key art shoots, her still promoting Harlequin at the time, her recording other music, and the fact she has a business she's involved in. She didn't give up, she's just busy. 

2 hours ago, princedeeblebleble said:

For me its crazy that much smaller or indie artists get more videos than legends like Gaga. She's basically a billionairess and yet she just doesn't wanan realse a visual album when she has such a strong base to do one, both Chromatica and Mayhem coule have easily gotten them but alas nada.

Smaller and indie artists are doing what they can to get their foot in the door. Gaga was the same at the beginning of her career. And she also was regularly in debt to her label during that time. Funnily enough, Gaga was nowhere close to a billionaire up until she stopped peddling music videos and other intricate costly projects to fans that won't ever be grateful for them anyways. 

[AsleepOnTheCeiling 6,832]

3 minutes ago, NemoMyName said:

Sorry but is everyone forgetting that The Dead Dance it's literally a tie-in song made and released exclusively to promote Wednesday S2? 

Do you think Netflix just came up to her and offered her millions to film a music video for it or do you think her team negotiated those funds and the right to do so? Because I imagine that if Netflix strictly had their way they would have made the visual for the song be the scene from the show. And you're conveniently skipping over the fact that she negotiated the right to put the Target exclusive song on streaming, which was dropped at the same time as the song. 

[Bronco 21,206]

3 minutes ago, AsleepOnTheCeiling said:

So to imply her MVs were luck or anything of the sort is a mischaracterization

I'm not trying to say her MVs were luck. 

I'm just pointing out that she did all that in realistically a very small window starting with Paparazzi. 

And like you say it was her theatricallity that made the videos so revolutionary. That aspect of Gaga is as strong this era as it was at her peak imo. 

She just never confined it to music videos and just due to the nature of the game these days we're getting less content from her so it feels like she's a lesser version of herself to some folks. 

[NemoMyName 1,934]

Also Mayhem:Requiem

how can anybody giving up do an album rearrangement concert? 

what the hell?

Edited March 4 by NemoMyName

[AsleepOnTheCeiling 6,832]

Just now, Bronco said:

I'm not trying to say her MVs were luck. 

I'm just pointing out that she did all that in realistically a very small window starting with Paparazzi. 

And like you say it was her theatricallity that made the videos so revolutionary. That aspect of Gaga is as strong this era as it was at her peak imo. 

She just never confined it to music videos and just due to the nature of the game these days we're getting less content from her so it feels like she's a lesser version of herself to some folks. 

Agree. I still think Gaga turns out artistically where it matters (live shows, photoshoots). A lot of money went into the Mayhem Ball set design as well as costumes. And I'm sure she would have poured more into the Grammy performance if she had been given the time and proper heads up. It was very last minute and she's mid tour. 

[Franch Toast 27,708]

While I would love to see Vanish get the single treatment, I'd hardly say she's given up on Mayhem. We're constantly being fed. She seems bursting with joy, fans are happy, and she's popping up in places we least expect it (like BB's Super Bowl). The tour is doing incredibly well. 

Also, neither she nor Michael are billionaires, and even though her tour is grossing a lot, as is Haus Labs, all of that money doesn't solely go into her pocket. She has a lot of people to pay. 

[Monstermilo 5,429]

i agree tbh 

[LGAte 670]

3 hours ago, Bronco said:

I mean Just Dance/PokerFace/LoveGame are great music videos, but in the videography of pop music they are just great music videos rather than anything groundbreaking. 
 

Now I disagree with this. I guess you had had to have been there. But that is WHY Gaga is iconic. She normalized videos like that and people fail to understand that because they see random other girls before/during/after her, but she normalized that type of video again when it was fading out and forced everyone back into that.

Just Dance played into the hipster/party/messy culture. It seems like a standard video. But no one was doing that kind of found footage party video at that time yet and she did it. It looked groundbreaking/different at that time. It was less polished and more in your face.

Poker Face was architectural and even the way the dogs were positioned, the edits with the clipping of Gaga's face...at that time that was visually interesting and sleek and new looking. It felt BIG. It felt....like someone who wanted to dominate and they were getting out of a pool in a ****ing avante garde look. No one got it because it was so weird...at that time.

LoveGame even had pushback. People were pissed that she made out with a woman in the telephone booth. It glipped in and out a man and a woman. It also was very very unapologetically gay in how the dancers and men were stripped down, how it was greasy, and not trying to hide/ommit/play down it's gay club intention. The clever wordplay of "HA" instead of "c o c k" was played up in the video too when she grabbed her crotch. Women didn't do this. Add in the layer that this was right when the penis rumors were beginning...she literally and figuratively was embracing it.

Alot of you see these videos now and look at them with presentism but do not understand for those of us who were a little bit older and old enough to know what was acceptable/what was the norm/how videos were being made....yes even Just Dance, Poker Face, and LoveGame were polarizing and questionable.

