Just in time for the holiday season, little monsters everywhere are getting the best present they can imagine: Lady Gaga's newest album, ARTPOP. Though the album was just released yesterday, Mother Monster (as her fans so fondly call her) and her team hooked listeners on the record months ago with the Aug. 12 release of its first single, "Applause." As with everything that Gaga does, the hype surrounding ARTPOP has been both impressive and overwhelming-and certainly does the pop gem justice.

The new release represents a bit of a departure from Gaga's usual darker and more psychologically resonant themes ranging from creation to bullying to self-ownership that she explored in her previous album Born This Way. Oddly enough, ARTPOP feels like a return to the sonic and thematic qualities of the artist's 2008 album, The Fame, and its more complex 2009 EP counterpart, The Fame Monster. With more superficial themes like beauty, sex and drugs explored on the new record, Gaga seems to be taking a well-deserved break from the gloomy introspection of her past record. 

ARTPOP begins with the echo-ridden, tropical-sounding "Aura," which was featured on the 2013 action film Machete Kills. The first third of the 15-track album continues on with "Venus," "G.U.Y." and "Sexxx Dreams"-an appropriate ordering, as all four songs consider female sexual dynamics and autonomy. In "Aura" Gaga deconstructs the image of the woman, imploring listeners with lyrics like "do you wanna see me naked, lover?" and "do you wanna see the girl who lives behind the aura, behind the curtain, behind the burqa?" Through electronic beats, techno-sounding harmonies and a continuous percussive bass line, "Aura" is best listened to with the volume all the way up, and is one of the most genuinely fun tracks on the album. 

The transition from "Aura" to "Venus" follows Gaga's thoughts from the external perception of the woman to a woman's self-perception. Sung through extremely filtered, almost robotic vocals, Gaga's repeated invocations of the goddess of love, Aphrodite, contrast beautifully with the emotionally earnest chorus, "when you touch me I die / Just a little inside / I wonder if this could be love." The song explodes into a sonic paradise of harmony, sung with a pleasant vibrato and resonance. "Venus" is a song of self-accounting for the bad girl in all of us. 

"G.U.Y." and "Sexxx Dreams" are, however, very different from all the other songs on the album-they talk boldly and unapologetically about sex and the roles of men and women in desire. When I first heard "G.U.Y.," I'll admit, I was an instant fan of the sparkly upbeat pop instrumental, but not of its lyrics. It took me a couple of listens through to convince myself that lyrics like "let me be the girl under you that makes you cry / I wanna be that guy (G.U.Y.) / The girl under you, guy" are sung ironically, and not in a matter that reaffirms the disappointing heteronormative stereotype of women being the weaker sex. "Sexxx Dreams" has been playing on repeat on my iTunes all day, however, because of how hilarious it is to hear Lady Gaga sing about an embarrassing recurrence of sex dreams she has involving someone who is off-limits to her. 

Although a slew of songs on the album are markedly more superficial than others, and certainly more so than her previous, more contemplative songs, I'm sure that the more philosophical Lady Gaga listeners will get over it once they hear tracks like "Swine." Another of my personal favorites, "Swine" is a no-holds-barred conversation between an individual and the negative voice in the back of his or her head. Somehow, through thick dance rhythms and chanting, almost confrontational vocals, Gaga reappropriates the idea of "acting like a pig," as a negative body criticism, and makes the song both party-friendly and hilarious. 

No matter what people say about Lady Gaga-that her new album is frivolous, that her music is departing from the piano ballads that brought her into the industry or that she's sold her soul to the pop machine-I'm still the biggest little monster I know. ARTPOP picks up where Born This Way left off as a declaration of braveness and shameless selfhood for Gaga fans everywhere.
*