Not hard to see why she's sold so many records. Appeal to the 18-22 year old bar star crowd and you will make money. These songs were marketed towards horny college girls so they could grind on guys at a club to them or hear them at a shisha bar and then buy the record the next morning for their ipod, and by God it worked.
Last edited by Ren; 01-16-2010 at 07:45 PM.
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An electronic album selling 8 million copies isn't exactly unprecedented, as the original post seems to imply. Moby's 'Play' sold 10 million nearly a decade ago, and if you're looking for an album that "literally made electronic music acceptable," I'd say Play is a far better candidate. It lacked the chart-topping hits in the US market that Lady Gaga has, but it did have eight singles that charted, and in terms of album sales and longevity, it can't be ignored.
Anyway, this post contains absolutely no commentary on judging musical merit, so carry on with that debate.
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This thread actually got me to take a few minutes to check out more of her music. I really never hear anything of her's because of where I live. She's totally unknown where I'm at.
Anyways, I don't see why people criticize her for her looks. She looks fine to me. A fairly pretty girl. I don't see why people are so supportive of her music either though. Her voice certainly sounded good in the OP's post where she was singing live, but that talent doesn't come through in any of the other songs that I've listened to. Her music seems fairly flat and generic, with little gimmicks in it to act as hooks.
The fact that she's sold as many albums as she has kind of makes me wonder if she's keying into some subtle North American cultural thing going on that I've just been removed from for too long. I generally don't have any problem with pop. Every musical genre's got someone doing something good, but I don't see what's special about this. I don't even really find it catchy. Honestly, I think it's far less catchy than most of the female pop artists' hits out there. I must be genuinely way out of touch with what's going on.
Although I was too young at the time to appreciate Madonna's rise in music, I understand that she was at least pushing limits in what she was trying to portray. I don't see what's different about this kind of music. In fact, it feels like it almost ultra-generic to me.
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Um, There will never be a genre that just becomes Pop simply over night. You need to have acts like Lady Gaga to sort of make the basics of Electronica accepted. If it weren't for Lady Gaga, I can garuntee David Guetta would still be a virtual unknown here and he's a very respected House dj so his success is obviously a start. Samething with that Tik Tok song. It has tons of electro influence (listen to the verse) and if it weren't for Lady Gaga and Timbaland (his work with JT specifically) it would not be the hit it is today.
As we move along I can garutnee more and more Electronic music becomes mainstream (whether you like that or not is up to you). Its been popular in Europe since it was created and now North America is starting to catch up.
Electronica is clearly becoming more mainstream
I don't see why you need to have acts like Lady Gaga to make electronica more accepted. Plenty of artists out there make creative, original electronica. The whole remix scene... I never understood that. Why would you want to cut and paste other people's work anyways? Sure you can put lipstick on a pig, but it's still a pig. It wouldn't matter to me if some dj can remix a Lady Gaga song, Nickleback song, whatever and make another buck off of it, its still fundamentally junk. I guess using other musicians top 40 hits as your foundation is a way of getting your foot into the commercial success door, so to speak?
I have no problem with electronica, or any other genre becoming more "mainstream". People can have their mainstream, it makes no difference to me. I do enjoy some electronica, drum and bass, ect but there are few bands or projects out there that I find interesting.
I won't dismiss any commercially successful band as "junk" simply because its popular, although it is extremely difficult to find quality in popular music these days. I understand the whole "tastes are subjective" argument, and that rings true, but the difference is that quality is not subjective.
Someone posted some piano stuff she did on....SNL(?) a while ago. That showed some talent. I likened it to some metal head burn out (maybe from a band with corpse in it's name) sitting down and playing classical guitar. Something you don't expect and wonder why they don't do that more often before you realize they would be eating cat food if that's all they did.
The Gaga one is turning into a media mogul anyway now that she's in charge of Polaroid so maybe her musak will take a backseat..
DJ Patm keeps saying that you need Gaga to popularize electronic music. He obviously missed the entire 80s where electronic music was established and very much heavy synth instrument usage was the norm in all forms of popular music. Electronic music in pop and especially hip-hop and r&b had been rising for years before she even showed up on the scene.
