Unzipped.net reviews TFM
Get dressed and come outside," I hear my friend—we'll call him DJ Gaga—say over my phone. "I'm down the street, I've got a copy of Lady Gaga's new album The Fame Monster in the car." CLICK. I wake up Steve (the husband), we toss on some gym clothes, groggily stumble out of the house and into DJ's car. Needless to say, this is something we're dying to hear.
DJ hasn't been to sleep since last night's gig, which is why he's waking us up, but since random **** like this happens to Steve and I all the time (like crashing the Kylie Minogue after-party in LA—what?) we're not too flustered. We just pile into DJ's pimped-out BMW and head toward Santa Monica, going with the flow.
"Don't want to kiss, don't want to touch, just smoke one cigarette and run..."
DJ skips "Bad Romance" because everyone's heard that song and starts with "Alejandro," a Spanishy dance track that's unlike anything from The Fame, with touches of ABBA and Euro-pop mixed in. I'm not quite sure what it was about (still waking up) but she doesn't want Ale... Ale... Alejandro to call her name, and I'm pretty sure there's a Fernando, and maybe a Roberto or Gilberto mixed in too. Or maybe we'd just passed too many roll taco stands and I was feeling noshy. The song was, however, crystal clear and doesn't start like the odd versions you hear on YouTube, proving that DJ has come through once more.
"He ate my heart and then he ate my brain..."
"Monster" is the next song where she's talking about a boy who is, duh, a monster. I know they French kissed on a subway train, then he did all that eating. It's another crazy dance track but I doubt it's going to be one of the main singles.
"Speechless" is next and it's quite different from any of Gaga's other music. At times personal and painful, at other points reflective. It's like "Brown Eyes" on The Fame, but bigger in both production and emotion. She's speaking about some kind of close relationship, and where so many of her songs tend to be about having fun this feels largely based in the real world.
"She's a tramp, she's a vamp..."
By the time we reach Westwood we're at "Dance in the Dark," another fun tune with a lot of sex to it. At one point Gaga starts riffing off people's names like Madonna did in "Vogue," and I had this sudden vision of queens on a dance floor shouting along in unison. I'd mock them but I have no doubt Steve and I will be riffing along ourselves.
"Telephone" is another track... Are you ****ing kidding me??? Single #2. For sure.
"So Happy I Could Die" has Gaga asking you to meet her in a bar with a bottle of red wine.
"Teeth" is a hard song with heavy beats that make you want to bounce around to the rhythm and pump your arms in the air... until you realize you're almost 40 and worry that you're starting to look tragic, so instead you bop around until the cocktails have kicked in and then you don't care what anyone thinks and start pumping your arms in the air again. Steve described it as, "One of those songs Wade Robeson will do some kind of stomping/python/swaying dance number on So You Think You Can Dance." Truth.
Album finished, Steve and I return home (BTW, in good traffic the album can take you from Hollywood to Santa Monica and back). We thank DJ, then spend the rest of the weekend talking about what we heard. The whole album is bigger—with more confidence in Gaga's singing and definitely more production backing from the studio. Of course it's coming out just in time for the holidays, but can you fault the girl for being a smart business woman? Besides, The Fame Monster [Deluxe Edition] is worth the money. Where most re-releases toss on a couple songs that were castoffs from the previous album, this is a whole different album. It's inspired by The Fame but doesn't imitate it, and takes listeners on a new journey that they'll be dancing along to well after the holidays.
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