The Fame Monster by Lady Gaga

The Fame Monster, released in November 2009, started life as a deluxe reissue of Lady Gaga's debut, The Fame, until the eight new songs got their own standalone release in some territories. Gaga argued the two records were conceptually different, yin and yang, and she was right: this is the dark side of the disco ball.

The subject is the ugly underbelly of fame, filtered through a monster metaphor, and the sound is electropop dressed in black: disco strut, glam rock swagger, '70s and '80s synth-pop, industrial and gothic shadows, all built for the runway. Hedi Slimane shot the two covers. "Bad Romance" was the lead single and a global monster in its own right, a No. 1 in more than twenty countries that stalled at No. 2 on the Hot 100, with "Telephone" and "Alejandro" right behind it. It went five times platinum in the US, won three Grammys including Best Pop Vocal Album, and launched the Monster Ball Tour.

Written with AI assistance from RockLists chart data, MusicBrainz and Wikipedia.