There was a point where Gaga having a purple streak in her hair was considered "weird" and different. 

The fact that you laugh at that now is proof that she was successful and massively impactful in ways you don't even realize. 

[REALITY 79,741]

I feel like this is just a long-winded way of saying you don't like The Dead Dance. 

I think you're putting too much emphasis on the music videos when you really should be looking at the live performances. It's clear that Gaga really wanted to hone and refine the live performance aspect of this era, which was something she hadn't really done since BTW/ARTPOP. 

You wanna talk about visuals, but forget that the MAYHEM Ball/Coachella/Copacabana has some of the best visuals of her career—and yes, I truly believe that. She didn't "give up" or "bail out" on MAYHEM. You checked out when she didn't do the promotional strategy that you wanted.

[gagacabana 5,047]

1 hour ago, bxr said:

beyond corporate sponsorships, consumer marketing strategies, cultural arbiter cosigns, commercial profit, and industry approval … there’s something essential missing … there’s a spirit of the age, in a way, but there’s something inherently soulful missing … the narrative feels like this definitive “mayhem” (stipulation: for all practical intents and purposes herein, gaga’s linguistic precision and word choice intention are established) is what an album sounds like when you’ve got the entire machine (metropolis callback, maria maria …) but some core element has been willfully deprived and maybe that void is the vanishing point over the horizon into LG8’s revelation reconciliation with said creative source

This makes a lot of sense. You might be the realest person on this thread

[gagacabana 5,047]

4 minutes ago, REALITY said:

I feel like this is just a long-winded way of saying you don't like The Dead Dance. 

I think you're putting too much emphasis on the music videos when you really should be looking at the live performances. It's clear that Gaga really wanted to hone and refine the live performance aspect of this era, which was something she hadn't really done since BTW/ARTPOP. 

You wanna talk about visuals, but forget that the MAYHEM Ball/Coachella/Copacabana has some of the best visuals of her career—and yes, I truly believe that. She didn't "give up" or "bail out" on MAYHEM. You checked out when she didn't do the promotional strategy that you wanted.

I wish it was possible to give more than 1 reaction because I'm equally lmaoing, thnxing and loveing this comment

[bim 779]

I’m a bit confused at the point being made by the OP. The title is that musically she’s given up and the post seems to be about how she didn’t push more singles? The interviews this era, particularly the Zane Lowe one was about how she seems to have fallen back in love with making music again. Compare that to Chromatica where she was suicidal, chain smoking cigarettes alone on her balcony, and needed to get dragged into the studio to make music.

We have interviews of her geeking out about the music making process (Rolling Stone and Song Exploder). She’s obsessed with the intricacy of it all. There’s the Disease Antidote and Poison videos we got, and she arranged an acoustic Abracadabra and Perfect Celebrity for Howard Stern. Coachella and Copacabana have filmed live streams. A tour film is in the works, and a reinvented Mayhem: Requiem was performed and filmed. And it’s not related to Mayhem, but we got Harlequin and Harlequin Live, because she literally just wanted to make and perform music that is important to her. Not to mention that Happy Mistake performance was a powerhouse vocal delivery from her.

When she accepted her award at the iHeart Awards she even said she feels like she’s just getting started and entering a new rebirth in her career. The Mayhem Ball proves she fully means it because it’s a fascinating show, where she revisits her entire catalog of music to celebrate what she’s done. We got acoustic Dance in the Dark and Brooklyn Nights, which is something we never would’ve fathomed in the Chromatica era when she was literally giving an advertisement for Oreos laying on a chair being filmed on a phone looking like she wanted to die.

Mayhem is also her best produced album. It seems like this is genuinely important to her now, which I’m glad by. Her albums have never felt as musically polished as this one, so if anything she’s more into the music than she ever has been.

Also The Dead Dance is a great song. It fit perfectly into Wednesday and is such a campy bop. I love having fun, silly music from her. Not every single thing she does needs to be the absolute best, most groundbreaking, boundary pushing piece of work. People seem to want more from her then are constantly complaining when she gives us stuff. We got a whole beautiful album for Harlequin, and people complain that it’s jazz and mostly covers (Folie a Deux and Happy Mistake are insanely good songs too by the way). People want dark music, then complain when Disease came out. People complained about Mayhem because it wasn’t the sound they were expecting it to be regardless of how incredible the album actually is. People want more rock music and complain about the Grammy performance. And people are still complaining that she didn’t give us enough when she’s working her ass of and giving us one of the best shows of her career, while looking healthier and happier than she possibly ever has AND her vocals are better than ever to be honest.

Just becuse this doesn’t look like other eras or like what other pop stars are doing does not mean she gave up on music. Honestly, how can someone even make that statement after watching the opening number of the Mayhem Ball?

Edited March 4 by bim