Gaga Farming

My obsession with Zynga’s FarmVille has finally amounted to something undeniably worthwhile and wonderful, in that Lady Gaga and FarmVille have joined together for the best promotion ever. The awesome GagaVille promotion allows us farmers to listen to the whole Born this Way album three days early.

I absolutely love this album, and I think it’s the only thing I’ve been listening to for the past couple of days. About half the album made my brain rejoice immediately, and the songs that I didn’t instantly love grew on me very quickly. The songs range from good to amazing.

GagaVille itself is pretty awesome too; with all the cool crystals, unicorns, and electric roses, my Gaga-fied farm has become quite shiny, and the GagaVille farm is the most bizarrely beautiful farm ever. This promotion makes me wonder if Gaga farms too, and I bet she does! That makes me love her even more! It’s nice when two obsessions join together to form one ginormous sparkly obsession.

UPDATE: May 23, 2011

Now that this magnificent album has officially been released, I have discovered that what was streaming in GagaVille was not the whole album (that is if I’m remembering the stream correctly, which I might not be). Anyway, now that I have the complete album via my GagaVille game card (which also came with remixes of “Born This Way” and “Judas”), and now that I have the tracks rather than a trackless stream, I can tell you which specific songs are amazing, in my opinion. Yes, I realize I could have easily found the track listing and done this before, but I didn’t so stop complaining.

Before I get to that, I feel that I should address the “Express Yourself” similarity of “Born this Way,” since it was just brought back to my attention by Weird Al Yankovic’s wonderful and funny parody, “Perform This Way.” I have noticed that at least one other song on Gaga’s album also sounds reminiscent of Madonna’s “Express Yourself,” and I think that elucidates the probable intentionality of Gaga’s invoking of that song. A large part of Gaga’s message is to be yourself, to show the world who you are, and thus, to express yourself. Gaga was very obviously influenced by Madonna, and I had assumed that was the extent of the “Express Yourself” similarity, but hearing Weird Al’s allusion in the context of his parody somehow crystallized for me that the similarity is likely not accidental. I heart Weird Al, and I heart Gaga.

Getting back to my thoughts regarding the Born this Way album, the following songs are amazing, and I think they are the same ones that my brain loved instantly. I will parenthetically refer to track numbers on the regular edition (the special edition comes with three additional songs and some remixes):

“Marry the Night” (Track 1)

“Government Hooker” (Track 3)

“Judas” (Track 4)

“Americano” (Track 5)

“Hair” (Track 6)

“SheiBe” (Track 7)

“Bloody Mary” (Track 8)

“Highway Unicorn (Road to Love)” (Track 10)

“The Edge of Glory” (Track 14)

That leaves the other songs that I either instantly thought were really good, or that grew on me to become really good. These opinions obviously refer to how I feel now, and that could obviously change in the future; as I listen to these songs ten billion more times, they might grow on me more to become amazing (or I might get sick of them). Nothing on the album sucks, or is even less than really good. That said, these are the just-very-good-right-now songs, in my arrogant opinion (just kidding, it’s humble):

“Born this Way” (Track 2)

“Bad Kids (Track 9)

“Heavy Metal Lover” (Track 11)

“Electric Chapel” (Track 12)

“You and I” (Track 13)

The three additional songs on the special edition version seem to fall under the “just really good and not yet amazing” category, which might be why they are not on the regular edition.

“Black Jesus + Amen Fashion” (Track 9 on Special Edition)

“Fashion of his Love” (Track 11 on Special Edition)

“The Queen” (Track 15 on Special Edition)

I heart Gaga.