Why Lady Gaga should not get dragged for ARTPOP's "poor" sales [THREAD]

Gaga went on a long hiatus after experiencing a hip injury from the BTWB early 2013. The lack of any appearances lasted for multiple months.

long before that she already started teasing ARTPOP with some songs that didn't even appear on the actual album due to scrapped projects which left a lot of fans disappointed and wanting for more

just in general she revealed a lot of plans for the album that ended up being scrapped for reasons I will get into further into the thread. She had different collaborations, a whole visual album in mind and wanted the album to be accompanied by it's own app

the album was initially expected to drop late 2012/early 2013 but the huge break due to gaga's urgent hip surgery made a lot of fans tired and they ended up abandoning her before the release of the album

just weeks before the supposed release of the first single "Applause" a lot of leaks started spreading which ultimately made gaga release the lead single earlier than planned, the same day as the release of Katy's "Roar"

roar ended up becoming a smash hit and overshadowed applause (no hate towards katy) which made it debut at a "low" #6 which ultimately removed the status of "undeniable pop force" from gaga's name which, just like in any case, made a lot of fans stop engaging with her as much.

two months later gaga released the second single off of artpop, "Do What U want" featuring R.K€lly. The song was supposed to receive a music video but said mv ended up being scrapped by gaga herself as it was considered an advert for r@pe.

Allegations also surfaced around R.K€lly being a p€dophile and abus€r which ultimately changed the GP's view on the song and on gaga as well as they thought she was supporting his actions. One of the people that helped work on the DWUW mv, Terry Richardson ended up also

facing ass@ult and harassment allegations which obviously shattered gaga's image at the time even more. The intense DWUW performances did not help her image.

Do What U Want ended up peaking at a "low" #13 which was a rather bad performance for gaga and it spawned many harsh articles claiming that gaga was over.

just a few days before the release of the album her longtime manager Troy Carter quits and quite a few other people abandone gaga. This, the articles claiming that she is over and more articles calling her "fat" made the album cycle and promotion spiral out into chaos and-

ruined her own perception of herself as well as her mental state. This lead to her emotional performance of "dope" at the YouTube music awards the same week as her managers departure.

Gaga also started teasing a possible second act of ARTPOP which was supposed to include some tracks she teased back in 2012 that didn't end up being on the album but after big anticipation she went silent on the topic and ARTPOP ACT 2 was left unreleased.

After having experienced so many false hopes, fans were upset and tired and a lot of her fans ended up turning on her.

The release of ARTPOP can be seen with mixed opinions. It debuted with 290k first week sales in the US which is pretty good but Born This Way, ARTPOP'S predecessor, debuted with over 1M first week sales in the US alone. Therefore ARTPOP was obviously a huge departure and it added

to the media's perception of her as a "flop".
A few months later Lady Gaga released the G.U.Y music video, also known as the "ARTPOP film". It is a stunning piece of media but went mostly unnoticed as interscope refused to promote the song

They also refused to pay for the video in the first place which made gaga have to pay for everything as well as direct everything herself. The video itself depicts how gaga felt at the time. She is seen as a way for people to make money.

She also had a lot of other plans for the album rollout such as different singles as well as aura serving as the continuation of the paparazzi-telephone trilogy. With all the disputes between gaga and interscope, she ended up leaking parts of the album herself, disguised as a fan

She felt completely disconnected from her own record label, her fans as well as herself which put her in an even worse mental state

due to the lack of promotion, G.U.Y ended up charting for only 1 week in the US which made it serve as the last single as interscope didn't see a point in having another single for the era

with an overal lack of televised performances before and after the album as well as a general lack of consistant promotion, ARTPOP declined in sales rather quickly.

gaga also mostly refrained from performing any of the songs, except for Applause, at future events which meant that the songs got no promotion during the streaming era which is why ARTPOP's streams are quite low compared to the rest of her albums. (outdated imagine)

To conclude, the cause for the recession of sales during the ARTPOP era can be accounted to the disconnection between gaga and her label, her fans as well as the general public

If you have any more reasons, feel free to reply under the top post!

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