Lady Gaga needs her own thread

Wow. Didn't know she had a Speechless in her. It's very Beatlesesque perhaps? Maybe just the guitar solo. But epic balladry and so forth are a good look for her.

Teeth is a great little vamp that has a sort of...20s jazz and/or rockabilly air to it. So Happy etc. needs more time to ruminate.

― wrapped up, packed up, ribbon with a donk on it (Alex in Montreal), Monday, November 16, 2009 5:59 AM (3 weeks ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

right. Teeth is fucking awesome.

Still prefer the electropop numbers. When she tries sounding like Queen, she ends up sounding closer to Mika instead. The electropop ones are all ace though.

Teeth is neither, really

saw some interview with her last night. it's like, i'm cool with the ideas behind her "art" -- but she needs to stop using the word "art" so much and dropping references to warhol and shit. it's like, she does have really good ideas, but she markets herself as such a cliche

yeah she needs to make "show don't tell" her mantra

gaagaaolaala-a

worst uhhh...."thing" ever to happen to music

goodnight

The only hit from 2009 I can think of that is obviously influenced by Lady Gaga is is "Evacuate The Dancefloor" by Cascada

heard this song every day when i was home over thanksgiving, god this is a piece of shit

i was thinking of that alexandra burke song maybe?

fucking HELL the synth madness going on under the first round of ra-ma-la-las on "bad romance"

basically playing "paparazzi", "bad romance", "telephone" and "teeth" incessantly now :/

I DON'T WANNA BE FREEEENCH

"he needs to stop using the word "art" so much and dropping references to warhol and shit."

Her interviews are the sole reason that it took me about six months to come around to her records. She reminded me of Placebo's Brian Molko acting if he was the first person in the world to have read Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. "Yeah, there's this guy Andy Warhol. You won't have heard of him. He said this really interesting thing about celebrity…" (not a verbatim quote btw)

^^^THIS.

Would that I had been blissfully unaware, I could have enjoyed the music 10x more.

it's like, part of the reason why pop music is so fun is that the artistry in it doesn't have to be so serious. it can be, and should be taken as such at times, but to brand genuinely fun work with a label as generic as "art" or "warhol" seems dumb

to brand genuinely fun work with a label as generic as "art" or "warhol" seems dumb

Or ... smart? I'm curious where she goes with all this. Frankly, the thing that bugs me the most about huge pop stars like Madonna or Beyonce or Rihanna or Mariah or whomever is their total inability - or refusal - to wrestle with the precepts of postmodernism. When any of them do try, it just seems so ... managed. Or mannered. Or maybe in the case of Gaga, dumb. Don't know if she'll do it, but if Gaga ultimately delivers on her nascent subversion (dormroom variety or no), I'd be very happy, because I can't think of the last pop star (US pop star, at least) that pulled that off and had so much apparent fun in the process.

i guess there's a happy medium. she just seems so pleased with herself.

who the fuck wants postmodernism from their pop stars?

in theory i kinda do but in practice i want it to happen by accident

maybe I missed her earlier, annoying interviews, but big interviews namechecking Cindy Sherman and coming out with lines like this actually make me feel better about being such a sucker for "Bad Romance"

"Celebrity life and media culture are probably the most overbearing pop-cultural conditions that we as young people have to deal with, because it forces us to judge ourselves," she said. "I guess what I am trying to do is take the monster and turn the monster into a fairy tale."

"If you're on an island, stranded, and all you have is sticks and leaves and pineapples, you're gonna make a boat out of sticks and leaves and pineapples," she said. "I view glamour and celebrity life and these plastic assumptions as the pineapples. And I spend my career harvesting pineapples, and making pies and outfits and lipsticks that will free my fans from their stranded islands."

i'd probably make pina coladas and chill first but each to his own

or this (this story, great example of an interview trying to come off knowing and snide and just utterly humiliating themselves)

Gaga insists on explaining the concept of her show, which is on the wildly original theme of evolution... So far so predictable, but then she goes on: “My evolution is from the beginning of time, so I start as a cell [she shows me a costume like a geodesic dome], and then I become a vertebrate, and then I become a full animal, and there’s the birth of the economy, and trade and war, and then it’s the Apocalypse. Because we as a society are taught politically and religiously that the Apocalypse is coming, it’s on its way. But what I’m saying with my show is, ‘We’re there right now: this is the Apocalypse.’ The fact that we’re surrounded by cement and we’ve already killed everything means the Apocalypse has happened.

