There is no doubt in denying that Lady Gaga knows what hooks her fans in, so when it came time for her to promote her newest album, she pulled out all the stops.

As a reward for her shameless self-promotion, her newest album, Born This Way, had the highest ranking first week album sales in the past six years: 1.11 million copies of her new album were sold in its first week of distribution.

“Whenever an album sells so much in one week, people ask if it’s an indication of something broader,” said Keith Caulfield, Billboard‘s associate director of charts/retail. “She is a true pop superstar, ostensibly the biggest in the past three years. Every single is a hit. Every video is a water-cooler moment. All eyes are on Gaga.”

Lady Gaga is the first person to reach the million mark since Taylor Swift, who sold a million copies of her newest album Speak Now in its first week of distribution in November 2010. She is the only person to have actually sold over a million copies since 2005, when 50 Cent’s The Massacre sold 1.14 million.

Whether it was arriving to an awards show in an egg, dancing around in a latex outfit, having a threesome with Justin Timberlake and Andy Samburg in a Saturday Night Live short or going on morning and late-night talk shows, she was able to gain an astounding amount of publicity. Google Chrome even featured an ad that was all about the Mother Monster.

It probably didn’t hurt that she sold the whole album on Amazon for 99 cents, either. Amazon frequently offers deals on new and hit albums by selling them for $2.99. An average album costs between eight and 12 dollars on the website. There was such a response to the sale that the Amazon servers slowed.

“We saw extraordinary response — far above what we expected,” says Amazon spokeswoman Cat Griffin. “We’ve never seen this much interest in one album in such a short period.”

Ean Mering of Pomegranate, a digital media network agency, said a low-price strategy could have future benefits.

“This pricing approach will prove to be a great case study,” said Mering. “This is good move that could open up Gaga to audiences who would not previously have purchased a $7.99 record.”

“Amazon’s promotion was a great way to catch people who might have turned to other means (like cloud systems or illegal downloads) to listen to the new album,” said Alicia Dennis, music editor for interactive pop-culture magazine Zimbio.com.

Dennis, however, thinks this is just “an anomaly” and could not be easily reproduced by other artists in the music industry.

“This kind of promotion could definitely boost sales for other artists, but they’d have to have Lady Gaga’s hype working for them as well, and no one does hype like Lady Gaga.”

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When we first met Lady Gaga as her first single “Poker Face” was dropping, we were introduced to a cute blonde who was comparing flirting and encounters with men to poker. We saw as she danced her butt of through elaborately choreographed routines, and from right off the bat, we could tell that she had her own way of doing things. Since 2008, she has become a fashion icon (in her own right) as well as an inspiration to many people. She has an enviable amount of self-confidence, and she used this for her inspiration for her latest album “Born This Way.”

The Mother Monster stayed true to herself for her third studio album. The album has electric dance beats with a little added rock that would fit in at any dance club and, once again, with songs like “Judas,” has people flipping out over her shock value (see the video if you’re sure who Judas is, but definitely hold onto your hat.)

Something new this album provides is a more direct line between Gaga and her fans. With songs like “Born This Way,” “Hair” and “Edge of Glory,” we can hear her screaming out to the world that everyone is great and we need to love ourselves. This is a beautiful thing.

To me, it feels like we rarely hear artists singing about their experiences with wanting to fit into the crowd in song-form. A lot of stuff that is coming from the music industry is just about drinking and partying. In a single song, she calls out at least six different races, the LGBTQ community and even the disabled, telling them not to be ashamed or feel bad. They were born this way, and, according to Gaga, “God makes no mistakes.”

Another topic featured on the album is the hot topic debate over homosexual marriage. In the song “Americano,” Gaga describes falling in love with a girl but not being able to marry her except for on the west coast on a Wednesday. Lady Gaga has been extremely outspoken regarding her support of the Gay Community, and it shows her dedication to the cause and that she isn’t some celebrity who’s trying to join a cause because it’s fashionable. We also get to see another side of Gaga as well, because this song is infused with Spanish influence, and Gaga herself sings in Spanish (she also sings in German in the song “Scheiße” if you’d prefer that.)

The only thing I didn’t like about this album was that it sounds essentially like something you would expect from an early Madonna. When the song “Born This Way” first came out, a lot of people criticized it saying it was a rip off version of Madonna’s “Express Yourself” (even though people seem to forget that song was a knock off of The Staples Sisters’ song “Respect Yourself.”) In a way, this factor takes away from the album. The first time I listened to it, I just sat and compared it the whole time. I think this could be a potential turn off for a lot of people.

All in all, “Born This Way” is an empowering album. It has classic love songs (such as “Fashion of His Love”) on it, while it digs down into deeper topics such as religion, politics and self image. Gaga has done a good job of trying to make her albums sound different from one another, and this album is successful at doing that. If you can’t get over the Madonna thing, Madonna has already given her approval to Lady Gaga on the album. The Queen of Pop has spoken.

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