The duo’s wild-eyed genre mishmash covers chiptuned pop-punk, chintzy trance synths, and the closely mic’d intimacy of indie pop—sometimes all in the same song.
Where GaGa excels, and why she crossed over, is how she doesn’t leave all this as a collection of hooks and rhythms, she shapes them into full-blown pop songs, taking the time to let the album breathe with chillout ballads and percolating new wave.
For once, Gaga’s quotidian performance-art stunts can be heard in the sound of her music: ARTPOP brims with blindingly vivid, jubilantly executed, idiosyncratic pop.