MerrillMedia wrote:
I like her better when she stops being lady gaga and is just being a singer.

In 2014, Gaga released a collaborative jazz album with Tony Bennett titled Cheek to Cheek, which became her third consecutive number one in the United States.

Jerry Nemeth wrote:

In 2014, Gaga released a collaborative jazz album with Tony Bennett titled Cheek to Cheek, which became her third consecutive number one in the United States.

Interscope had to 'play with the numbers' --this can be done.
Artflop was fastest sinking #1 ever? Or close to it.

In any case, whats the new one like?

SAND DIAL wrote:
Mister Kickfights, I think she has run out of good material. Like 3 Cds ago.

The only album I own is Born This Way. Her other albums have a track here, a track there, which are fine, but otherwise not compelled to actually own.

SAND DIAL wrote:
Interscope had to 'play with the numbers' --this can be done.
Artflop was fastest sinking #1 ever? Or close to it.

In any case, whats the new one like?

That was easily my favourite record of hers too. The title track reminds me of Bowie with Klaus Nomi on backup vocals.

Then again ... Despite being his most critically acclaimed and musically important era, it was bookended by two decades of music that make sales from that era look like cab fare.

I was hoping for another Artpop, but didn't get it. The first half of the record is very catchy, and sounds like 'safer' versions of her old stuff. The second half reminds me of Ryan Adams' version of 1989.

And I do like hearing her actual singing voice.

I'm glad I bought it, and i'm enjoying it very much. But I don't think this is destined to be a favourite album that I pull out a couple years from now and listen to start to finish.

Strong car rotation though. And I really like John Wayne.

Also ... Anybody else catch 'All I want for Christmas is You' in there? I forget the title, but it's track 9 or so.

SAND DIAL wrote:
The second half reminds me of Ryan Adams' version of 1989.  !!!!!!!!!

What did you pay for it? Is it a CD?

I bought the "high-res" version from HDtracks. It's 24 bit, but the same sample rate as a CD.

I don't normally buy pop music new - I usually wait until it's been out a couple months and buy the CD used for five bucks. Even when there is a true high-res version, I don't find it usually matters much for most recordings.

But a fellow fan recently did me a favour, so I thought I'd buy the best version I could find before he had a chance to buy it himself.

Do the exclamation marks mean that you agree, or that you think I'm crazy? I thought a couple of those later tracks - especially Angel Down - had a serious 1989 vibe. They definitely sound like a mix of dance and alt-country - both in tone and lyrically.

Zack Zoll wrote:
Hence the age old question:  Revolver, or Sergeant Pepper?

Pfft. Revolver, hands down.

Oh, wait, that was a rhetorical question. Sorry, never mind.

But definitely Revolver.

kickfight wrote:
Pfft. Revolver, hands down.

Oh, wait, that was a rhetorical question. Sorry, never mind.

But definitely Revolver.

yeah, i never get all the accolades tossed at sgt pepper's. it has a couple great songs on it, but it's not the best beatles lp, by a long shot. revolver or rubber soul (the 2 Rs) are way better, more influential, records than sgt pepper's was. even abbey road, or--heaven forbid--the white album were better.

and their earlier works were great, too, but they really started to come into their own by "help!".

GK photo wrote:
yeah, i never get all the accolades tossed at sgt pepper's. it has a couple great songs on it, but it's not the best beatles lp, by a long shot. revolver or rubber soul (the 2 Rs) are way better, more influential, records than sgt pepper's was. even abbey road, or--heaven forbid--the white album were better.

and their earlier works were great, too, but they really started to come into their own by "help!".

The thing is that SPLHCB was, by design and intent, *not* "a Beatles album", and in that specific context, it succeeds spectacularly. It succeeded perhaps too well, in fact, because of all the work they put into making it sound different than not only their previous work, but pretty much anything else on the market up to that point. They also lavished attention on the overall atmosphere of the album, down to the over-the-top iconic cover art ---with all members sporting facial hair, John wearing his granny glasses on an album cover for the first time, etc--- plus the printed lyrics on the back and the cardboard inserts and specially-designed slip cover and all that stuff. It's a masterpiece of pop music packaging and pretty much guaranteed that alternate personas indulging in extraordinary audiovisual excess would now be "a thing" that pop/rock musicians should aspire to do at some point.

There's about 25% killer stuff on there, 25% interesting but not essential things, and the rest is pretty much filler. For a Beatles album, that's missing the mark quite a bit. As I see it, the essential albums (as complete albums) are A Hard Day's Night, Help!, Rubber Soul, Revolver, The Beatles and Abbey Road. You do get a few clunkers in there (especially in the White Album), but for the most part those are high on killer and low on filler.

