Music Review: ARTPOP

1/5 Stars

Lady Gaga should have stopped making music after "The Fame Monster." The album gave the pop genre a much-needed facelift and cemented Gaga’s place in the industry as a distinctive artist who knew that a small dose of uniqueness sells. Fast-forward to 2011 when 'Born this Way' spoiled what was once unique into a shambolic, patronizing mess of lazy dance songs tainted with Gaga’s unconvincing brand of manufactured theatricality. In 2013, Gaga is coasting on the thin ice that is her music career, frantically extracting from a withering supply of uniqueness to give us "ARTPOP," her latest—and hopefully, last—interruption of Gaga radio silence.

I guess I’ll start with 'Aura,' formerly known as 'Burqa' (I’d comment on the song’s vulgar appropriation of Islamic garb if it weren't such low-hanging fruit). The opening’s off-putting spaghetti western guitar only worsens as it morphs into Arabic plucking layered with a trance-like buildup. Gaga’s awkward refrains (“ha-a-a,” “aura-a-a”) make a bittersweet intervention, cutting through the "oriental" guitar at the expense of terrorizing listeners with eerily mediated vocal chants, as if someone forced Cher’s ghost to produce a crappy techno track at gunpoint. I won’t touch on the lyrics so as not to beat a dead horse, but long story short: 'Aura' is four minutes of Gaga making her case for the veil as a choice and maybe even a beacon of a women’s personal freedom, but the end result trivializes an otherwise valid argument by reducing it to a shallow commentary on covering and sexuality.

The title track’s slow-paced electronic beat recalls an early Kylie Minogue, but only enough to remind us how Gaga pales in comparison. The song addresses neither art nor pop, except for when Gaga carelessly inserts “artpop” into arbitrary moments of the cut: “We could, we could belong together (ARTPOP).” At the very least, Gaga seems to be self-aware of the vacuousness of her lyrics. What does artpop mean, you ask? “My ARTPOP could mean anything.” As such, Gaga cops out by endowing her art with infinite meaning-making potential instead of telling us what the hell she’s actually talking about.

'Fashion!' and 'Donatella' are back-to-back on the track list. Without exaggeration, these cuts consist of Gaga yelling high fashion brand names while telling us how fabulous and thin she is. They vaguely recall moments when kids beg for attention before jumping into the pool, except Gaga’s analogue reads as a cheap, sadder solicitation of undeserved praise. They are surely one of the lowest points of an album that’s already pitted in incalculable mediocrity.

More than ever, Lady Gaga seems to have conceptualized this album to push the definition of what a “pop album” could be. I understand Gaga’s task, but her execution draws from an uninteresting bag of tricks. Combining “art” and “pop” did about as little to bolster this record’s legitimacy as caps lock stylizing the final product as "ARTPOP" did. Anything can be aestheticized to be taken more seriously when you capitalize, right?