Lady Gaga has been an interesting artist to watch these past few years. Often hindering herself with her antics, she has mega watt talent that’s evident even with the foolishness. It’s been a few years since her last album and she has decided to grace us with ARTPOP, the next step in her evolution as an artist. So is the album any good? Peep the analysis after the jump.
WHICH ONE OF Y’ALL TOLD LADY GAGA TO DO THIS ALBUM LIKE THIS? *composes self* My word is this album is great. Like…let’s just get to the analysis.
Production Value
Born This Way showed that Gaga was able to handle wide ranging styles while leaning heavily electric, and to me ARTPOP feels like a great step of evolution for her. The production value on ARTPOP is insane, with each song feeling unique and yet part of a cohesive unit. Also the sounds of the songs are great. I’m not the biggest fan of music that leans electronic, but you’d be hard pressed to think that every track on this album wasn’t awesome, beat wise at least. I also love the mix of tracks on the album. I mean where else can you get an electronic club record (Swine), a ratchet another (Jewels and Drugs) AND a ballad (Dope) on the same album and it still feel coherent?
Lyrical Content
Sometimes with an album that’s so heavily electronic like this one, the lyrical content typical gets overlooked by the audience (and sometimes the artist). Luckily for us, ARTPOP doesn’t do that and gives us some fun lyrics and great stories. It’s in the clever play on words in G.U.Y. and even in the songs I think are less than aka Dope, there’s some great content there.
Final Thoughts
I honestly think this is one of the finest albums of the year. There is literally only one bad song on ARTPOP and even that had some redeemable quality via it’s lyrics. Lady Gaga has managed to create something that’s the perfect blend of her showmanship and her actual talent.
Grade: A
Best Track: Swine