Review Summary: Just like The Fame but with better lyrics and a different message.
2009 has been quite a year in music. That is no exception in the pop industry of course, most notably directed towards Lady Gaga, an artist whose debut album
The Fame has overrun the pop charts with hit singles such has
Just Dance,
Poker Face, and the not-so-undertone
LoveGame. With popularity comes rumors as well, Gaga has been repeatedly bantered with accusations of having a disco stick of her own. Rumors like this are the prices Lady Gaga was willing to pay to obtain her childhood dream.
Originally to be released as a re-release of her debut album,
The Fame Monster was ultimately split into a single album consisting of eight new tracks. Excitedly Gaga officially declared this as her sophomore album. The question is if
The Fame Monster can live up to its origins.
Monster is essentially the opposite of
The Fame, the latter of which deals with the glamorous Hollywood lifestyle.
Monster on the other hand contains tracks that each deal with a different “monster” presented by Lady Gaga.
The first of these monsters are the opening track
Bad Romance, with begins with Gaga singing “rawr, rawr” noises in rhythm. While it sounds cheesy, the song actually proves to be quite fantastic, dealing with undertones of sex slavery. The chorus, “I want you loving/ I want your revenge/You and me could write a bad romance” booms loudly. Surprisingly sounding better than anything off
The Fame due to its toned down production level that would altering Gaga’s voice to unrecognizable extremes, although obvious production is present. No one can say that this is unexpected on most pop albums in this generation of auto-tune.
The next to-be single is
Telephone featuring Beyonce which is catchy and fun, but not much more than that. The song unfortunately is the opposite of
Bad Romance and features awful amounts of production mutating the vocals. The best part of the song is when Beyonce busts out a rap that adds a certain spice to the song not seen often on this ever so short album.
Lyrically every song on
Monster exceeds
The Fame by a long shot most notably on the piano balled
Speechless which actually sounds like a pop rendition of a Bowie song, a commonly cited influence of Gaga’s. The song is emotionally driven and easily the most evolved song on the album. “You’ve left me speechless, speechless/So speechless” is sung deep and loudly which, while not thought provoking and emotional to the listener, provides a great addition to the album as a stand out track.
Ultimately
The Fame Monster fails to live up
The Fame, but still produces great pop tracks that are undeniably addicting and fun, although it shows little to no evolution in talent it will undoubtedly produce hits. That is just to be expected because Gaga knows how to sell herself. If anything, this is a leap from her debut, to whatever she releases in the future. I personally believe that Lady Gaga saw how harsh of a jump it would be from a huge hit making debut to a completely new subject matter, so she had to release something different but also slightly related. If that was the plan…she succeeded.
