After several months of laying low due to a hip injury, Lady Gaga is back in the headlines with today’s typically… er, conceptual update on her long-awaited third album, ARTPOP. The pop star has posted the album / app’s release date, along with a slew of other cryptic information and the image below, on her official website. So, considering that we’ve been hearing various news about ARTPOP since early 2012, this seemed like a good time to round up everything we know about it so far.
THE BASICS
Title: ARTPOP (yes, in all caps)
Label: Interscope
Release format: Album and iOS / Android app
Release date: November 11, 2013
First single comes out: August 19
You can pre-order the album: September 1
THE CONCEPT
It’s about bringing high art into pop culture: Judging by today’s announcement, ARTPOP will pick up on the themes of celebrity that Gaga explored on her first album, The Fame and its excellent follow-up / evil twin EP The Fame Monster: “Altering the human experience with social media, we bring ARTculture into POP in a reverse Warholian expedition,” her website tells us. Hmm. Sounds like Gaga has been talking to Jay-Z and Kanye. Here’s hoping this means she’ll actually start crediting the artists whose ideas and aesthetics she appropriates.
It’s interactive: So, what’s all this talk about social media? It seems that TechHAUS — yes, that is apparently “the technological branch of HAUS OF GAGA” — has designed an app to accompany the album that will take ARTPOP to the masses, creating a virtual community called “the auras.” Although the highfalutin language on Gaga’s site makes it difficult to tell what it means that “the user will share in the ‘adrenaline of fame’ as they build and share their own projects, chat with one another, and watch in real-time on virtual globe as ARTPOP explodes onto the visual and physical universe at once on November 11,” the idea seems to be some kind of online platform to encourage creative work and collaboration — none of which will be as important as the opportunity for all participants to gather together and worship Lady Gaga’s new album.
THE SONGS
There might be a song called “Sex Dreams”: In February, while Gaga was in the studio, she sent the following tweet, which has been interpreted as a few teaser lyrics from a track with that name.
Other possible song titles include: “G.U.Y. (Guy Under You),” produced by Zedd; “Burqa”; and “Tea.”
Lady Gaga says she wrote 50 songs for ARTPOP: “i have written like 50 songs,” she told fans last year. “i don’t know what will rise to top. but thats how i wrote the fame/the fame monster.
That might explain why her much-discussed song about Princess Diana won’t be on the album.
THE DETAILS
Producers who Gaga worked with on ARTPOP include: DJ White Shadow, RedOne, Zedd, Madeon, and Dallas Austin
Possible collaborators include: Kendrick Lamar, Azealia Banks, Doug Aldrich (yes, the guy from Whitesnake)
Gaga’s first live date for ARTPOP will be at London’s Roundhouse in September. The performance will have a budget of £500,000, and will mark the singer’s return to the stage after a hip injury forced her off her feet in February.
Something is happening on November 10: On the eve of ARTPOP‘s release, Gaga’s website reports that she’ll host something called artRave, a party that will spotlight her collaborations with such art stars as Robert Wilson, Jeff Koons, Marina Abramovic, and Inez & Vinoodh.
There’s also going to be an ARTPOP documentary: The film will chronicle the album’s creation. But don’t get too excited — Terry Richardson is directing it.
Gaga hosted a dinner last night at Inez & Vinoodh’s gallery: She gave guests “skull-adorned red-velvet cakes and copies of the very first photograph from her upcoming album, ARTPOP… which depicts a nude Lady Gaga peering out from an elongated ski mask with the album name tattooed in caps on her left forearm,” reports Vanity Fair.