Artpop

in which I go to lady gaga’s artrave, and then listen to the new album. really late. because I have things that make me busy. stupid things.

So I went to this little thing back in November called Artrave, which was basically Lady Gaga’s album release party. Here’s a photo:

My takeaway from the event: I’m really old. And jaded. Probably far too old to actually go to Artrave, but whatever. When I get offered the chance to go to a random Lady Gaga event, you’d best believe that I’ll go.

1. There were a lot of skinny white girls there who seemed to think it was necessary to be naked. I’m not complaining, mind you, I just find it odd. Is Lady Gaga’s music really that liberating? Is being naked the conventional person’s way of being “wild” these days? Are we as a society just lacking imagination? I felt like saying “yes, honey, you’re being super unconventional by taking off your clothing, just like the 315 other skinny white chicks with glitter on their faces who have also taken off their clothing at this event. Go you.” Also, I thought that taking off one's clothing in public was generally considered to be a sign of mental illness?
2. Lady Gaga was showing her performance art videos on six huge screens on the walls. Apparently Maria Abramovic had a hand in some of them. Performance art is not my bag, y’all. I’ve participated in enough performance art over the years (ok, all before I turned 22 and stopped taking drugs, but still) to know that it is mostly bullshit. It was fun bullshit, but man, I do NOT want to watch it any more. 
3. Lady Gaga was naked in a lot of her performance art videos. Maybe that’s why so many of these girls were taking off their clothing.
4. I hate to tell y’all this, for fear of disappointing you, but underneath her clothing, Lady Gaga appears quite human. Not an alien or anything.
5. There were Jeff Koons pieces all over the place. They were shiny.
6. Lady Gaga performed some of her new songs. You can watch most of the performances on YouTube if you haven’t already.
7. There was an open bar.

Here’s one last picture:

So, onto the music:

For the first few hours of Artrave, DJ WhiteShadow, a producer that she worked extensively with on Artpop, performed (does DJing count as performing?). He was fine, if a bit repetitive in his beats. He tended to have very similar beats throughout each song, and tended to drop the beat at exactly the same point on each track. 

Anyway, if you want to know what his set sounded like, listen to the song Aura (here’s a link to her performing it at Artrave), which honestly, sounded so much like the rest of Whiteshadow’s stuff, I didn’t even realize the performance had started.

So yeah, the album. I bought it. I’ve been living with it for the past month or so. Despite my complaints about the repetitiveness of WhiteShadow, I really like the song Aura, as I feel like that goes in a somewhat new direction for Gaga. Applause, Do What U Want, Applause and Gypsy are also fun tracks. The rest of them, honestly, I can live without.

On the whole, after a month of listening to Artpop, I’m kind of… tepid. Which sucks. I’m bummed. Maybe some of the other songs will grow on me, but for the most part… eh.

Gaga puts on one hell of a party though.