Why is ”Stache” so forgotten?

[saint satine 259]

On 11/7/2026 at 7:10 PM, bxr said:

Aw, @Ladle Ghoulash—our first dialogue! The memories! 

That‘s what I love about Pop music, interpretations are that much more predicated upon the lived experiences of the listener, or I guess that peculiar balance between each listener’s own personal experiences and cultural/universal contexts … all of that is to say, sometimes, with music, it’s just building narrative association from those needle drop “blink” first impressions …

So, with Stache, for instance, the JPS No Exit (to abbreviate a larger discourse into a comparative synopsis), immediately just presented the ill-fated love triangle plot structure, then the rest of the song felt like it operated within that aspect, so everything unfolded from the dragon-chasing triptych … at that point in the ARTPOP era, especially with Aura and Venus (although tbh I was in and out during the ARTPOP rollout … I was out of the loop during the whole development cataclysm, checked back in during the iTunes festival through the VMA and Applause, then fell out for awhile, and sort of just caught up to speed around SxSwine, G.U.Y., and artRAVE, so I’m not too positive on the prominent thematics during development) it felt like she was exploring some divine feminine / next wave/post-wave feminist motifs, so that echoed the sense of the “stache“ as a beard-adjacent or alt-beard (tying back into the character profiles in Sartre’s No Exit) … where‘s her stache … then the shift to the drug motif—the “stash” stache— continuing that there is no (conventional) drug that she wants or loves, but it does not negate her potential indulgence in narcotics to temporarily satiate or substitute for the primary human object of affection (which, again, to the stache/beard/no exit plot, could be taboo, or unrequited, or just patently unattainable in practical physical reality … hell is other people) … then to the climax of “psychotic music head” … to her point (paraphrasing) “Music f—ks me up like no other” … music is the ultimate love, drug, elixir … and to be honest, the suitors and substances, at that point of obsessive music psychosis, are all just manifestations of her cardinal fidelity to music, the ultimate love supreme 

But … neither here nor there … just observations in the rationale of, even if that’s not how it was written, that’s how it reads within a capacity … I’ll digress here … and leave Applause discourse for another play

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My perpetual Achilles as a pop music audience member is engaging with all work (within a capacity) from some aspect of cultural biography, so song significance gets interpreted through some integrated lens of logical structure and material association (to your point), symbolic association, cultural context (which in its own right is a blend of the explicit structural. to your point, and the zeitgeist or spirit or “vibes”), and just I think what people infer when they reference poetic or artistic license … that and usually, the more a song lacks apparent logical meaning (in the case of stache, for instance), the more I’ll just draw on conceptual associations to make it make sense for me in a way that at least carries poetic integrity … which, at some point, anything can be poetry, and ARTPOP can be anything … 

But, to your point, in context of Stache, in particular, the song itself was, (I think?) just her vocals added on to a pre-existing Zedd track; so, the song itself feels like a mood-board demo, not a proper fleshed out studio produced composition … which, to me, never felt like it was recorded or that the lyrics were written with the intention to meaningfully parallel Sartre’s No Exit in a more clearly articulated metaphorical domain … I’d only read No Exit once in high school, but I from that, I just always took its cultural indication or its creative trope to be the “Hell is other people” thesis, and then just the character personifications. So to your point: “The “No Exit” reference goes precisely nowhere and has nothing to say about the text it’s referencing,” it just felt like, even if it wasn’t fully fleshed out or deftly expressed, the No Exit associations didn’t go entirely nowhere (yeah, nowhere … fast!) or had nothing to say about the play in reference … I just took it as a dolled-up demo that mood-boarded some conceptual associations … but, at the root of the association was the three main characters in Sartre (which, again, I’m not a Sartre scholar at all), and then just pivot to the character personifications of the stache, the stash, and gaga … or love, drugs, gaga

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How verbose the discourse—and yet, the narrative continuity!   

 

Also reminds me of my interview with Zedd back in the day … how timey the times, those primordial ARTPOP rhythms and rhymes!

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https://swiperbootz.com/2013/03/28/keep-calm-and-kari-on-with-zedd/

 

Wow, I didn't think my old ass post would get mentioned here 

If anyone wants an extended, remastered, better version of Stache, check out FrankenWayne's "Stache (Reloaded)" mix

 

[MountainMonster 3,100]

On 11/7/2026 at 12:06 PM, AVeryGagaHolyDick said:

Not as dated as Just Dance/Monster tbh

Also yeah, it’s no The Edge Of Glory but not every song needs to be that

It’s better than some of the last MAYHEM songs, and much better than the DWP songs

This is the craziest thing you’ve ever said.