The wait is almost over, Little Monsters! Lady Gaga’s latest album, ARTPOP, is sure to be more inventive and avant garde than ever, judging from today’s release of the cover art for the album’s first single, “Applause.”
The “Applause” single cover art, shot by Inez van Lamsweerde and Vinoodh Matadin, is evocative and emotional, intended to display the artist’s vulnerability. Gaga’s face, covered with white makeup and smeared with streaks of blue, yellow, and red paint, fills the frame against a dark headwrap and white sheets.
“When I look at it I see that there is a longing for the applause,” Gaga told Women’s Wear Daily in an interview. “I see that there is a void that is leaking onstage, that the performer is leaking, that the art is sort of becoming something else in front of your eyes. Something more human, something more honest.”
The image is a shot from the “Applause” music video, which was shot by Van Lamsweerde and Matadin about a week ago in Los Angeles. The single will drop on August 19, marking the end of Gaga’s six-month musical hiatus after she was forced to cancel her Born This Way Ball world tour in February due to a severe hip injury.
All of you Gaga fans can certainly expect an extravaganza in the coming album, as she has split the last six months between hip rehabilitation and work on ARTPOP, which will come out on November 11. “I had six months to beef up my brain and my body. I got to put a giant white or black sheet of paint over my whole canvas and I got to review ARTPOP again. I was given the time to really be creative because it’s a gazing process, it really is. I have to gaze into the work for long periods of time for it to be good,” Gaga told Women’s Wear Daily.
The cover art for “Applause” seems to hint at an equally experimental tone for the album as a whole. In fact, ARTPOP has been marketed not as an album, but as a “project” that will include an “artRave” exhibit of Gaga’s collaborations with other artists, and the release of an app designed by TechHAUS that “combines music, art, fashion, and technology with a new interactive worldwide community,” according to the statement on Gaga’s website.