Lady Gaga launches 'Artpop' at VIP New York party

Multi-platinum selling diva Lady Gaga electrified several thousand handpicked fans with a live performance at the Brooklyn docks, kicking off the global release Monday of her third album.Strutting and writhing across the stage dressed in a white leotard and white wig, Gaga late Sunday performed tracks from her new album "Artpop," launched in collaboration with US artist Jeff Koons.

Fans in fishnets, men in sequined drag and lipstick, girls in stilettos, gay men in platforms, older men in kilts and the odd grandmother, the crowd was as eclectic as they were die-hard Gaga fans, mobbing her with cell phone cameras and dancing madly.

"Artpop" signals a return to the limelight for Stefani Germanotta, the 27-year-old privately educated New Yorker best known as Lady Gaga, after she was forced to tone down her wall-to-wall engagements to undergo hip surgery.

She has collaborated with several world famous contemporary artists, including Koons, who portrayed her as a post-modern Botticellian Venus for the album artwork.

"I just want 11/11 to be a time for us all to really open our minds and project a brand-new future in communication, in technology, in visual art," Gaga told a packed press conference ahead of the VIP launch party, in reference to the date.

"Artpop" is a return to the danceable synthpop of Gaga's massively successful 2008 debut album "The Fame" after she experimented with other styles on her second album, "Born This Way."

Gaga established her reputation with chart-topping songs and outlandish costumes, and has surrounded herself with a constant media buzz.

Critics however gave the hotly-anticipated new album only lukewarm reception.

Even though some tired audience members drifted away from the event before it was over, most fans seemed smitten.

Gaga sang "Aura" in front of Koons' enormous white statue of her sitting naked, legs splayed, and holding a giant blue ball in front of her crotch.

She sashayed through the room to the stage and powered through the explicit lyrics to "Sex Dreams," then made an emotional dedication to Koons.

Gaga has a fight on her hands to retain her "Queen of Pop" crown after Katy Perry supplanted her as most followed person on Twitter, and with a twerking Miley Cyrus stealing the headlines.

Before assembled journalists Gaga took off in a custom-made flying dress to proclaim a new cultural revolution.

She strapped into the fly suit and buckled her helmet wearing a cut-out black leotard and knee-high sparkly white stiletto boots. She then took off and propelled through the air.

"I think that anytime you have a voice in the world and you're a public figure if you have the potential to start a revolution I feel it is your duty to do so," she said.

Gaga called the battery-operated flying dress Volantis, and an "early prototype" for what she said could be a new dawn in travel.

She presented the device as part philosophy, part science, and part metaphor for herself, but was vague on what use it could ever have.

But instead of gliding from the back of a Brooklyn warehouse to a small platform in front of the cameras, Gaga hovered for a few seconds several times. The device came to juddering halts, and she walked the last few steps towards the podium.

"Most importantly today we just wanted you to feel inspired," she said.

Unveiling a smartphone app that accompanies the album, she finished by saying: "I hope today is a change in pop culture."

A dashing Koons, kitted out in an elegant midnight blue Christian Dior suit, explained why he agreed to work with Gaga.

"I think she's really a very, very generous person. As human beings we all have a freedom of gesture and it's whether we exercise it or not," he told AFP at the launch party.

"Gaga's exercising it and is trying to communicate to her fans that they can exercise that freedom too and so as an artist that's what I'm involved with also so I think we appreciate that in each other."

Lady Gaga feels ‘empty’ after completing ARTPOP

Lady Gaga feels 'empty' and 'depressed' after finishing her album 'ARTPOP'.
The 'Applause' hitmaker has hit a low point since releasing her third studio album as she is no longer being creative.

