Review Summary: The Fame is an album full of catchy hit tunes, but still just a pop album.
In the year of 2009, Lady Gaga broke out into ultimate stardom. Her year began as a little known artist trying to be a pop star, when her first single
Just Dace dropped she caught the attention of many, the song became an instant hit and seemed to be played just about everywhere. Even still this is not anything out of the ordinary in the pop industry, artist rise and fall just as quickly. It wasn’t until that the second single,
Poker Face off Gaga’s debut album
The Fame was revealed that the public became hypnotized with the seemingly unstoppable pop-force know as Lady Gaga.
As a pop album
The Fame, (even if you do not want to admit), is great. Its produced to sell to the masses and attract plenty of attention due to its unique qualities and performer alike. Lyrics like
LoveGame’s, “Let’s have some fun/This beat is sick/I wanna take a ride on your disco stick” produce some not-so-vague undertones that make up the albums extreme catchiness. This; plus hooks after musical hooks make the
The Fame a strong album in the long run.
The crown jewel track of the album has to be
Paparazzi, a mid-tempo song that basically wraps up the concept of the album into one song. The lyrics, “I’m your biggest fan/I will follow you until you love me/Papa-paparazzi” hints at star struck obsession, and borderline stalking. The song will also be remembered by many due to the extravagant and overdone bloodshed of a performance of the song at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards that left people jumping up and down with excitement or scratching their heads in confusion. Unfortunately, this excitement and unexpectedness shown in Gaga’s stage persona are not reflected onto the album at all. There are no unexpected turns on the album at all; it follows the exact guidelines of a perfect pop album. The catchy and danceable tunes like the singles,
Just Dance and
Poker Face, the ballad dedicated to a past love lost as heard in
Brown Eyes, and the dreamy happy-go-lucky song like that of
Eh, Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say). As in most pop album formulas there is always at least one filler track, in this case that song is
Beautiful, Dirty, Rich an unnecessarily robotic and emotion-lacking song with no creative beats or vocal hooks making it the most boring song featured on
The Fame.
If there is any one thing that drags this album down the most though is its generic over produced sound that either candy coats the vocals or making the already drab beats ridiculously technical, overpowering anything else in the song, most obvious in
Summerboy.
Summerboy has lyrics that do not even sound like Gaga’s voice on the rest of the album leaving the listener with a sense of confusion to if their listening to
The Fame or a Gwen Stefani solo album. As a whole though the good weighs out that bad on the album, probably making it the most addicting album of the year, wither it be a guilty pleasure or a true love for Gaga’s vision of the music industry. Although she is not a pioneer of creative pop-thinking, she is a reflection of pop stars of the past, and she knows how to use that to her advantage.
