The Fame

Big brash synth saturated disco pop - three anthemic mega hits but the rest really holds up well - it sounds colorful. Fun, hedonistic party music, it’s hyper-synthetic with a robo- Daft Punk style to the production. It’s very Eurovision for an American pop album. The raps that pop up every so often are awful though good lord. A bit too long.

This is very good at what it does, and the big hits from it are bangers. Not something I'd typically listen to, but I certainly appreciate the quality (and it should probably be on the original list).

Moderni klassikko tämäkin, ja voi kysyä, miksei ollut varsinaisella listalla. Nollarien pop olisi aika eri näköistä jos tätä ei olisi olemassa. 4/5 koska laatu heikkenee tokalla puoliskolla.

Huge first 4 tracks, then it falls of sharply. Listening back at this album the production isn't very good and sounds like it could've been made in the late 90's.

First 4 tracks: 4.5
Rest of the album: 2.5
Final rating: 3.5, but I'll bump it up to a 4 for it's impact on music and pop culture.

I have to admit that I've never listened to this before. My wife has, and she likes it a lot. I can see why, for a pure pop/pop-dance album, it's not bad. It's better than Madonna's later albums at least.

The middle to middle to end of the album dragged a bit. Cut this down to 40 minutes and it's a very good album.

Big nostalgia on this one. The first 4 tracks absolutely took over the world. The back half is much more of a mixed affair. Paper Gangster is another highlight. Brown Eyes is just an odd duck in this track listing. and Summerboy is even further afield. Discoheaven is so odd! God 2008 was just a fever dream.

Maybe it sounds dated with time and exposure, but there is little of this album that feels inspired or original. Paparazzi is still a great song though.

This album is ridiculously front-loaded. The first four tracks are pure pop muscle. “Paparazzi” still hits hard. “Poker Face” remains one of the most unkillable singles of the century. You can’t sit still through it. You can’t not sing along. And thinking that Gaga was only twenty-one when she made something this polished is wild. Those opening tracks are bangers, no two ways about it.
Then “Eh Eh” arrives and it kinda goes limp after that.
I do have a soft spot for Lady Gaga. Not just the performance art and the deliberate theatricality, but her whole public self: the acting, the warmth, the work she does through Born This Way. She’s a genuinely good human who happens to also be a real singer. That matters. But it doesn’t save the back 2/3 of The Fame.

You could make a killer 6-song EP out of this and lose nothing of value.

After the opening salvo, the album sinks into the forgettable. Some tracks are fine (“Money Honey”). Some are actively bad (“Starstruck” really is awful). And for someone who later built her identity on shapeshifting, this record weirdly sounds like the same idea over and over again. As individual songs, a lot of them still work. As a full album, it gets old fast. By the final few tracks I was fighting the urge to skip. The harsh autotune on “Starstruck” and “Paper Gangsta” really grates the ears.

Still, this is the foundation everything else was built on. You can hear the blueprint for the superstar she would become, even if she hadn’t figured out how to transcend club-pop yet. It’s nowhere near her best work, but its cultural impact is undeniable. A debut this iconic belongs on a list like 1001 Albums.

pure pop, pure rubbish, hard to believe she built such a huge career off the back of such a nothing debut. Auto-tune, Akon, terrible guest verses, and rubbish production. Probably deserves to make the list, for lasting impact alone, but not if I get to write it!

Goated fr fr 🔥

As an album experience this follows the same pattern as every other pop lady from 1995 onward, where it opens with all the songs that were such big radio hits I got completely sick of hearing them, and then the back half that didn't make the radio was never even a little bit worth your time.

As far as the singles go, I hated how inescapable the radio hits off of it were back when this came out, but then after getting a year's break from people playing them at me, I kind of came around on them. Poker face actually is pretty fun.

I couldn’t avoid this album during my
2nd year of uni, constantly played in every club/pub/party we went to.
So was big but not really music I care for now.