She told O2: 'I'm depressed after making this album. I feel empty and sad. I'm no longer the creator, I'm the performer.
'This is the reverse of Warhol, this is the reverse of the soup can, this is art imprinted onto pop culture.'
This comes only weeks after Gaga claimed she doesn't 'feel alive' when she is not on stage as her stage persona gives her the chance to express her thoughts.
She said: 'When I'm not on the stage, I don't feel alive. But when I hit the stage, it's like everything that I'm thinking and feeling, where I belong - that's where it is.'
But the 27-year-old eccentric star doesn't think she is different from anyone else, because most people have creative energy they want to release.
Gaga explained: 'I don't think I am different from anybody else. I think everyone with their location and their job and what they do, their passion, feel the same way I do. It's sort of like we are endlessly obsessing about what we are creating and then the explosion is the moment where we get to share.'

Lady Gaga To Start Film Career From Machete Kills

Famous singer Lady Gaga has now decided to show her talent in movies after gaining worldwide fame and respect through her melodious songs. She is going to start her film journey with an important role in the move “Machete Kills.”machete kills.

Machete Kills is an upcoming 2013 American exploitation action film directed, produced, co-written, cinematographied and co-edited by Robert Rodriguez. The film is the third based on Grindhouse fake trailers; the first were Machete and Hobo with a Shotgun. Danny Trejo, Michelle Rodriguez, Tom Savini, Billy Blair, Electra and Elise Avellan, Felix Sabates, and Jessica Alba reprise their roles from the first film, Machete, and are joined by series newcomers Mel Gibson, Demián Bichir, Amber Heard, Sofía Vergara, Lady Gaga, Antonio Banderas, Cuba Gooding Jr., Vanessa Hudgens, Alexa Vega, William Sadler, Marko Zaror, and Charlie Sheen.

Lady Gaga fights to keep 'Queen of Pop' crown

Multi-platinum selling diva Lady Gaga is fighting to keep her 'Queen of Pop' crown with a hotly-anticipated third album, but early reception in the US and Britain has been lukewarm.

"Artpop" signals a return to the limelight for Stefani Germanotta -- known as Lady Gaga on stage and in video -- after she was forced to tone down her usually ubiquitous media presence to undergo hip surgery.
"For ArtPop, in a symbolic way, I've put myself in front of a mirror, I've taken off my clothes, then the makeup, then the wigs, I've dressed myself with a black jumpsuit and I've told myself: 'Now, you have to prove you can be brilliant without all that'", Lady Gaga told the magazine Grazia.
Even before its official release next week, "Artpop" has been making the headlines.
The 27-year-old New Yorker, who established her reputation on chart-topping songs and surrounded herself with a constant media buzz, streamed the new album this week after it was leaked.
The artist also hinted at an out-of-this-world publicity splash for the album's official launch -- a concert in space.
The US Weekly magazine reported that Lady Gaga plans to undergo a month of special vocal training to perform in early 2015 aboard the Virgin Galactic, the passenger spaceplane being launched by British billionaire Richard Branson to popularise space tourism.
While the third album suggest Lady Gaga's increasing artistic ambitions, critics in Britain and the US are not so convinced.
"The intention of the album was to put art culture into pop music, a reverse of Warhol. Instead of putting pop onto the canvas, we wanted to put the art onto the soup can," Lady Gaga said in an interview in Britain's Daily Mail.

Lady Gaga has collaborated with a number of world famous contemporary artists, including Jeff Koons for the album's artwork, showing her as a post-modern Botticellian Venus.
But on a first hearing "Artpop" returns to familiar themes -- desire, drugs, identity, celebrity, fashion, creativity -- and sounds more like Lady Gaga's previous albums "The Fame" and "Born this way" than it does a totally new musical experiment.
"There's certainly some decent pop on Lady Gaga's new album -- but the 'art' part is rather harder to discern", said the British newspaper The Guardian.
The verdict was echoed across the Atlantic.
"Lady Gaga's latest extravagant exploration of her own fame, fabulousness and fearlessness is undeniably relentless, but that doesn't mean it's consistently entertaining," said USA Today.