Lady Gaga's third studio album became an underrated musical creation from the very beginning.
The world was not ready for the release of Gaga's 3rd studio album "ArtPop" back in 2013. The synth-pop and EDM collection had influences of dubstep, techno, and R&B polarized critics and listeners alike with its "altering of the human experience" and "reverse Warholian expedition."
The album portrays a semi-abstract, pop-art-esque view of fame, sexual liberation, self-empower — all topics that were either beginning or not as talked about in general conversations throughout the beginning of the 2010s.
Nonetheless, lines were split down the middle as Gaga's little monsters fanbase, critics, reviews, media outlets, and more expressed their opposing sides: one side argued that the album made no sense — equating it to nothing more than a dissonance of incoherent sounds and themes.
The other side stayed true to Gaga's Warholian vision, stating that "ArtPop" was one of Gaga's most successful attempt at the time to connect her "eccentric image and radio-friendly conventionality."
Since then, "ArtPop" went down in Gaga's discography as a flop and fell in obscurity behind Gaga's own image recreation in "Joanne" and the stylistically similar dance-pop "Chromatica". ArtPop is one of the most underrated albums of the 2010s from a major pop star, and surprisingly, the album now finds a home in the beginning of the 2020s.
"ArtPop" is what we need in 2021.
After more than a year of the COVID-19 Pandemic and varying levels of quarantine, isolation, and socio-political strife that began the decade, "ArtPop" is exactly what we needed.
This modern, intense, and gender-bending, and even raunchy musical experience is now gaining traction thanks to fans on TikTok and Twitter. Users of both platforms helped raise the popularity of the album once more and considering that TikTok now pushes some of the most popular songs now into stardom, it's not hard at all to believe that it's aided in the resurgence of "ArtPop."
From "Aura," and "G.U.Y." to "Mary Jane Holland" and "Donatella," the album serves it all.
Moreover, the rise in popularity of EDM, dance-pop, and synth-pop now allow "ArtPop" itself to reach a wider range of listeners and critics that enjoy all that Gaga's vision has to offer.
With albums like "Chromatica," which received praise for its motifs and cohesiveness, "ArtPop" is another way for all of us to begin enjoying our relationship with music and pure artistic expression during a time of conflict and isolation.
Personally, I believe "ArtPop" was amazing from the very beginning. I remember talking with friends and family alike about it from its release. The album truly was ahead of its time; it just happens to be that "ArtPop" was eight years ahead of its time. "Mary Jane Holland" and "Fashion!" are some of the greatest songs on the album, and its overall lyrical execution is nothing less of phenomenal.
In all, "ArtPop" walked so that "Chromatica" could run!
