Is Lady Gaga really “Born this Way”? After a spectacular first week of sales, with almost 1.2 million copies of her CD and downloads sold, the second week shows a big fall off. “Born this Way” sold only 169,387 copies last week. That’s a drop of 85% from the first week. It’s important to remember that 440,000 of those first week sales were only for 99 cents. So the fall off is really less, I guess. But if we stick the official numbers, “Born this Way” is in swift decline.
Compare that to Adele, who “21” album was only off 4% last week. That album continues to sell and sell. One reason is that Adele’s album is strong all the way through. It’s unclear what kind of”legs” the Lady Gaga collection really has: so far it’s spawned just one real hit, the title track. The rest of the album is monotonous. Watching Anderson Cooper’s piece on “60 Minutes” this past Sunday didn’t help.
While Stefani Germanotta is confident and smart, she is also overbearing. The costumes. the pretense, the posing to be more Madonna than Madonna–it’s too much. Gaga believes more is more. This may play her out very quickly. She’s reinventing herself at the speed of ADD. Quite clearly, the songs don’t matter-it’s the statement, the look, the attitude. Her supporters argue that she sings and actually plays the piano and writes songs. But that’s getting lost. If sales drop again next week by huge numbers, Lady Gaga may have to lose the egg.
