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Lady Gaga, Artpop, review
Lady Gaga inhabits many musical guises on her latest album, Artpop – but all of them are great for dancing
With her playful, planet-sized ego fully engaged, Lady Gaga gives a shoutout to the rest of the solar system on her third proper album, concluding with the playground naughtiness of “Uranus! Don’t you know my ass is famous?”
Well, yes, we had noticed. Even people with zero interest in pop music know that the 27-year-old Lady Gaga (Stefani Germanotta) is a phenomenon. After a decade of dressed-down celebrities in skinny jeans and Ugg boots, we were hungry for pop stars that could be spectacular, and her barmy outfits certainly brighten up our newspapers.
But while the window dressing’s always been fabulous and there have been some terrifically catchy pop hooks along the way, much of her music has sounded generic, with her strong voice sometimes lacking a distinct personality. And the thought of yet another album themed around her own stardom (after Fame and The Fame Monster) wasn’t promising. Can she really have anything fresh to say about it?
After more interviews in which Gaga claims she wants to “revolutionise” pop, the fact she’s made an album that’s designed, quaintly, to be played from start to finish will amuse fans from the pre-digital era. But from the predatory opening footsteps of the first track to the block chord blast of lead single Applause, it’s clear that it’s more fun to abandon any plans to analyse what Billboard describes as Gaga’s “lofty ideas” and instead, to quote her first hit, Just Dance.
Musically, there’s a lot going on: it’s like wandering drunk around a vast, labyrinthine club, and peering into a disorienting series of darkened rooms in which she tries on various musical genres as if they were hats. She doesn’t do anything wildly original with them, but she has fun.
There’s a queasily heightened American rave beat on Mary Jane Holland, while the industrial hip-hop grind of Jewels and Drugs (featuring T.I., Too $hort and Twista) opens with an orchestra tuning up. The ballad Dope pushes this combination further, with big, showstopping vocals joining a deep, squelchy electronic bassline.
The most interesting song, Aura, involves some moreishly twanged middle-eastern strings. Here she sings about an enigmatic pop star who wears a “burqa for fashion/It’s not a statement, as much as just a move of passion.” Her trademark repeated syllables (“aura-ra-ra”) mingle with empowering assertions of control: “I am not a wandering slave/ I am a woman of choice”. But her resolve weakens on the trancey refrain, as she asks: “Do you want to see me naked, lover? ... Do you want to see the girl who lives behind the aura?” It’s here that I start to think even Gaga herself believes the aura – the clothes, the clever sonic shapeshifting – is more interesting than what lies beneath.
But maybe that hollowness is part of what makes this album so great for dancing. Gaga doesn’t really inhabit any of these poses. She sheds them like skins, leaving a cool trail for her warmer blooded fans to slip into.
Lady Gaga tour confirmed for UK arenas in October. Tickets on sale Saturday, February 8th.
