Gaga's "first" album (2007)

[warhol killah 9,112]

I was reading Gaga lore in Gaga wiki and read that after signing in Def Jam records she supposedly had an album scheduled for May 2007:

During that meeting, charmain Antonio "L.A." Reid stopped in and said to her "I can hear you from my office, you're very loud!" He saw a born star inside that young women and signed her on the spot. On September 6 of 2006, Gaga said I Do to an artist development deal with and a first album scheduled for May 2007.

What do you guys think her first album would have been like? Since this is around mid-2007 songs like Just Dance and Poker Face weren't made yet.

I feel like these songs (written with Team Love Child) would have been probably on the album:

Beautiful, Dirty, Rich

Hollywood

Fancy Pants

Fever

Oh Well

Reel Cool

Retrosexual

Ribbons

Rock Show

Shake Ur Kitty

Vanity

Wonderful

I think her career would have been different if Def Jam didn't drop her + released an album under them. We probably would not even get a Just Dance or Bad Romance.

[ALonelyNight 5]

11 minutes ago, warhol killah said:

I think her career would have been different if Def Jam didn't drop her + released an album under them. We probably would not even get a Just Dance or Bad Romance.

Well certainly if she had never been introduced to RedOne, her sound would have remained like that of the back half of The Fame, a funkier new-wave style album as opposed to the electropop behemoths that he made

[AVeryGagaHolyDick 31,835]

I love these songs individually, especially Wonderful 

But THANK GOD, that didn’t happen. 

I know she suffered from being dropped by Def Jam, but it really was for the best.

The Fame has a FIRE. A fire that’s started it all.

 

[princedeeblebleble 3,569]

Honestly being dropped was the biggest secret blessing. It probs lit the ultimate fire under her ass as well as allowed her to meet the right people who supported her insane vision. Def jam could not financially support the things she had in mind. 

[SleepingSun 1,331]

I honestly think if she released an album under Island Def Jam in 2007, she wouldn't have become the global pop phenomenon she is today. But who knows, she could've become just as famous, even more famous, a lot less famous... Or maybe she wouldn't have become a star at all 

[BeyonkaAte 935]

i thought Paparazzi and Summerboy were written around that time as well, or was it right after she got dropped? 

Edited 4 hours ago by BeyonkaAte

[Head Empty 26,944]

45 minutes ago, BeyonkaAte said:

i thought Paparazzi and Summerboy were written around that time as well, or was it right after she got dropped? 

Yes, she performed them during her Lollapalooza set in 2007

[gagzus 22,765]

The album probably would’ve sounded more like Paper Gangsta and Starstruck because the whole purpose of Paper Gangsta sounding as it does is because it was representing them trying to change her and her sound.

But she probably was pushing for a sound like her earlier work of Retrophysical, Fancy Pants, Summerboy, Again Again and BDR

Def Jam was primarily a Hip-Hop/R&B label at the time and even made both Rihanna and Beyoncé make music that sounded like that. 

We still don’t know for sure what song made LA Reid drop her, but most people guess it was the laptop demo that’s leaked of LoveGame. He has sugar coated it throughout the years but he basically said she sent him a bunch of demos one day and he hated every one of them, and dropped her hence his famous “I’ve made a mistake” thing from a documentary he was in a few years ago.

Edited 3 hours ago by gagzus

[Quentin 6,771]

1 hour ago, AVeryGagaHolyDick said:

The Fame has a FIRE. A fire that’s started it all.

We burrnt the place to the f-cking grouuund!

[gagzus 22,765]

1 hour ago, AVeryGagaHolyDick said:

I love these songs individually, especially Wonderful 

But THANK GOD, that didn’t happen. 

I know she suffered from being dropped by Def Jam, but it really was for the best.

The Fame has a FIRE. A fire that’s started it all.

 

I mean… a lot of The Fame was music she had already made beforehand with the RedOne songs tact on after a two week creative spike they had. You can also tell because most of The Fame songs with RedOne sound similar or use a lot of sampling or sample packs to make their beats. 

