"Artpop" (stylized in all caps) is the third studio album by American singer Lady Gaga. It was released on November 6, 2013, by Streamline and Interscope Records. Gaga began planning the project in 2011, shortly after the launch of her second effort, Born This Way. Work continued until 2013 while Gaga was traveling for her Born This Way Ball tour and recovering from surgery for an injury she had sustained while touring. Gaga described Artpop as "a celebration and a poetic musical journey". It displays an intentional "lack of maturity and responsibility" by comparison to the darker and anthemic nature of Born This Way.
Gaga collaborated with various producers on the record, including DJ White Shadow, Zedd, and Madeon. Musically, Artpop is an EDM and synth-pop album, with influences from R&B, techno, industrial, and dubstep, among other genres. The themes of the album revolve around Gaga's personal views of fame, sex and self-empowerment; references include Greek and Roman mythology. It also features guest vocals from T.I., Too Short, Twista, and R. Kelly. In 2019, as a reaction to the documentary Surviving R. Kelly, Kelly's featured song, "Do What U Want", was removed from all streaming and online versions and new vinyl and CD pressings of the album.
The release of Artpop was prefaced by a two-day album release party dubbed ArtRave. The album received generally mixed reviews from music critics, although it was included in several year-end lists and earned retrospective positive reviews by critics and publications since its release. It debuted atop the US Billboard 200 with first-week sales of 258,000 copies, becoming Gaga's second consecutive number one record in the country. It also topped the charts in Austria, Croatia, Japan, Mexico, Scotland, and the United Kingdom, while charting within the top five in many countries, including Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, New Zealand, Spain, and Switzerland. According to the International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI), Artpop was the ninth global best-selling album of 2013 with 2.3 million copies worldwide. Despite this, the album was considered by some as a commercial failure compared to Gaga's previous albums.
"Applause" was released as the lead single from Artpop on August 12, 2013, and was a critical and commercial success, charting within the top ten in more than 20 countries worldwide, peaking at number four on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the United States. The second single, "Do What U Want", was made available on October 21, reaching number 13 in the US. It was followed by promotional singles "Venus" and "Dope" shortly before the album's release. "G.U.Y." was the third and last single released from the album. Gaga promoted Artpop with several television appearances and performances, including her second Thanksgiving Day special. After a short residency at Roseland Ballroom, she embarked on her fourth headlining concert tour, ArtRave: The Artpop Ball.
Development of Artpop began shortly after the release of Lady Gaga's second studio album Born This Way (2011), and by the following year, its concepts were "beginning to flourish" as Gaga collaborated with producers Fernando Garibay and DJ White Shadow. Initial recording sessions for Artpop coincided with the Born This Way Ball tour (2012–2013), with up to 50 songs sketched out and considered for inclusion. By May 2012, the project was taking definite form, with co-manager Vincent Herbert promising "insane, great records" within its craft. Gaga said that she yearned to make audiences have "a really good time" with Artpop, engineering the album to mirror "a night at the club". "When you listen to it, it really flows nicely. It's really fun to pop in with your friends. I really wrote it for me and my friends to pop in from start to finish," she said in a 2013 interview for MTV. Meanwhile, Gaga began presenting tracks to her record company and hoped to reveal the album's working title by September, a revelation that instead was announced one month in advance. The artist later claimed that Artpop was her first "real" effort that emulated a "phoenix rising from the ashes", reflecting her heightened confidence in writing material for the album compared to her previous efforts.
Gaga recruited Jeff Koons into the project in early 2013, with the two having previously met at a Metropolitan Museum of Art fashion event three years earlier, where Gaga provided a live performance. According to Koons, she "just kind of grabbed ahold of me and gave me a big hug around my waist" and replied, "You know, Jeff, I've been such a fan of yours, and when I was a kid just hanging out in Central Park I would talk to my friends about your work." Following her hip surgery in February 2013, Gaga was forced into a six-month hiatus, during which she studied literature and music with her creative team, the Haus of Gaga, in addition to sharing "creative gifts". This stage allowed her to review and enhance her creative direction, which she admitted to be a meticulous "gazing process". "I have to gaze into the work for long periods of time for it to be good," adding that upon analyzing her ideas, she received "that wonderful feeling" which told her "that's the one".
Gaga described Artpop as "a celebration and a poetic musical journey" that displayed a "lack of maturity and responsibility", contrary to the dark, anthemic nature of Born This Way. In an August 2013 interview, she told V magazine that she underwent a "cosmetic experience with words" as she examined potential names for the project. "Popart" was initially favored and taken into consideration, but as Gaga questioned "the cultural implication of the words" and the title's evolution post-release, she soon found a "nice ring" to "Artpop". With Artpop, Gaga attempts to inject vulnerability into her work; she also cited Pierrot and Sandro Botticelli's The Birth of Venus (c. 1484–1486) painting as an influence. Gaga admitted to being increasingly self-conscious at the apex of the Born This Way era, and when asked about the decision to refine her image, she responded: "For Artpop, I, in the most metaphorical explanation, stood in front of a mirror and I took off the wig and I took off the makeup and I unzipped the outfit and I put a black cap on my head and I covered my body in a black catsuit and I looked in the mirror and I said: 'OK, now you need to show them you can be brilliant without that.' And that's what Artpop is all about. Because I knew that if I wanted to grow, if I really wanted to innovate from the inside, I had to do something that was almost impossible for me."
The album's themes primarily revolve around fame, sex, and empowerment, whilst briefly exploring gender roles and marijuana. References include Greek and Roman mythology, and classic jazz and electronic musician Sun Ra. Spencer Kornhaber from The Atlantic saw Artpop as an "attention-freak's manifesto", and interpreted the record's exploration into carnal desire as a facet of the broader idea of "owning up to one's own desire for attention". London Evening Standard's John Aizlewood suggested that songs such as "Do What U Want" and "Dope" highlighted Gaga's "curiously submissive" tendencies as a lyricist. Jason Lipshutz from Billboard commented that Artpop "naturally abides" to her "far-reaching ambition" to "re-think the 'pop album' as an entity", while USA Today's Jerry Shiver observed the lyrics to foretell "the exploits of an empowered, sexy siren who wrestles with fame", something he expected from Gaga. John Pareles from The New York Times argued that, with Artpop, Gaga reasserted "her need for the love of her audience and announced her new pivot to align herself with the [visual] art world".
Gaga composed and produced all the songs on the album, and worked together with DJ White Shadow, Zedd, and Madeon, among other producers. White Shadow told MTV that Gaga texted him less than a week after the release of her previous album, Born This Way, telling him that she already "had the name and the general concept for the record". In his interview with Rolling Stone, he later talked more about their working process: "I was just trying to make something that pushed people's way of thinking a little bit... something a little off from the norm to get people thinking about possibilities. ...[Gaga] wrote this album as we were traveling around the world for the last two years, and we wrote so many songs together." He also recalled that on one occasion, they stayed up for around 20 hours to finish a song, adding: "We never work on one song and finish it and move on. They all get worked on in rotation until literally the day we have to turn it into Interscope." Gaga had been touring with Zedd during her Born This Way Ball tour. Zedd had previously done a remix of her 2011 single "Marry the Night" and worked on her remix album, Born This Way: The Remix, while Gaga had contributed vocals on an alternate version of Zedd's track, "Stache". Zedd told MTV News that they "both love nothing more than making music, so it was just kind of natural for us to just work on music." He later talked about finding it difficult to complete the project due to their busy schedules and that their work progressed mainly while being on
