And Finally Artist News Beef Of The Week

CMU Beef Of The Week #189: Lady Gaga v Those who would seek to betray her

By Andy Malt | Published on Friday 10 January 2014

Lady Gaga has had a bit of a rant about “those who have betrayed me”, suggesting that it’s all their fault that the campaign to promote her new album, ‘ARTPOP’, hasn’t gone quite as well as hoped. Who those people are she hasn’t said, but we might as well speculate a bit, eh?

In a broad sense, there are the staff at Gaga’s Haus Of Gaga company, which she set up to work on various creative projects, inspired by Andy Warhol’s Factory.

She’s generally talked up this operation in the past, but its technical division, Techhaus, was also responsible for that ridiculous ‘flying dress’ thing she unveiled in November. The much-mocked demonstration took place ahead of her live-streamed ‘ARTRAVE’ launch event for the album, for which a sponsorship deal with American Express fell through (though AMEX still plumped up the cash to pay for it).

Someone else possibly due some scorn is former PA Jennifer O’Neill, who is suing the singer for unpaid overtime. In September, despite Gaga’s attempts to have the case dismissed by dubbing it “bullshit”, it was decided that it will go to a full trial with a jury and everything. Which must be annoying.

Plus, of course, just as ‘ARTPOP’ was about to go on sale in November it emerged that Lady Gaga and her manager Troy Carter had parted ways. Gaga and Carter had worked together since 2007, and the partnership had, up to that point, proven extremely lucrative for both.

One of Carter’s key innovations in helping the singer to build the fervent fanbase she now presides over, was the creation of the Backplane technology, upon which Gaga’s own social network, LittleMonsters.com was built. And it was on that social network that Gaga made her comments this week.

Asked why the video for her track with R Kelly, ‘Do What U Want’, is yet to come out, the singer said: “It is late because, just like with the ‘Applause’ video unfortunately, I was given a week to plan and execute it. Those who have betrayed me gravely mismanaged my time and health and left me on my own to damage control any problems that ensued as a result”.

Although she never actually mentioned anyone by name, the thinly veiled criticism continued: “Millions of dollars are not enough for some people. They want billions. Then they need trillions. I was not enough for some people. They wanted more”.

Gaga added that her problems all began when she was forced to cancel tour dates and go into hospital for hip surgery. She wrote: “When I woke up in the hospital after my surgery there were many people that were not there. My health did not matter. I did not matter unless I could perform. This is a very hard lesson. My label was not aware that this was going on. The next few months of ‘ARTPOP’ will truly be its beginning. Because those who did not care about [the album’s] success are now gone”.

So that’s good. You don’t want greedy people who want all your money, but who aren’t interested in you making any, hanging around you. That’s just bad luck. And now all the extravagant and expensive parts of the launch campaign are out of the way, she can finally get on with promoting the album properly. Or just put it down to experience and try again.