Dear Gaga's Team: PUSH ZOMBIEBOY

[gagacabana 8,653]

7 hours ago, ALGAYDO said:

I wonder if she even wants to be a pop star lol 

I thought it was already obvious that she didn't, not anymore... regardless of her choice, she is one, tho. And will continue to be forever

[gagacabana 8,653]

4 hours ago, Bronco said:

Nothing like singles promotion works without a monoculture to target.

The monoculture is extinct. It has been replaced with nearly 8 billion personally curated AI algorithmic cultures detached from one another.

This is funny because, at least in Brasil, the big media is still alive. TV and radio are still the main communication vehicles for over a half of the people, who are poor and don't have access to technologies older than 2015. And monoculture, as a globalization tool, is also very weird, but in any way it's devastating that it (monoculture) essentially died, yet the people are still not free... capitalism just shifted to trap us even more violently 

[Bronco 28,152]

13 minutes ago, gagacabana said:

This is funny because, at least in Brasil, the big media is still alive. TV and radio are still the main communication vehicles for over a half of the people, who are poor and don't have access to technologies older than 2015. And monoculture, as a globalization tool, is also very weird, but in any way it's devastating that it (monoculture) essentially died, yet the people are still not free... capitalism just shifted to trap us even more violently 

I mean, obviously the poverty and wealth issues aren't something we want for anyone. 
But ironically, at least they've meant that Brazil has avoided the worst excesses of the digital age. 

[gagacabana 8,653]

2 minutes ago, Bronco said:

I mean, obviously the poverty and wealth issues aren't something we want for anyone. 
But ironically, at least they've meant that Brazil has avoided the worst excesses of the digital age. 

In a way... yeah? But not really? It only deepened an already giant gap between people and created more problems we have no way of solving without causing other problems 

[LGAte 1,335]

On 9/21/2026 at 8:15 PM, Purrrrrr said:

why do you think this would do anything?

Because its a good song and not everyone knows it yet and single pushes do work. I'm in music and marketing and despite what is being said by random people in this forum (who aren't actually in the music industry but are observers of the industry) pushing singles still works. Maybe not in the same way. But it can work. 

On 9/21/2026 at 9:53 PM, niccolo said:

Not adding The Dead Dance is savage

It's just a bad song. It is corny compared to how decadent and sexy the rest of this playlist is. 

On 9/22/2026 at 12:33 AM, princedeeblebleble said:

Gurl is too busy pushing the stroller to deal with music 

People keep saying this and I am alarmed at how much people don't find statements like this unbearably sexist. Do you realize what joke you just made? 

 

On 9/22/2026 at 2:30 AM, MountainMonster said:

easy - swap it in for Swine. No one needs to hear that racket. And The Dead Dance should replace Perfect Celebrity or So Happy I Could Die. Then we’d be cooking. 

Killah over Swine is crazy. Swine has a deep and interesting meaning and one of the most legendary drops in pop music history. It's also associated with one of her most underrated insane pop music moments that was actually dark in real life. Killah is a fun song and I love it. But it's not as good as swine. Also the idea of TDD replacing Perfect Celebrity or So Happy I Could Die made me realize I'm arguing with someone whose taste bunds are singed. 

 

[LGAte 1,335]

On 9/22/2026 at 3:25 AM, gagzus said:

“She doesn’t have to do anything at all” ok then why isn’t it just naturally getting streams then? 

Realistically nothing from the album beyond the singles has enough streams to warrant any form of new “single” push. And all you can do after this length of time is release a vinyl variant and that’s it nnn

Garden of Eden, Vanish Into You, How Bad Do U Want Me, and Shadow of a Man are all non-singles that have 100-200 million streams. I think that shows single-worthy.

 

And besides that, it doesn't matter. Do you think if I looked at the stream count of Bloody Mary in 2020 compared to the rest of the album it would have been "single-worthy"? I don't even know if Bloody Mary would have had higher streams than HML, Hair, Scheibe, Americano, or Government Hooker and they weren't even singles. This argument is limited in its scope of how virality works. 

On 9/22/2026 at 3:27 AM, gagzus said:

Also the reason Katy Perry did what she did was because she hasn’t had a single successful song in over 10 years worth of new material. So they were pushing her old songs that actually were already successful. And it did nothing because TOTGA still didn’t reach the peak Bloody Mary did before Interscope even did anything 

So we should only do things because of whether or not it would be popular?

On 9/22/2026 at 3:55 AM, ALGAYDO said:

I love Gaga so much but it does frustrate me as a fan seeing so much potential go to waste. Idk why she does it, and I don’t feel comfortable questioning her decisions, but yeah sometimes I wonder if she even wants to be a pop star lol 

Thank you! But I do think she still wants to be a pop star...its just hard to be a "pop star" the same way. But she will always find a way. 

 

On 9/22/2026 at 6:05 AM, imogen2133 said:

No she shouldn't, she should leave that album alone (partially for my sake) cause it's over (the era) and focus on her new baby and new music when it happens.  

She should do what she wants to do. 

On 9/22/2026 at 7:04 AM, Bronco said:

I mean your drawing the wrong conclusion here to suit what you think should happen.

The music changed to what it is now doing because everything else stopped working. 