OTOH, Joanne is essentially the reverse approach: after a career of playing the Lady Gaga role first and foremost, the implication here is that we are finally getting at least a peek at the actual musician (Stephanie Joanne Germanotta) behind the persona, with all the Mother Monster audiovisual fandango stripped away to a certain degree.

As always, regardless of approach, it will inevitably come down to how the public responds to the actual music, beyond all the conceptual conceits and marketing juggernauts and so on.

Zack Zoll wrote:
I am not sure I understand what you want from a pop artist, Adam.

Someone to sing pop music. It's not complicated. Unfortunately for her, the music got her known, but she had to rely on goofy stunts to keep her there.





Believe it or not, some pop stars actually don't have to resort to that stuff to be popular.

[img]You're upset that someone is manufactured, but then you criticize them for poor sales after they ditch their handlers? It sounds like maybe you're saying the manufacturing system works well.[/img]

I'm not upset at all that she's manufactured, but let's be honest...she's manufactured! So were the Backstreat Boys, NSYNC, etc. I have no issue with that, but it would seem as though once she got famous she imploded a bit and didn't like the reality of the fact that her act was manufactured by other people so she decided to "prove" to all those people that she was actually famous because of her talent (which she wasn't) and she failed...more than once. These folks give themselves way too much credit and frequently think they are smarter than they are.

Kind of reminds me of when Sheryl Crow released her first album. She was an unknown and Walmart decided to back her and contributed to an overwhelming majority of her CD sales. Without Walmart, she would still be singing in bars somewhere. So what does she do? Her next album she slams Walmart...a very brilliant move indeed. Walmart dropped her like old luggage and her record sales have never recovered. All of her albums she released after the first one have not had combined sales that equaled her first album. It's also funny listening to her rant about how all people only need 1 square of toilet paper to save the environment too.

Or perhaps you're suggesting that every album an artist puts out ought to be in the same vein as their debut?

Consistency is fine but so is variety. Let's be honest though, some people only have one good album in them.

I've got no problem with manufactured pop, provided it's done well. You can't get much more manufactured than The Spice Girls, and those records were really good for what they are.

I absolutely agree. Lest we forget, the Jacksons were manufactured pop too.

Hence the age old question:  Revolver, or Sergeant Pepper?

I've always been more of a Abbey Road fan myself, but definitely Beatles over Rolling Stones.

Zack Zoll wrote:
Fair enough, Adam. Fair enough.

But I disagree with Beatles over Stones. Sort of. Ish. Hard to say, really.

As far as music I listen to right now, I'd put Beggar's Banquet and Exile on Main Street(and about half of Goat's Head Soup) over anything in The Beatles' catalog. Maybe Sticky Fingers, if I had been drinking.

If I were hearing them at the time, I suspect my mind would be too blown from all the weird shit The Beatles, Jimi Hendrix, and later on Zeppelin, Sabbath, the Velvets, the Stooges, and Tull were doing to care much about the Stones, who were a little of all that.

Assuming I still had access to all that music. Half of that was impossible to find when it came out. Hendrix was a relative nobody until he got the Woodstock gig from Spirit, who was huge at the time. Today, people think everybody owned Hendrix records, and nobody would know who Spirit is if not for the Zeppelin lawsuit.

From a historical perspective, Beatles all the way. I don't think any other act but Chuck Berry has ever been that influential - although some studios and producers have been.

But it's not an East/West coast rivalry ...the fact is that nobody in The Beatles could ever have written Heartbreaker or All Down the Line, and nobody in the Stones could have ever written Lady Madonna or I am the Walrus.

Once Banquet came out, they were completely different bands.

But before then ... They pretty much just had Satisfaction

Chuck Berry is going to release a new album.  He is 90 years old.

kickfight wrote:
One of the greatest delights of being alive in the 2010s is seeing so many women in popular music doing their own damn thing on their own terms in spite of everything. All praise be to Gaga and Miley and Katy and RiRi and Taylor and Adele and of course, Queen Bey, in whose shadow we all dwell but in whose light we all bask.

...and Lemonade... honestly, no one is going to see that for what it's worth for another 20-30 years, at least.

When I was a teen in the 90s, female pop stars were still "girls." Today, women in pop are grown.

Or, at least, they feel like they can be grown - without the repercussions that would have been there two decades ago. I'm 34 and have always followed pop music. when Miley Cyrus came out with Wrecking Ball, with her short hair and male-styled tank top, I was like "Finally, women can just....be. We can be!!" I seriously watched that music video probably 50 times and teared up every time and it never had anything to do with the song. All my peers thought I was crazy.