Some crocodile tears to go with that meat dress

Ten Worst Songs of 2013 – 5. “Dope” by Lady Gaga

Published on December 3rd, 2013 | Jonny Abrams

As downright unseemly as it may seem to refer to a lady as a bell end, Lady Gaga – in at number 5 on our continuing list of the ten worst songs of 2013 – is well and truly a bell end.

Irretrievably so, in fact, and compounded by such critical lack of self-awareness that she went and titled her latest album ARTPOP, even though the only way it might conceivably constitute art is as one of those idly distasteful Turner Prize entries like some excrement on a canvass, or some such.

The most impressive thing about “Dope” is that it features the eminent meat-wearer actually playing a real life instrument, specifically a piano, and yet it still manages to be the most horrendous track on an album hewn primarily of tacky mainstream pop.

If you manage to make it through all the strangulated caterwauling then you’ll find yourself confronted with a motif, the heavy-emoting repetition of “I need you more than dope”, that appears to be any one of an impassioned plea, a gag or a cross between the two.

Any which way, you are likely to cringe your face clean off your head: if it’s an impassioned plea then it’s a flimsy, amateurishly expressed one, if it’s a gag then it’s hackneyed and not funny in the slightest…and if it’s a cross between the two then it’s got the worst of both worlds.

Simply put, it sounds like Phoebe Buffay without the oddball charm. Lady Gaga still doesn’t seem to realise or accept that her audience comprises largely of 12-year-olds, not many of whom are likely to be au fait with heroin.

What does she think she’s offering the world here? Another “Golden Brown”? Because it’s at the absolute opposite end of the spectrum in terms of subtlety, mystique, originality and melody. It’s piss-weak, right down to the fake crying during its performance in the video below.

Oh hang about, she’s not even singing about heroin: apparently she’s professed to being addicted to marijuana, in which case you’d think she might have some more interesting ideas.

We mean musically, before anyone pipes up about the meat dress. See, that’s what you have to do if you don’t have any interesting musical ideas whatsoever: wear a dress made of meat.

Bell end.

Artists: lady gaga

About the Author

Jonny Abrams Editor of Rocksucker and the website's founder, Jonny is passionate about the music he listens to, both good and bad, as well as interviewing his favourite musicians.