There's plenty of industry articles out there showing how all forms of advertising mediums for music have led to increasingly diminished returns. Even tiktoks aren't working anymore because the rate of crossover from tiktok interaction into actual streaming consumption is creeping higher and higher. 

Singles don't work unless you get the 0.1% hit now because there is no market for singles. Radio audiences have collapsed. Nowhere sells physical singles except for Artist online stores. Playlisting is only working for already established music. Tiktok trends aren't achieveing the same level of virality anymore because the app is basically just a drop shipping ecommerce platform now. 

Nothing like singles promotion works without a monoculture to target.

The monoculture is extinct. It has been replaced with nearly 8 billion personally curated AI algorithmic cultures detached from one another.

What a fascinating take. I hope some way we can build something like the monoculture again- at least something that unites people in a good way. Hopefully the people can figure out a cultural work-around in the future.

On 9/22/2026 at 11:09 AM, gagacabana said:

If you think saying "Who is this?" to Peggy Gou, John Summit, SG Lewis, Purple Disco Machine, and Boys Noize ate....then I fear the pea soup ate you. 

[gagzus 25,408]

33 minutes ago, LGAte said:

Garden of Eden, Vanish Into You, How Bad Do U Want Me, and Shadow of a Man are all non-singles that have 100-200 million streams. I think that shows single-worthy.

 

And besides that, it doesn't matter. Do you think if I looked at the stream count of Bloody Mary in 2020 compared to the rest of the album it would have been "single-worthy"? I don't even know if Bloody Mary would have had higher streams than HML, Hair, Scheibe, Americano, or Government Hooker and they weren't even singles. This argument is limited in its scope of how virality works. 

So we should only do things because of whether or not it would be popular?

Thank you! But I do think she still wants to be a pop star...its just hard to be a "pop star" the same way. But she will always find a way. 

 

She should do what she wants to do. 

What a fascinating take. I hope some way we can build something like the monoculture again- at least something that unites people in a good way. Hopefully the people can figure out a cultural work-around in the future.

If you think saying "Who is this?" to Peggy Gou, John Summit, SG Lewis, Purple Disco Machine, and Boys Noize ate....then I fear the pea soup ate you. 

Having modest (yes, modest) streams =/= being worthy of being a single. Singles now exist purely for album promo hence why Gaga now does 2-3 singles usually before an album comes out.  Those songs have been stuck in the low hundreds of millions for over a year and a half, if they were really massive they’d be closer to 1B atp. 
 

Singles also dont function like they used to, a regular era of upto 5 wil singles and tv performances just doesn’t happen anymore unless all the singles do abysmal.

Look at DWAS, it hasn’t been promoted in the same length of time since those songs gained those low hundred million streams (early 2025). And it has garnered over 2-3 billion on its own without any proper promo from Gaga since roughly late 2024. Literally an organic hit. The rest of the album only is streamed by fans now, and got a brief boost from the GP when she was on tour. But even still DWAS was racking up the streams.

Bloody Mary got made a posthumous single purely because it went viral, it didn’t get promoted as a single nor did it get pushed with Wednesday. It proves my point that real successful songs will just randomly gain traction and none of Mayhem beyond DWAS and Abra had any viral basis. Bloody Mary also just FYI had almost 100m streams before it went viral and got about 500k daily streams and then it went up-to 1-2m per day after it went viral. It went to #41 on the Hot 100 and is nearly at 1B streams despite its only “promo” being a vinyl variant, not even an official sped-up remix release mind you. That’s organic. 

I get that the fanbase wants new singles purely because of three reasons; accolades to brag about in stan wars (this is the primary one idc what anyone says—this fanbase has been so jaded since ARTPOP underperformed and has never truly recovered), new music videos and new live performances. The last 2 have proven they no longer equate to single or album sales, so spending money to make money is no longer viable. That’s why YouTube no longer counts toward the hot 100.

As for making an EP purely because the songs are popular; yes, that’s literally the only purpose. Labels don't invest money into any promotion unless it gives them a return. Katy only made that god awful playlist/EP thing because her masters were sold and they pushed for TOTGA to go viral (it gets less daily streams than Bloody Mary even did) so they wanted to push her other songs to bump her popularity back up since it was in the gutter. Which has proved futile because none of them (not even TOTGA) charted on the Hot 100 high enough to bring any value. Plus Gaga is known beyond her early hits, she’s literally had 2 massive hits in the 2020s (Rain on Me, DWAS) and one modest one (Abra). Katy hasn’t had even a modest hit since roughly 2016/17.

Also to answer your question to Bronco about monoculture, it’s dead because of media consumption fragmentation and isn’t coming back sadly. 

Edited 2 hours ago by gagzus

[Purrrrrr 18,506]

57 minutes ago, LGAte said:

Because its a good song and not everyone knows it yet and single pushes do work. I'm in music and marketing and despite what is being said by random people in this forum (who aren't actually in the music industry but are observers of the industry) pushing singles still works. Maybe not in the same way. But it can work. 

Well in that case, what capacity are you expecting them to push the song in? Treating it like a full blown single now would be an absolute waste of alot of money   TDD was on a netflix show and performed on Tuddum and that didn't make much noise, thinking people would take to Zombieboy (quite frankly an oddly noisy song with vocal chants that are not for everybody)  more so than TDD is an interesting take

Edited 2 hours ago by Purrrrrr