Gaga has become too safe.

[Ladle Ghoulash 53,604]

7 minutes ago, Mothermayhem said:

Charli XCX just released her most half baked underwhelming album

“Half-baked” and it’s meticulously crafted 

[Mothermayhem 17]

1 hour ago, Starmie25 said:

It really wasn't though. Her first 4 albums are nowhere near safe sonically.

Actually they were. Do you even know who lady gaga is atp😭 just dance and all the singles from the fame are her safest and most commercial songs . Yall need to stop throwing words together and hoping they stick 😕

[Ladle Ghoulash 53,604]

Anyway, echoing @Bronco’s point: I think because Gaga was a formative influence on a lot of the folks on here, there’s a tendency in the fan base to act like her music is more experimental than it actually is because she may have been some folks first exposure to certain sounds/approaches to music. I think she is genuinely experimental and virtuosic relative to the mainstream pop scene, but I wouldn’t really say her music particularly experimental outside of that context, nor is her music now any less experimental than it ever has been. If anything, I think she’s arguably taken more sonic risks as of late (REQUIEM, Disease, Abra, exploring electro grunge on PC + CSTH, Killah). 

Edited 5 hours ago by Ladle Ghoulash

[Mothermayhem 17]

8 minutes ago, Ladle Ghoulash said:

“Half-baked” and it’s meticulously crafted 

LOL… nobody thinks this btw the album was artistic wannabe and half baked. she wanted to take advantage from the hype of her last album but the album so underwhelming that nobody gaf 

[gagzus 23,294]

3 minutes ago, Mothermayhem said:

LOL… nobody thinks this btw the album was artistic wannabe and half baked. she wanted to take advantage from the hype of her last album but the album so underwhelming that nobody gaf 

As a Charli fan I can tell you you’re completely wrong and don’t understand who’s she is as an artist or person. If she wanted to take ADVANTAGE of brat (because she literally CRAVED fame and success for like a decade beforehand) why wouldn’t she make… another dance music album? Kinda counterintuitive.

Like I said before in multiple threads; modern pop fans need so much exposition and false complexity that they don’t understand nuance or ambiguity anymore. Literally the worst thing internet culture did to music was to make algorithms and make music so accessible to everyone that now people genuinely believe their needs need to be catered to. 

You can literally just not listen to it and say “not for me” like not everything needs an opinion put out into the world  

[Ladle Ghoulash 53,604]

13 minutes ago, Mothermayhem said:

LOL… nobody thinks this btw the album was artistic wannabe and half baked. she wanted to take advantage from the hype of her last album but the album so underwhelming that nobody gaf 

Me reading this:

 

[PartySick 172,735]

3 hours ago, Bronco said:

Ngl most of the time it always strikes me that they just have a very narrow experience with pop music and so the use of external genres in a pop song feels way more experimental & new than it does to anyone who listens to other big genres. 

I've always tried to expand my own horizons as far as the music I listen to but...I've seen FKA Twigs, Arca, and Bjork mentioned, yeah? I find maybe 95% of their work genuinely unlistenable and the songs I do listen to hit more like novelties than actual music  

So if Gaga staying "safe" or "mainstream" means she keeps making music I actually wanna listen to I'm good with it  

'Cause even if it's "safe" she'll still manage to be interesting  

3 hours ago, fashii0n said:

 

For me, one of Gaga’s weirdest and most experimental songs is probably Aura especially that guitar intro and the way she sings on it and also Disease is pretty unusual too compared to what’s mainstream right now. But even then, a lot of what makes Disease sound different is just the heavy electroclash influence, which was actually huge in Europe in the 2000s but never really took off in the US

There are also a few weirder album tracks on Born This Way, but overall, most of Gaga’s biggest songs are still very radiofriendly. She’s not really an artist like FKA twigs, Björk etc who will fully commit to something abrasive or genuinely leftfield. Gaga is more in the Madonna or Britney tradition, she is a mainstream pop star who likes borrowing from experimental, underground or more “artsy” inspo/sounds, but usually shapes them into something accessible enough to still sell. I don’t think she’d ever make something completely alienating.

Disease actually really makes me think of an MJ song

He and Gaga are super similar in that their music is largely mainstream but they take the occasional left turns just to keep it seasoned nicely.

What she lacks in experimentality (is that a word) she definitely makes up for with versatility.

SOME people might think only soccer moms and old folks are streaming her non-dance pop stuff () but one of her biggest strengths is she could be plopped into basically any genre and excell.

Idk what my point is lmao. I guess that I don't really have the itch for her to put her weird yelling meditation videos over a messy non-beat and put it on a CD labelled "here's my experimental album, you f-words".

[Ladle Ghoulash 53,604]

6 minutes ago, gagzus said:

As a Charli fan I can tell you you’re completely wrong and don’t understand who’s she is as an artist or person. If she wanted to take ADVANTAGE of brat (because she literally CRAVED fame and success for like a decade beforehand) why wouldn’t she make… another dance music album? Kinda counterintuitive.

Like I said before in multiple threads; modern pop fans need so much exposition and false complexity that they don’t understand nuance or ambiguity anymore. Literally the worst thing internet culture did to music was to make algorithms and make music so accessible to everyone that now people genuinely believe their needs need to be catered to. 

