I don’t consider Lady Gaga an inconsequential artist. Is that shocking? I think she definitely “homages” the hell out of certain artists and I believe Gaga tries way too hard and thinks way too highly of herself as a pop artist, but that being said… I think she’s consequential. I think we’ll still be talking about her first album a decade from now. The problem, of course, is that Born This Way and ARTPOP have not performed as well as The Fame. The problem is that Gaga’s most iconic and successful album was her first, the one she did when she was still having fun, the one she did before she became The Mother Monster whose every fart is High Art. So, is ARTPOP officially a bomb? Not really, it’s just a “bomb” compared to The Fame. But what makes it interesting is that Gaga’s label, Interscope, spent $25 million promoting ARTPOP and they’re going to end up losing a lot of money:
On Saturday, it was revealed that Interscope, Lady Gaga’s label, has spent $25 million dollars to promote her flop album “ARTPOP,” which is set to sell around 250 thousand copies in its first week — that’s a 75 percent drop from the first week album sales of “Born This Way” only two years ago. This weekend, plenty of Lady Gaga’s little monsters prostituted themselves online, offering gay sex for people who buy at least 30 copies of “ARTPOP.”
Some have compared the fate of “ARTPOP” to Michael Jackson’s “Invincible,” where $30 million was spent on the promotion for an album that didn’t even launch one solid hit single. But “ARTPOP” is really Lady Gaga’s “Glitter.”
So, how was the money spent? We talked to a music industry analyst (who wants to be referred to as ‘Jacob’ for this story), who has worked at both Warner Brothers and Arista over the past twenty years. He works closely with people from Interscope and told us that the past year has been a huge nightmare for Lady Gaga and Interscope.
“She originally was going to have the album ready by last Christmas. They made her re-record it. When her tour wasn’t selling, they invented a hip injury and told Gaga to go away for months so the public could be interested in her ‘comeback.’ After the lead single ‘Applause’ didn’t get such a great reception, they made her re-record the album again. I hear that they allegedly paid radio stations in order to put the song at the top of their playlists,” Jacob laughs.
Besides the alleged payola, it is believed that a lot of money could have went to news outlets such as Billboard, Glamour, MTV, ABC and some others. “Cash gifts to news outlets really aren’t unheard of, but Gaga has taken it to new extremes if this happened. Articles by many news sources sound like they were completely written by Gaga’s PR team.” He notes that Rolling Stone, a magazine that had usually praised Lady Gaga in the past, allegedly wouldn’t accept the cash. Gaga’s team was hoping Rolling Stone would put her on the cover and call her “Woman of the Year.” Instead, the “honor” went to Glamour.
“I can’t say for sure what she is doing for Billboard, but they are definitely trying to save her. They let her song ‘Dope’ chart at number 8 this week based on YouTube views that weren’t intended just for her. The magazine also counted thousands of free giveaways of the song for that chart position. They are covering up for her big time. It’s really sad when an industry staple such as Billboard picks favorites and allegedly participates in the payola game,” Jacob says with sadness.
Jacob believes Lady Gaga’s current drug use is destroying her. “She has turned against everybody who has helped her. She claims she has only done Marijuana recently, but that’s far from the truth. She’s dying a slow death every day and nobody is there to help her!” claims Jacob, who has seen drugs destroy family members and all sorts of stars. Let’s hope somebody loves Lady Gaga enough to get her clean.
Updated Information: Lady Gaga and Interscope are bragging about how “ARTPOP” hit number one in the UK. However, we have been told that the numbers are FAR lower than they were for her last album, “Born This Way.” “ARTPOP” is expected to take an amazing tumble from the top next week in both the UK and US. It is already dropping like a brick on iTunes in several countries.
[From Examiner]
Holy crap, this is such a juicy, crazy article. I too believe Gaga’s drug use has gotten out of hand – but I’ve been thinking that since the promotional tour for Born This Way, during which she gave endless coked-up interviews and behaved bizarrely from start to finish. Now, do I believe that everyone is on the take and everything is being manipulated by her label, even Gaga’s hip injury? Eh. I think Interscope is paying people off, for sure, and I think her label did tell her to “go away” for several months. But here’s the thing: did Interscope think this enormous gamble was going to work? That they were somehow going to recreate The Fame? Some people at Interscope should get fired over this mess.
Photos courtesy of WENN.
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