I don't even know why Lady Gaga is considered to be electronic music. It's just terrible club music with lame lyrics and nothing even close to some of the great techno/house club music that really is a defining part (but still only one part) of electronica over the past 2 decades.
Last edited by Hack&Lube; 01-16-2010 at 08:27 PM.
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All I'm trying to say is, the point of music is to entertain. If it's beyond what most people can comprehend, then all the talent in the world doesn't mean jack to the normal person. You can say say artist A has more musical talent than artist B, but if artist B is more accessible to more people than artist A, then artist B creates better music to these people than artist A. Like I said, that's my opinion, please feel free to disagree with it. But you're not going to convince me otherwise.
I know nothing about the technicalities of music, I just know what I like to listen to and what I don't, and that's how I judge what's good and what's not.
All I'm trying to say is, the point of music is to entertain
You keep saying that but even as a fellow fan of Donnie Yen, I couldn't disagree more. It's like saying the point of Kung Fu is only to fight or to entertain move audienes when it's really something completely different. If you only watch a Donnie Yen movie as entertainment instead of appreciating the art and talent and history behind the martial arts, you are missing so much.
Entertainment is only a very small part of what music is.
The point of music is human expression, the expression of ones emotions and conveying that to others. It's a social experience. It's a private experience. It's so many more things than entertainment.
You keep saying that but even as a fellow fan of Donnie Yen, I couldn't disagree more. It's like saying the point of Kung Fu is only to fight when it's really something completely different.
Entertainment is only a very small part of what music is.
The point of music is human expression, the expression of ones emotions and conveying that to others. It's a social experience. It's a private experience. It's so many more things than entertainment.
That's fine, but it doesnt express anything to me if I don't understand it. It's good music to them and the people who understand it, and it's not good music to me because i don't like listening to it and I can't understand it.
I mean, flinging feces at a wall can be considered a point of human expression of ones emotions as well. I'm sure it's very deep to the person flinging the crap, and to the people who understand that person's inner struggles. It doesn't mean I would enjoy watching it.
You people who say writing pop/hit songs is easy really have no clue. The reason there are 1000s of one hit wonders is because it's extremely hard to do even once and only few can do it twice. Nickelback's music is pretty terrible in my opinion, but you think Kroger gives a when his checking account dwarves all of our's by quite a bit? Why do record labels pay guys like David Foster, James Taylor, Timbaland, etc... to write/produce hit songs when they could pay almost any musician to do it?
Last edited by FlamingLonghorn; 01-16-2010 at 09:36 PM.
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did any of them sell 8 million albums in 15 months? serious question because i don't know the answer
Why are we still on the whole thing about how many albums these people sell? How many albums someone sells doesn't say anything about what actual musical merit they have.
I think A-Ha's first album sold over 8 million at release and they have sold nearly 40 million albums and singles worldwide currently. I think Soft Cell had somewhere around 10 million. I wouldn't be trying to compare Lady Gaga's success to 80s bands if I were you. The record industry was way different, singles (that didn't just cost a $1 on Itunes) but priced as regular records were a major part of sales, and there were no mp3s and the only real piracy was tape dubbing and mix-taping.
Instead of all this arguing about, how about we just share with each other music that we like?
If we're talking modern electronic pop music by girls, my vote has to goto Ladyhawke, a girl from New Zealand with Asperger's syndrome. She's music to my ears. You may or may not agree with this. That's cool. She's not going to sell 8 million albums. That's cool. I don't care if she gets famous either.
Not hard to see why she's sold so many records. Appeal to the 18-22 year old bar star crowd and you will make money. These songs were marketed towards horny college girls so they could grind on guys at a club to them or hear them at a shisha bar and then buy the record the next morning for their ipod, and by God it worked.
You say that like it's a bad thing :P
Seriously though, I think I've seen enough of Lady Gaga to know she's incredibly talented, and an amazing artist. At the same time I think she's catering to a mass market, and "selling out" (to use the common term, however I'm more in favour of the term "buying in") because it makes more money.