You can literally just not listen to it and say “not for me” like not everything needs an opinion put out into the world  

I also just don’t understand how a fan base that stans an artist whose whole schtick was riding the line between irony and sincerity (being a club kid while also being a cultural critic + art student) insist that because Charli (purposefully) reads and presents as a vapid party girl that she doesn’t have substance lmao

[gagzus 23,294]

On the topic of Gaga playing it safe, I personally believe she’s only viewed as safe now because the world has caught up to her.
 

i remember how big of a deal and weird she was seen as when she debuted, not only her fashion — but her music too. Dance music was few and far between success wise since the late 90s and she took Pop music EXTREMELY serious from every angle.
 

She didn’t wear jeans on red carpets, her fashion was inspired by runways instead of RTW, her music was entirely electronic and full of metaphors, she was a smart songwriter and also she wrote her OWN MUSIC which I think people on here nowadays dont understand how big of a deal that was back then, including singing live. She was an anomaly in pop music and never let people get a leg up on her.

The reason we view everything about her now as safe is two fold; One — she already made waves and now other female popstars can make those same waves as normal. Two — she’s older, wiser and knows herself better. There’s nothing wrong with having a niche.

But she’s equally not as experimental as people perceive her as, which is why I think it’s utter nonsense that people believe she’ll ever make a straight up rock album for instance, when if anything she’ll just start making more songs like Killah or Disease which are still pop songs.

Finally a BIG thing I think we don’t acknowledge, her music finally became more experimental and weird during ARTPOP and people here in the fandom dismissed it.
 

Songs like Aura, MJH, J&D, Swine and ARTPOP in fact ARE massively experimental by Gaga’s standards, but people don’t realise how different they were to the dancepop on the radio at the time. Except Applause Gypsy and Dope that album was absolutely NOTHING like radio dancepop. It was actual EDM.

[gagacabana 7,523]

3 hours ago, Obobo said:

97% of yall didn’t care about palestine when it’s been going for 70+ years.

Because we were born in the 2000s LMAO. Caring about social and political problems only happens after studying in depth with an open heart. 

3 hours ago, Obobo said:

ask your politicians.

They hate us, they hate people, and they worship money/capitalism. They don't care about us, literally. Doesn't matter if it's Middle East, South America, Africa, North America. Politicians are always thinking about their own benefits only, it's never in the name of the people, because they'd rather see us (both the environment and the people) dying of overwork than to fight to create a new world through new ways of thinking and being. 

Lady Gaga, or any popstar, or even us, regular people, will never be able to magically fix geopolitic wars, hunger, or anything. And really, neither will a single, or a couple dozens, of politicians, even with all their so-called power/agency. The system is not built to be easily transgressed and it's maintained by cultural products, like Lady Gaga herself, for example.

All that she can do is inspire the people, as she's an entertainer, and not an apolitical one. And that's how cultural products, slowly, change the way society reacts to counter/hegemony. This is Lady Gaga's currently place in the world, similar to Madonna, Michael Jackson, etc... is an artist's activism, who's a millionaire, truly activism? Yes, no, it's complicated. Is my penniless everyday activism truly activism? Yes, no, it's complicated. 

At the end of the day, what we owe to each other is caring, a truly deep caring, and perhaps that should be the main topic of discussion (not only here on this GGD thread, but worldwide).

[PartySick 172,735]

1 minute ago, gagzus said:

Songs like Aura, MJH, J&D, Swine and ARTPOP in fact ARE massively experimental by Gaga’s standards, but people don’t realise how different they were to the dancepop on the radio at the time. Except Applause Gypsy and Dope that album was absolutely NOTHING like radio dancepop. It was actual EDM.

ARTPOP mainly suffered 'cause it was delayed. Had it come out in early/mid 2012 instead of late 2013 people would have given her credit for bringing EDM into the mainstream.

Instead, she JUST barely missed the EDM train.

[monketsharona 90,168]

5 hours ago, Bronco said:

I mean the closest pop girls have gotten to similar sounds are the electroclash outputs of Slayyyter. 

But if we move out of pop girl territory, we have output by Nine Inch Noize. I'd argue Sleep Token & Electric Callboy are also examples of mixing industrial/rock/techno/pop in ways similar to Gaga on Disease/Abracadabra. 

Lady Gaga needs to work with Boys Noize and Nine Inch Nails on an album by the way.

I hate how BN involvement has been treated on Chromatica

[Mothermayhem 17]

11 minutes ago, Ladle Ghoulash said:

I think she’s arguably taken more sonic risks as of late (REQUIEM, Disease, Abra, exploring electro grunge on PC + CSTH, Killah).

This is actually so accurate. Yet we have to read some lame takes on here about how the fame “isn’t safe” ( which is actually gaga’s most commercial and radio friendly album).

some of these gaga fans have absolutely no understanding of gaga as an artist and just want her to mimic indie artists which is a lazy way to look at things and  that was never her intention lmfao.

gaga always wanted to be a popstar and she IS experimental within pop music that’s why she is far more interesting than most regular popstars.

[Starmie25 22,590]

3 minutes ago, PartySick said:

Instead, she JUST barely missed the EDM train

EDM, electronic type music was still going strong up till 2016, least in the mainstream.

[PartySick 172,735]

1 minute ago, Starmie25 said:

EDM, electronic type music was still going strong up till 2016, least in the mainstream.

I meant she missed the chance to be one of the first doing it. ARTPOP could have had a defining impact on the genre but instead it was just another EDM album for the gp.

Slightly related, I'm glad The Cure was the only time she ever got near tropical house music  

2016 was such a terrible year for music. Joanne is quite literally the only thing to come out of the mainstream that's worth a spin imo