Information on Lady Gaga's upcoming album ARTPOP is so locked down that only few tantalizing facts about the album have dribbled out so far. We know, for instance that there will be an app involved in its release, and that the first single is a song called 'Applause'.
Speaking to Rolling Stone, DJ White Shadow - who co-produced and co-write 'Applause' - seemed as though he might be suggesting that it's an unbeat, danceable tune. Or maybe not? "I don't know, man!" White Shadow quickly added. "You tap your feet to a ballad. I might tap my feet to 'Every Rose Has Its Thorn.'" Here's what we know for sure about Gaga's latest magnum opus:
1. ARTPOP will be released on November 11th. Before that, we'll get to hear 'Applause' on August 19th and see a video shot by photographers Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin.
2. "Applause" is . . . fun! "I'll tell you that it is very fun," Gaga said earlier this year. "And that it's full of happiness, because what I'm saying in the song essentially is that I live for the applause." Adds DJ White Shadow: "It's just a fun song. There's no political commentary . . . I watch people's toes and they tap."
3. ARTPOP is not just an album. It's an app, too. Gaga helpfully calls the project "a musical and visual engineering system that combines music, art, fashion and technology.” (Preorders begin September 1st.)
4. Gaga began working on ARTPOP almost immediately after 2011's Born This Way came out. "It couldn't have been more than a week," DJ White Shadow says, "and she hit me up and said, 'OK, the next album's called ARTPOP, let's go' . . . I was laying on my couch watching 'Judge Judy' or something and trying to chill."
5. Gaga isn't necessarily aiming for a typical radio-friendly sound. "She does not have to please anyone, and she is who she is," Zedd (the German DJ-producer who worked on several ARTPOP tracks) recently told RS. "Whatever is dope is dope. We do whatever we want, and we don't have to make a song that's three minutes and 30 seconds just to fit the radio."
6. Gaga will perform "Applause" at MTV's Video Music Awards on August 25th. "I'm sending a doppelgänger," Gaga told Women's Wear Daily. "I'm going this year as a fried egg instead of hard-boiled."
7. ARTPOP is an electronic dance music album . . . or it isn't an electronic dance music album. Definitely one of the two. "We didn't try to make an EDM album – but, at the same time, we didn't try not to make an EDM album," Zedd added.
8. Gaga's rehabilitation from a broken hip helped inspire the album. "I was given the time to really be creative because it's a gazing process, it really is," she said recently. "I have to gaze into the work for long periods of time for it to be good." Adds DJ White Shadow: "She wasn't going to just lay in bed and have a morphine drip and pass out for three months. She was about making the record. She doesn't sit down. She doesn't chill."
