By KATIE KLIMACEK
Staff Writer
It’s no surprise that Mother Monster has yet again been able to amaze her fans with her latest album, ARTPOP. Released on November 11, this is Lady Gaga’s third studio album.
As described by Gaga herself, this album is “a celebration and a poetic musical journey.” Mixing the sounds of pop and techno, ARTPOP is an experience like no other album Lady Gaga has produced before.
Taking almost two years to complete, ARTPOP shows a happy ending to the artist’s difficult road to fame.
In an interview, Lady Gaga said that her inspiration for this album was to show her fans more of her vulnerable side. She stood in front of a mirror and removed the wigs, makeup, and outfits that made her Lady Gaga and put on a black bald cap and cat suit, saying “OK, now you need to show them you can be brilliant without that.”
Each of Lady Gaga’s albums represents a chronological evolution of sound and meaning, with ARTPOP taking the cake as her most innovative masterwork.
In her second album, Born This Way, she expressed a voice of pain in her music, representing her many insecurities and struggles. Using a new style of rock n’ roll, it is an album about acceptance as well as the painful price to pay just for being yourself. But with ARTPOP, Gaga steps out of this darkness in her life, producing a completely new and innovative form of pop music. In the end, it embodies who she is as a performer.
I really enjoy this side of Gaga. As much as her style and outrageous persona makes her who she is, it’s nice to see her simpler side. To me, it makes her even more relatable to her fans. Even though she shares her struggles as a person and an artist and is able to connect with fans through her music, she strips away the wigs and outfits in ARTPOP to show the world that she can leave behind what her career was built on and still be able to rock out and make great music.
A perfect example of this transformation can be heard in her new song, “Dope.” You can just feel the real Lady Gaga, Stefani Germanotta, come through and show her struggles with drugs and alcohol. At a performance in London, Gaga took a moment to express to her fans that giving up drugs and alcohol was one of the hardest things she has ever had to deal with. She even went so far as to say, “I don’t have to be high to be creative.” In the song you hear “I need you more than dope,” which leaves you with the feeling that she is talking directly to her fans, letting them know how much they mean to her.
In several interviews, Lady Gaga explains that her fame came very quickly and made it hard for her to really plant her feet on who and what she was as an artist. Because of this, she used her creativity to hide the sadness that she felt as not only an artist, but as a person as well.
ARTPOP is her happy place, where she feels that she doesn’t have to be the crazy artist who wears outrageous outfits. With this new album, you see her in a more simplistic manner, more natural, and in a sense, more real than before.
Another great song from ARTPOP is “Applause,” the first single released from the album. For 7 months, Lady Gaga was unable to preform due to a broken hip, preventing her from finishing her tour and taking her away from her fans.
“I live for the Applause,” Gaga said as she sat down with GMA. “What I mean is not that I live for the attention, but I live to make you [the fans] happy.” And that is exactly what Gaga was able to do with ARTPOP, make her fans happy.
