MicShazam

I thing Lady Gaga got better each album, or close enough.
Artpop was an album that was forgotten pretty fast by the mainstream because it wasn't as hooky as the previous ones,
but it just might be my favourite.

The Batlord

She peaked with Monster. She actually evolved her sound in an entertaining way, but afterward she became a victim of her own hype. She was never some uber-artist. She was a good pop star. After The Fame Monster she just showed her limitations as an artist.

Ke$ha however is clearly aware of her limitations, and instead works within them to perfect her ridiculous schtick.

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MicShazam

Yeah it was a mistake to ever make such a big deal out of Lady Gaga, and maybe she believed the hype herself, given her pretentious comments about the Artpop album. I like her as just a good, no frills pop star, which is to say that I don't care about all of the crazy costumes and silly concepts. Its just some good songs and she's got a good voice. Good dancer too, but I don't care about that either.

Ke$ha is no where near as annoying as people made her seem. I don't hate her schtick, its just not my thing. I'd rather listen to Ke$ha than a rather large amount of boring contemporary pop artists.

My idea of what truly boring, bad pop music is like would be best demonstrated in Atomic Kitten. Such an edgy name, such a vanilla result.

The Batlord

Before passing final judgement I think everyone should hear the logical conclusion of a white chick pop star pretending to rap. It's just the best.

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Terrapin_Station

My problem with Lady Gaga is that I wanted to see her put anywhere near the creativity she put into her image, her clothing, her stage shows, etc. into her music.

I would have rather seen her have "meat dress music" and "soccer mom in jeans and a t-shirt" clothing rather than meat dress clothing and "soccer mom in jeans and a t-shirt music." Her music always seemed pretty boring to me.

Think of it this way: would you have preferred Captain Beefheart to dress in stereotypical business suit and play music like Trout Mask Replica or dress like the cover of Trout Mask Replica, complete with a fish head mask, and play music like Bryan Adams? Lady Gaga has taken the latter route. I'd rather see someone in a business suit play music like Trout Mask Replica. Of course, if we get that and the fish head, that's cool, too.

The Batlord

If she's gonna suck at being arty then I'd just rather have her make more club hits like "Bad Romance" and "Paparazzi".

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Terrapin_Station

Well, it's also not that I don't like any mainstream pop, but Lady Gaga's mainstream pop never clicked with me and always seemed unusually bland/relatively featureless.

Part of my reaction is probably tempered by annoyance at the weird image and completely middle-of-the-road approach to songwriting and arranging. Not that I want that to affect my opinion of her music, but I think it probably does a bit.

Isbjørn

I haven't listened to her, but I do like some Celtic stuff. Once in a while I'll put on an old Dubliners album.

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MicShazam

I totally get what you mean, but I find Lady Gaga's music quite a bit more inventive than Bryan Adams, frankly. Of course, what's bland and what isn't is a lot up to subjective experience and isn't a binary thing, but a question of gradients. I guess that to me, there's a decent amount of little sonic quirks and fresh melodies in her stuff that I find it mildly creative. But that's just me.

MicShazam

Didn't hate it at first, but it lost me at

Rat tat tat tat on your dum dum drum
The beat so phat, gonna make me ***, um, um um, um