I respect that. Frankly I do. She found a way to make herself millions of dollars, become famous, and do it while doing something she has a passion for and loves.
If it is the easy way out (not saying what she's doing is easy, just if it is easier than pure artistic abilities and creativity) then I can't fault her for it.
Look at my posting, I tend to make the cheesy, bad, puny jokes around here (and more so in person) when and where possible. It's not that I don't think I can't be witty or funny. I like to think I can be, hell sometimes I try to be. But frankly, cheese and groaners get a better reaction, thus I go for the bad joke more so than the clever good one. I can't fault anyone that takes the more profitable/greater reaction way, as that's what I do.
To quote the movie SLC Punk "I didn't sell out, I bought in". I think that's what this thread is coming down to. Selling out (bad) vs buying in (good). If you are ok with buying in you respect Lady Gaga's abilities, if you think she is selling out (or lump her with those that don't have the talent to make it, but cater to the populous thus get famous) then you don't like her.
I could be wrong, but I think it's a matter of perspective.
My perspective, she's very talented, and has the ability to be a masterful artist. I don't think she's on top par (with the Beatles, Hendrix, et al) because she's catering to the masses to make a name and make money. Frankly I can't fault her for that.
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She looks like a classy Marilyn Manson in that video.
She's got a good voice, seems talented to me. I won't be rushing out to buy her stuff however.
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Why are we still on the whole thing about how many albums these people sell? How many albums someone sells doesn't say anything about what actual musical merit they have.
I think A-Ha's first album sold over 8 million at release and they have sold nearly 40 million albums and singles worldwide currently. I think Soft Cell had somewhere around 10 million. I wouldn't be trying to compare Lady Gaga's success to 80s bands if I were you. The record industry was way different, singles (that didn't just cost a $1 on Itunes) but priced as regular records were a major part of sales, and there were no mp3s and the only real piracy was tape dubbing and mix-taping.
Instead of all this arguing about, how about we just share with each other music that we like?
If we're talking modern electronic pop music by girls, my vote has to goto Ladyhawke, a girl from New Zealand with Asperger's syndrome. She's music to my ears. You may or may not agree with this. That's cool. She's not going to sell 8 million albums. That's cool. I don't care if she gets famous either.
For the record, I love Ladyhawke and I intend to make her my wife one day.
Oh yeah, and her self-titled album is really good also.
They are definitely technically good at their instruments, except for maybe the vocalist. I have one big metal-head friend, and I still don't see where talent fits into the equation when it comes to heavy metal vocalists. They all sound the same to me, and I assume the ones that make it are the ones that can simply make that sound for the duration of a recording session, or live show.
Let's see you try to be a death metal vocalist, it is VERY hard. Not an easy thing to pull off. And only a few metal bands have that type of growl vocalist anyway. Iron Maiden, Iced Earth and even System of a Down have very difficult singers to follow, certainly more difficult to pull of than Lady Gaga who is a dime a dozen, if you ask me. I don't mean that as an insulting way either, many many vocalists can sing just like Lady Gaga, I don't find anything challenging from what I have heard.
How can you even compare the two? That's like comparing Apples to A$$holes...
And eveyone likes their own style of music, who the hell cares what you think is better? To each their own...
Maybe you should read my posts. I was sarcastically saying that Lady Gaga sucks and that I am going to listen to some Cannibal Corpse. The point was that what is garbage for one person is great for someone else. And here we are, pages of posts on this very subject. I am sure Lady Gaga is great for the OP, yet for me her music does nothing. Nothing wrong with that, and I hope she has a great career. I doubt many people like anything on my Ipod, as I love metal. Yet metal is often the most insulted of all musical genres, where in my opinion, they are the most talented, since I rate talent as to how well they can play an instrument. That is just my opinion. Maybe you should read all the posts before posting something else that is silly.
Throughout all of the posts, some people did say Cannibal Corpse have no talent (or something like that). That claim is not true, as they are very accomplished musicians, who simply play a genre of music that simply has a much smaller audience. Some people think album sales equate skill, I don't. There is no winner in this thread, just who can insult someone the most (it seems!).
