Lady GaGa – The Fame Monster Review

Posted by Michael Melchor on 11.23.2009

It’s easy to be told that The Fame Monster is different from the The Fame, but the proof is in the listening.

One thing that tends to proliferate the music marketplace around the holidays – and one thing that really drives me up the wall – are album re-issues. Record labels, in a bit of bass-ackwards logic, expect customers to be stupid enough to pay the same (or higher) price for essentially the same album they’ve already bought once, only this one comes in fancy new packaging with maybe 2-3 new songs. And those same labels wonder why they’re failing.

I have to give credit to Lady GaGa, though – she saw through the ruse and, while being contracted to Interscope and not able to stop it, decided, instead, to make it worth the consumers’ while. The Fame Monster could be called a re-issue, yes; The Fame is present here, in its entirety. However, GaGa decided to run with the concept opportunity this necessary evil provided. She’s added nearly an entire album’s worth of new material (instead of a few flimsy “bonus tracks”) as a companion piece to her original work.

According to reports, GaGa dedicated the new material to exploring the darker side of her fame. However, The Fame Monster plays like more of the same type of music (and lyrics) that made The Fame a platinum-seller. Despite being pop, it’s not bad music at all – just an extension of what we’ve already heard.





To get it out of the way and covered, The Fame was never a terrible album to begin with. Lady GaGa does dance-pop. There’s nothing revolutionary or ground-breaking about her music; this isn’t anything that will change the face of music o forever. Nor does it have to be. Just like any other genre, dance-pop has its good and bad. Stripping away all of the outlandish outfits and crazy looks (that, among other things, have rightly earned her comparisons to Madonna), what Lady GaGa does musically she does well. More credit should be given her way considering that she writes or at least co-writes all of her own material instead of letting other writers and producers run her sound, her image, and her career overall in to the ground. Again, nothing has come from her pen that will change the way people view human relations or even art – and, again, that’s perfectly fine.

So, The Fame Monster– the newer tracks that make up this compendium (and actually take up disc one) – is there to make a statement. Particularly, the songs were written to look at the “dark side” of fame that GaGa has seen over the past year-plus. Or so she says – if there’s any sort of “message”, it’s well-hidden in the thick beats and synthesized backing that define her style (and pop as a whole, really). The first track (and lead single), “Bad Romance”, is as pop as it gets. The sound is a little more harsh than she’s done before; apparently her idea of being “darker” is to distort the music a little. Other than that, the polished vocals, the grating “Whoa-OOOoooh”-vocal hooks and catch chorus are all in place.

In fact, the title “Bad Romance” should be a clue. Lyrically, the first half of The Fame Monster is about romance and love. That’s it. Just boys and girls hooking up in some form or fashion. What this has to do with “the dark side of fame” – or how it even differs from the subject matter on The Fame – is an honest mystery to me. It’s not until halfway through, with “Dancing In The Dark”, that her “message” is finally addressed. Even then, it’s masked in the idea of sex:

Silicone,
Saline,
Poison,
Inject me
Baby I'm a free
bitch;
I'm a free
bitch.

Some girls won't dance to the beat of the track.
She won't walk away, but she won't look back.
She looks good but her boyfriend says she's a mess,
she's a mess,
she's a mess,
Now the girl is stressed.

Of course, young girls won’t pay much attention to the lyrics – they’re too busy dancing. This may be a relief to some parents, because GaGa gets a little more vulgar here than she did on The Fame. Even with that, it’s a little hard to make out the lyrics over the beats and computer-constructed melodies. It’s even harder, save for subtleties, to discern this as any different from her previous material.

The 411: Lady GaGa, to her credit, fancies herself as an artiste more than the flavor of the week. Her effort to be as such is certainly there. However, her sound could definitely use some work if she wants to prove that and move up to the next level. It’s easy to be told that The Fame Monster is different from the The Fame, but the proof is in the listening. GaGa could do well to put more effort in to differentiating her music as well as her image.

Final Score:  6.0   [ Average ]