Lady Gaga - ARTPOP Track By Track Album Review

By Daniel Welsh / November 7, 2013

rating: 4

When Lady GaGa delivered the official press release for her third album ARTPOP, it was the eye roll felt around the world. Describing the project as a "reverse-Warholian experience", then more recently tweeting that ARTPOP was the "album of the millennium", GaGa was setting the stakes pretty high for most recent output. Just a week before its highly-anticipated release, we're asking if ARTPOP is worthy of the hype Lady GaGa has created around it. If you can separate the music from the unnecessary pretentiousness she feels the need to surround her work in, what you will find is that with ARTPOP Lady GaGa has once again made a fantastic pop album that manages to sound fresh and current, while still carrying the unmistakeable Lady GaGa stamp, which will no doubt comes as a relief to her loyal, and occasionally frightening, fan-base.

1. Aura

Aura is the perfect opening track as it sets the tone brilliantly for the rest of ARTPOP. While the chorus is gorgeous pop perfection and sticks in your head instantly, the verses see GaGa almost shrieking a string of bizarre lines. The track also lets you know from the offset that GaGa is still not shying away from controversy, as the lyrics use the burqa as a metaphor, which has already upset several critics. ("do you want to see the girl who lives behind the aura/behind the curtain/behind the burqa?" she sings as the song reaches its climax). With Aura, GaGa has proved to the world that while her music may have evolved somewhat since the days of Just Dance and Poker Face (which contained such awe-inspiring lyrics as "puh-puh-puh poker face, puh-puh poker face, muh muh muh muh"), she still knows her way around a catchy chorus, even if lyrically it is dealing with more mature themes.