When we last left Lady Gaga, she was throwing her team under the bus over the delayed music video for “Do What U Want,” despite the fact that … well, it’s a collaboration with R. Kelly. She should have let that one die quietly and no one would blame her. Anyway, Gaga’s still pointing fingers and is blaming her ex-manager Troy Carter for ARTPOP‘s poor performance rather than herself. I don’t want to call it a flop, because it’s really not doing too bad, but the label is clearly not happy about it and someone’s about to be relocated to the undercarriage of the crosstown express. Via Page Six …
Lady Gaga seemed to blame her ARTPOP disaster on her ex-manager Troy Carter in a blistering online rant, but music insiders say the real problem is her lackluster album.
Gaga parted ways with Carter in November, days before ARTPOP was due to hit shelves. Critics called the album a flop after it sold about 250,000 copies in its first week and dropped 82 percent in its second week (Beyoncé’s self-titled surprise fifth album, released in mid-December sold 618,000 copies in week one).
“She’s mad the album failed,” said our source. “At no point does she talk about the underperformance of the music … everything is to blame except the music being bad.”
Awwwww, son of a — I’m now in the unenviable position of defending Gaga’s lesser qualities, huh? Well, let’s see what I can do here … all right, here’s the thing. The album didn’t do that bad. It still made its way to number one, and the songs are pretty decent, if not thoroughly ground-breaking or original. So let’s just put that out there: Gaga puts high expectations on herself, and maybe they’re not wholly realistic. On the other hand though, she seriously needs to consider her own limitations here. She needs to learn how to edit, and she needs more people around her to say “No, that’s stupid. We’re either going to fine-tune it until it’s no longer stupid or we’re just not doing it at all.” And most importantly, she’s a pop star. She’s an image. If people are no longer feeling the image, they’re not going to buy it, and that’s really all on you.