IS THE LADY GAGA PHENOMENON OVER?
Questions have been asked about the apparent dwindling popularly of Lady Gaga following her weak concert sales in the US and declining online interest.
The now 26-year-old star first burst onto the music scene in 2008 with the debut album The Fame, and went on to sell over 23 million albums and 64 million singles worldwide.
In the process, and in part thanks to her outrageous costumes and stunts, she became a cultural phenomenon. She was even named one of the most influential people in the world by Time magazine.
Her vocal support for LGBT teens and activism against homophobic bullying and in favour of same-sex marriage quickly made her especially popular among gay communities around the globe.
In recent months, however, her status appears to be on the decline, despite a world tour and the launch of a fragrance.
While her Born This Way Ball tour has done well in some countries it’s been much less successful in the US, with reports that tickets have been heavily discounted. (Humiliatingly, her much older competitor Madonna scored the biggest selling world tour of 2012 during the same period.)
Gaga’s most recent album Born This Way has sold disappointingly compared to her previous releases and she was recently dethroned as the most followed celebrity on Twitter by Justin Bieber.
YouTube has also stripped her videos of 156 million views after it found that some of the videos had been duplicated. Her continued support for the fur trade is also unlikely to have boosted her popularity.
Now, AccuraCast, a leading London based search engine marketing agency, has revealed that online interest in the singer has taken a huge knock of late.
The company graphed Gaga’s internet search history and found that “since May 2011 her popularity has fallen almost continuously each month and shows little sign of recovery”.
It goes on to say: “When we consider how busy Lady Gaga has been over the course of 2012, her fall in online popularity is astonishing and even more so if we consider the influence of the internet in launching her career…
“The declining number of searches, which is lingering dangerously close to the level it was when she burst onto the scene in 2008, indicates that we are all a little bored with Lady Gaga’s antics!”
The singer is preparing to release her new album Artpop later this year. Its success, or lack thereof, may well be an indicator of the longevity of Mother Monster’s career and of her ability to re-invent herself.
What do you think? Are you bored of Lady Gaga, or is she still as relevant as ever?
TOTALLY BORED! The b**** can sang though and I will always appreciate that about her
Good riddance of BAD so-called talent!! For her it is all about the side-shows and desperately trying to be “weird” and freak people out. She is already so last century, last Tuesday!! Bieber needs to be flushed down the toilet!! WTF happened to music????
yeah i’m totally bored with LG – used to be a big fan and even bought tickets for her concert here in SA, but with her refusal to abstain from wearing fur and her ‘in your face’ lack of moral values and not being a good role model, i lost interest and sold my tickets to someone else. don’t think i’ll ever be a fan again
I saw her concert. It was amazing and so inspiring. I will follow her till I die……
Easy: yes, and she’s been forced to ‘take a holiday’ by her record company. By the way, according to Gaga, didn’t she have 50 songs ready for her new album? How come it’s become from a dance album ready to cone out to a jazz collaboration mext year? Shelved?