I think the album doesn’t QUITE fit the narrative she tried to give it about internalised self worth linking to a form of fame. The title track and Money Honey do but the rest don’t.

[AVeryGagaHolyDick 31,835]

1 hour ago, gagzus said:

I mean… a lot of The Fame was music she had already made beforehand with the RedOne songs tact on after a two week creative spike they had. You can also tell because most of The Fame songs with RedOne sound similar or use a lot of sampling or sample packs to make their beats. 

I think the album doesn’t QUITE fit the narrative she tried to give it about internalised self worth linking to a form of fame. The title track and Money Honey do but the rest don’t.

But the core of The Fame is the RedOne songs, and they’re the reason she became famous

I also disagree about what you wrote about the concept of the album, it’s all about the lifestyle

What you said about the album is more true with any other album she’s released

[gagzus 22,765]

Just now, AVeryGagaHolyDick said:

But the core of The Fame is the RedOne songs, and they’re the reason she became famous

I also disagree about what you wrote about the concept of the album, it’s all about the lifestyle

What you said about the album is more true with any other album she’s released

It’s not though, because only The Fame, BDR and Money Honey tackle the ideas she puts forward. Every other song is a song about love, sex and relationships, it’s basically an album that is 80% about her relationship with Luc Carl at its core. In fact almost all her music up until ARTPOP was heavily about Luc Carl in general.

Paparazzi is a narrative framing device that linguistically links to theme yes, but not a direct reference to the theme she proposes for it. Yes the RedOne songs are the selling point and I agree they are the stronger tracks followed by the Kierszenbaum ones, BUT there’s only 3 songs on the actual album that match the mythos she created around it. The actual mythos was mostly constructed by her public image and the mystery around her. So much so that it was literally a point of contention amongst her critics; they said her music was generic in subject matter and lyrics that were shallow but she was trying to mask it all with an outrageous persona. It’s often noted that her MUSIC didnt become as abstract as her persona until ARTPOP and then she just never leaned into it ever again.

TF, BDR and MH are the three pillars of the ethos she has about the album; feeling famous, idealising being famous qnd what happens when you’re finally famous and they go in order in the tracklost BDR -> TF - MH. Everything else is essentially canon fodder that happens along the way.

The Fame as a song is about wanting fame but not having it and idealising it, which matches her mythos for the concept.

Money Honey basically asks can you have all the money in the world and be happy or do we need something deeper (like love).

Beautiful Dirty Rich is about the internalised fame she talks about and FEELING famous without the catch-all nature of fame.

[warhol killah 9,112]

1 hour ago, gagzus said:

We still don’t know for sure what song made LA Reid drop her, but most people guess it was the laptop demo that’s leaked of LoveGame.

It was Beautiful, Dirty, Rich according to her 2009 Rolling Stone interview!

Even after hearing "Beautiful, Dirty, Rich," Def Jam execs dropped Gaga. "They didn't get it," she says. "Some people still don't get me." After a dispiriting few months, she began working with RedOne, a synthesizer-loving Moroccan-Swedish producer, and found a new record deal with Interscope.

[gagzus 22,765]

5 minutes ago, warhol killah said:

It was Beautiful, Dirty, Rich according to her 2009 Rolling Stone interview!

Even after hearing "Beautiful, Dirty, Rich," Def Jam execs dropped Gaga. "They didn't get it," she says. "Some people still don't get me." After a dispiriting few months, she began working with RedOne, a synthesizer-loving Moroccan-Swedish producer, and found a new record deal with Interscope.

LA Reid’s account contradicts this though because she had been with them for 3 months BEFORE she was dropped and BDR was in the first batch of songs she’s played them because BDR was made as early as 2006. And since it made it all the way to her debut album I doubt she’d have left it out because it’s probably the only song we’ve heard of hers in the early days that had little to no change in almost 2 years alongside eventually Paparazi 

Edited 1 hour ago by gagzus