As Chris Molanphy pointed out for Pitchfork at the time: “The problem for Gaga, perception-wise, is she isn’t supposed to be measured by the same yardstick as other starlets.” In the context of Lady Gaga's much-lauded career so far, then, "just OK" looked like failure.Īs such, ARTPOP has always been somewhat tarnished, despite the fact that many of its tracks are very good indeed. Upon its November release, just over 18 months after Born This Way, ARTPOP received reviews which were just OK – one demonstrative, three-star Guardian review called it a “mixed Gaga outing with some ludicrous highs, questionable digressions and plenty of not-unpleasant filler.” The record’s sales followed suit: it shifted 258,000 copies in the first week, which landed it the number one place on the Billboard 200, though Born This Way had sold almost quadruple that figure in the same amount of time. Indeed, she told the Guardian in 2013, “I, in the most metaphorical explanation, stood in front of a mirror and I took off the wig and I took off the makeup and I unzipped the outfit and I put a black cap on my head and I covered my body in a black catsuit and I looked in the mirror and I said: 'OK, now you need to show them you can be brilliant without that’.”
The album counted Marina Abramović among its supposed influences, and boasted a front cover by Jeff Koons, embracing the Western art canon over the latex, leather, and religious blasphemy that Gaga had previously claimed.
In some ways, Gaga was the blueprint for our contemporary conception of overexposure, always pulling some stunt or another, triggering blog after blog asking “GAGA DID WHAT?”ĪRTPOP took on a different aesthetic to Born This Way. But seven years ago, we weren’t necessarily quite so au fait.
These days, we’re only too familiar with the concept of celebrity overexposure, an easy trap to fall into via quickly successive album cycles and social media. But by 2013, fatigue with Gaga’s “whole thing” – her obsession with stardom as a concept and her wacky public antics, like the time she showed up to the Grammys in an incubator – had set in.
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