Lady Gaga
The Fame Monster (Interscope)
N.Y.C. dark pop artist Danny Blu told us about his love for a Gaga classic...
I truly struggled to choose between two albums here. It was a toss up between The Fame Monster by Lady Gaga and The Queen of the Damned Soundtrack. Both were incredibly influential to me at very different times in my life but I’m gunna dive into Gaga’s pop masterpiece today!
NYC, 2009, I had just started college after a gap year. It’s a weird time in my life during which I had left a bunch of my alternative influences behind in service of being more “cast-able” in theatre. “Bad Romance” came out the day before my birthday (Oct 19) and it’s not hyperbole to say that it, and its accompanying video released the following month, and the rest of the Fame Monster changed the course of my life.
This album was the soundtrack to my existence for the next 2 years. And was with me when I made some of the most important decisions I’ve ever made. Including: “I’m going to make music.” It saw me start a career in nightlife. It saw me embrace my sexuality and weaponize it. It saw me through heartbreak, trauma, despair, euphoria and obviously greatly informed the type of musician I was becoming.
The Fame Monster is dark, sad, aggressive, sexy, chaotic, poignant, and packed full of the most incredible hooks in the history of pop music. The sonic vocabulary, the production, the visuals, the lyricism: I still reference all of it to this day.
Danny Blu's "Type" is out now.
