Lady Gaga’s ARTPOP has been reignited almost eight years after its release.
Little Monsters across Twitter launched a campaign to push LG’s highly avant-garde, third studio album up across iTunes charts around the world.
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However, the stans have an ulterior motive with their move to bring ARTPOP to the top again. As the hashtag #buyARTPOPoniTunes went viral on Twitter on April 13, Little Monsters around the globe have been sniffing around for an “Act II” or follow up to the original body of work.
The ARTPOP campaign allowed the album to hit number three in the U.S., just following Taylor Swift’s rereleased version of Fearless and DMX’s greatest hits record, The Best of DMX.
Mother Monster took to Twitter to respond to the powerful campaign and opened up about the pain that went into creating the sonic universe that lives within the confines of tracks like “Venus” and “G.U.Y.”
The global superstar shares, “The petition to #buyARTPOPoniTunes for a volume II has inspired such a tremendous warmth in my heart. Making this album was like heart surgery, I was desperate, in pain, and poured my heart into electronic music the slammed harder than any drug I could find.”
Gaga also acknowledged how the record was particularly advanced for the time and displayed intricacies that fans are clinging to today. “I fell apart after I released this album,” shared LG. She continues, “Thank you for celebrating something that once felt like destruction. We always believed it was ahead of its time. Years later turns out, sometimes artists know. And so do little monsters. Paws up.”
The campaign to drive ARTPOP to the top also comes just a week after DJ White Shadow, who was heavily involved in including features on ARTPOP, shared that he reached out to Lady Gaga about fans petitioning for a follow-up to the album. The petition currently holds about 39,000 signatures.
DJ White Shadow shared, “I never been so broken as a human being the day when that record was turned in. At times I felt finished with life. This is not an exaggeration.”
The follow-up to the initial record, ARTPOP ACT II was meant to reveal unheard songs from the project, but the second part of the album was never released publicly.
Additionally, the original version of ARTPOP contained a track titled “Do What U Want (With My Body),’ which featured R.Kelly.
After an onslaught of sexual abuse allegations and charges were made against Kelly, Gaga finally removed the song from the tracklist in 2019. At the time Gaga shared, “My intention was to create something extremely defiant and provocative because I was angry and still hadn’t processed the trauma that had occurred in my own life.”
“The song is called ‘Do What U Want (With My Body)’ and I think it’s clear how explicitly twisted my thinking was at the time. I intend to remove the song off iTunes and other streaming services and will not be working with him again.”
“I’m sorry, both for my poor judgment when I was young and for not speaking out sooner. I love you.”
WATCH MORE: Lady Gaga Writes Heartfelt Apology For Working with R.Kelly
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