She's (very) commercially successful -- her revenues have surely long since eclipsed the entire D&B economy totalled over time.
Among commercially-successful acts, her product happens to be a lot more richly constructed than the competition. But the Mac isn't loved for it's BSD kernel -- it's the complete package. Gaga's success should be instructive to anyone hoping to make a splash in any industry.
I find her visual image and brand are very well executed and interesting. However, the quality of her music is just not up to snuff. If you compare her tracks to those of other contemporary pop producers such as The-Dream, Xenomania, and Richard-X, you will find that there really is much room for improvement.
That being said, I am almost certain that GaGa will get her act together and start collaborating with better producers and she will become one of the true great pop artists of our time
It's like, hmmm. Imagine you have a bag of Starburst™ brand fruit chews. You eat one, it's an orange. You eat the next, it's an orange. You go through an entire bag of orange fruit chews when suddenly -- out of the blue -- you encounter a strawberry-flavored chew. And you start raving about how the strawberry is more subtle, more nuanced, more rife with unexplored avenues of flavor than the bag of oranges you've just consumed.
No. It's just superficially different. It's still ground-up pig toes, HFCS, and artificial flavorings and colorings.
Depends on your definition of popular.