VH1 Music showcases Gaga's most unoriginal ideas

Choo-choo! The newest rider on the "Lady Gaga's a copycat" train is none other than VH1 Music.

Writer Diane Cho has compiled a list of Gaga's most unoriginal ideas and put them all in one place in this article, titled "Every Time Lady Gaga Thought She Was Being Original But Wasn't".

Cho has nine slides of photos and videos of Lady Gaga's biggest rip-offs inspirations, including the infamous meat dress from the 2010 VMAs, the Annie Lennox Jo Calderone character, Colette (you may remember her as the street artist that protested outside Barney's alleging that Gaga copied her work for "Gaga's Workshop" back in 2011), Marilyn Manson, and naturally, Madonna.

Of course, none of this is new information for people that follow this blog and/or can use the internet to google pop culture pre-2008, but nonetheless it's good to see some more sources out there that aren't afraid to speak up and say that maybe Gaga "...should have given credit where credit is due."

If you can stomach the nine slides of "burglary" (their quote, not mine!), you can find the article HERE.

Where there's smoke, there's fire...

...and it smells like a burning bridge.

Cheek to Cheek was all we ever heard about from Lady Gaga until its release. Now that it has made it to number one in the U.S., has the hype passed? Or is she still trying to heavily (and some may say desperately) promote it?

You tell me! If you look at her Twitter, all you see are ads for the album! Every other tweet is about how she wants you to buy the album...

 or about how well its doing...

or about how "great" it is, or about how "meaningful" it is... and remix, after remix, after remix!

How many remixes do you need for an album that's only been out a couple weeks?! Anything to get those numbers, I guess... right, Gaga?

Yeah, the album is doing pretty well... but if you actually do look at the numbers, you'll see that Cheek to Cheek has taken a bit of a dive in the charts, going from number one to number four in one week with a drop of 58%.

In comparison, you can see that Streisand's album Partners - which has been out a week longer - has overtaken Cheek to Cheek and sold almost 20,000 more copies this past week. So what could that mean for Cheek to Cheek? Does it have staying power? Or has Gaga bitten off more than she can chew by trying to become a serious jazz artist?

As I alluded to in the title, Gaga may just be in trouble if this jazz stuff she's trying to do doesn't work out. She's suggested to HER OWN FANS that pop music is not real music...

...all while in the middle of her artRAVE tour!

And while reports of "sold out shows" are still coming in, other sources seem to be saying differently. The Oslo show, for example, was considered sold out and the numbers we were given (8,948/8,948 = 100%) may not be accurate.

For example, this source states that the show sold only 7000 tickets, and this one says 5,500 tickets, for the Telenor arena which has a capacity of 23,000! This source shows surprise that she has such low demand, since the last time she was in Norway for the Born This Way Ball, she sold out an arena with 16,000 tickets (just paste the article into Google translate to read it in your language). 

With evidence that her "pop" star is fading, do you think Gaga's behaviour and comments like the one above are going to end up hurting her in the end? Is Gaga burning her bridges by insulting the pop genre and - by extent - its fans? Or do you think she has a future in jazz?

It's official: Cheek to Cheek is number one

It looks like the deep discount and constant promotion of Cheek to Cheek really helped its sales for its opening week, because it (un)offically hit the coveted number one spot on the Billboard top 200, according to Hits Daily Double.

Kenny Chesney and Barbra Streisand were close behind - and it's a good thing for Gaga that Streisand didn't release her album a week later than she did, because Streisand almost took the number one spot again in her second week!

I guess when you have a devoted small army working for you (for free) doing more than some actual paid promoters do, you have a huge advantage over your competition! Check out the task list she gave to her fans!

How nice, Gaga only says she loves them in the postscript and doesn't even thank them for helping her out! Remind me never to help Gaga move!

Would Cheek to Cheek have made it to number one without the discount, the legion of fans working for free, and literal shit-ton of promotion? Who knows! Either way, Cheek to Cheek seems to be doing remarkably well worldwide, despite the mediocre reviews:

Billboard - 3/5 Stars
Allmusic - 3/5 Stars
The Daily Telegraph - 3/5 Stars
Rolling Stone - 3/5 Stars
Slant Magazine - 2/5 Stars
LA Times - 1/4 Stars

And by the way, Gaga's still trying to play up the whole 'I don't care about the numbers' thing. I guess it's easy to say that the charts don't mean anything when you've got a number one album, but of course her twitter is telling a different story... with promo tweet, after promo tweet, after promo tweet...

Does this look like the tweet of someone that doesn't care about chart positions, numbers, or sales?

Later today, Billboard should update and officially show Cheek to Cheek as number one. When the album drops down into oblivion in the coming weeks, at least Gaga will sleep better knowing she managed to squeak past her competition into the number one spot.

"Cheek to Cheek" already being discounted

Lady Gaga's newest album Cheek to Cheek has only been out 4 days, and already she's offering it at a discounted price.

Maybe the news that Kenny Chesney is currently being seen as the best contender for the number one spot on the Billboard Top 200 is what inspired her to tweet out this "limited" deal.  Current estimates show Chesney's album The Big Revival at 125-135,000 copies sold, and Cheek to Cheek at 115-125,000.

Will she manage to push over 10,000 more copies before the week is done? Will Gaga take the number one spot?

Happy first day of fall!

                     
                     
                                 
                                 

The big news of the day: Cheek to Cheek is out now worldwide. Is it going to make it to number one, or will it fall flat on its ass?

Billboard, one of Gaga's biggest sources of hype, has given the album a decent review but only 3/5 stars. They love Bennett's performance, but of course, the whole article is about Gaga. Although they hype her quite a bit, they do throw a few digs at her too. Right at the beginning they state that the Great American Songbook "just might save her career", which is interesting because, like Gaga, they usually spend quite a lot of time and effort trying to deny that her career is struggling.

Billboard also admits that "Gaga definitely needed Bennett more than he needed her", but suggest that both will benefit from the pairing because, get this, they had fun recording together. Seriously. There was no other mention of how this duet benefits Tony Bennett at all aside from "they had a blast". Odd, right? Not really - the whole world knew she needed him, not the other way around, but it's interesting to see that even Billboard is admitting it.

As for the actual music, they go on to say, nicely, that she completely overdoes it on most of the album. Their words exactly are "Gaga thrives on spectacle", though if you actually read through the review you'll also see things like Gaga "verges on overpowering", has a "mighty vocal surge", she's "singing right over poor Tony"... they even call her "histrionic" at one point.

Read the review HERE.

From what I have heard so far, there's an awful lot of yelling going on in this album. I don't think Billboard is too far off the mark when they give the album 3/5 stars, but I feel like the only reason it even ranked that high was due to Bennett's voice, the music, and the fact that all of the songs included on the album are jazz standards and not anything Gaga wrote herself.


What are your thoughts on the album?


UPDATE:
It seems Billboard lowered their review from 3.5 stars to 3 stars on the day of release. Wonder what that means?