After Little Monsters shot 2013’s Artpop album into the top 3 on the U.S. iTunes album chart this week amid calls for a sequel, Lady Gaga told them the love has warmed her heart.
“The petition to #buyARTPOPoniTunes for a volume II has inspired such a tremendous warmth in my heart,” she tweeted after fans helped push the singer’s notoriously ambitious third album back onto the charts with their hashtag effort.
“Making this album was like heart surgery, I was desperate, in pain, and poured my heart into electronic music that slammed harder than any drug I could find,” she added.
Artpop featured such beloved songs as “Applause” and “Sexxx Dreams,” as well as the T.I./Too Short/Twista collab “Jewels n’ Drugs” and the banger “Venus.”
To date, more than 41,000 fans have signed a change.org petition urging Interscope Records to release Artpop Act II. “The 2013 album ARTPOP by Lady Gaga was a smash among fans. It combined pop music and art to create something new and unheard. Now, 8 years later, fans are still clamoring for the next volume of her fourth studio album,” reads the petition.
The plea then cited a recent post from the album’s main producer, DJ White Shadow, in which he responded to a fan asking if we’d ever hear the mythical lost tracks from the sessions. “Gotta petition Gaga on that one” he responded about a possible 10th anniversary celebration of the album.
He wrote that he was “amazed how much you all still care about that era, and about some songs you have never heard. I can only say to you that I am humbled every day that I am able to share some of myself with you and for it to be loved in such a special way.” He then described the making of the album as difficult, comparing it to “going skydiving and you are stuck in a free fall for what seems like forever. Then, smashing into the ground after your parachute doesn’t open, and having to do it again and again and again. Then imagine a bunch of people just standing on the sidelines watching you, and stealing your wallet from your lifeless body every time you hit the ground.”
To be fair, he said, he was so broken by the process of recording the album — “nearly dead” if he’s being honest — that it took up until last year for him to undo the “trauma” of completing that phase of his life.
Gaga appeared to second that emotion about the EDM-leaning project that she poured all her creative faculties into that was perceived by some as a creative misstep. “I fell apart after I released this album,” she tweeted of the effort that debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 charts. “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.”
At the time of the original’s release, Gaga hinted in a tweet to a fan that Act II was already in the planning stages and Shadow has reportedly played some alleged instrumentals from the mythical sequel in concert as the opening act on Gaga’s 2017 Joanne World Tour.
He said he’s ready whenever Gaga is to unleash unspecified “extras,” while urging fans to be nice to her and understand that that was a trying time for her as well. “I am sure she will be ok with revisiting it one day and building on it when the time is right,” he wrote of songs such as the majestic “Tea,” which he has performed live, as well as others with titles rumored to be “Temple” and “Onion Girl.”
“I will continue to push for those songs you want so badly, that LG and I did, and I hope you will get to hear them,” he promised. “Don’t let them die.” Oh, and he said he texted Gaga about it.
Check out the tweets below.
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 that slammed harder than any drug I could find.
— Lady Gaga (@ladygaga) April 13, 2021
I fell apart after I released this album. 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 🙌❤️❤️❤️
— Lady Gaga (@ladygaga) April 13, 2021
NUMBER ONE HERE WE COME
— W/S (@DJWS) April 13, 2021