"So the idea for me is to give a sense of repose and solace to my fans, that we’re here, we did it already, and now it’s about accepting where we are and looking more joyfully into the future."

i kind of like those ideas. i like the idea that she's taking ugly things and making them beautiful, to be honest. and it helps the case that she's kind of ugly, herself. but i guess she is repping for a kind of uber-creativity, when it comes to human error and potential. that's pretty cool.

i have never read any interviews w/ her and i think both of those quoted passages are wonderful. brilliant, fun and subversive and a very good way - an inspirational, forward-thinking & creatively engaged way. and that's exactly what i got from her songs and videos without reading the interviews anyway, so i think she does do the "show don't tell" thing pretty well.

i like the idea that she's taking ugly things and making them beautiful, to be honest. and it helps the case that she's kind of ugly, herself. but i guess she is repping for a kind of uber-creativity, when it comes to human error and potential. that's pretty cool.

― Do you love me now? (surm), Thursday, December 17, 2009 5:22 PM (26 minutes ago) Bookmark

this is what i love most about her, and why i mentioned marilyn manson upthread.

OK, so I've got a chance to see the traveling performance art installation that's called Lady Gaga at the Nokia Theater tonight. Will report back on Illuminati agents, theosophical rituals, and orbiting mind control lasers.

I'm kind of over Gaga talking about 'art' and am now more annoyed with the lip service she pays to her fans. MTV asked her who her favorite artist of the year was and she said "my fans," come the fuck on.

an early xmas gift: fred phelps has discovered lady gaga!

http://jezebel.com/5433133/reverend-fred-phelps-god-hates-lady-gaga

"THOU HADST A WHORE'S FOREHEAD"

She does do the fan service thing a lot, but it hasn't started to grate on me yet. It's kind of cute. She's playing up the "I am like you" card, which seems well-intentioned if slightly manipulative.

Crazy but highly entertaining symbolic exegesis of 'Bad Romance' video.

i always wonder who these videos harm if all the bad stuff is hidden, answer me that crazy christian watchdogs

She does do the fan service thing a lot, but it hasn't started to grate on me yet. It's kind of cute. She's playing up the "I am like you" card, which seems well-intentioned if slightly manipulative.

― Do you love me now? (surm), Wednesday, December 23, 2009 4:11 PM (5 hours ago)

it's just played, it'd be nice if she'd just answer the damn question

:( damn i'm really loving the fame monster, that throaty scream at the end of "speechless" is really something, reminds me of like, courtney love or something

ok phew "dance in the dark" and "telephone" both kinda suck but the first three tracks are pretty awesome

*four

"MONSTER" is still kicking my ass

i had it on at a party the other night, and it sounded so fresh, cutting and inspired.

Wasn't recruited by Illuminati, but the show was tremendously great

"speechless" is beautiful, fuck

teeth has been kinda in my head

"speechless" is beautiful, fuck

^^^my process of appreciation of the fame monster. "speechless is a pretty decent george harrison guitar rip, isn't it --> wow, speechless is really something --> speechless is stuck in my head. always."

The exegesis blog post is amazing. Makes you wonder if Matthew Barney + Bjork = Gaga, but the dates don't quite work.

"If you're on an island, stranded, and all you have is sticks and leaves and pineapples, you're gonna make a boat out of sticks and leaves and pineapples," she said. "I view glamour and celebrity life and these plastic assumptions as the pineapples. And I spend my career harvesting pineapples, and making pies and outfits and lipsticks that will free my fans from their stranded islands."

This is really the heart of the appeal of Gaga for me, aside from the songs being great - - I recognize this thing she's doing, taking all the hugeness of celebrity glamour/pantomime as a toybox that's open to everybody, including big-nosed weirdos who presumably spent their teenage years listening to "Radio Ga Ga" and/or "Lady Stardust" as discussed upthread. This is why the "my fans are my favorite artist" thing works for me - it would undermine the whole fucking point of the show if it weren't a mirror pointed back at the fans encouraging them to fashion their own celebrity out of whole cloth and/or pineapples.

Whether that's a viable dream or not, it makes sense to me. An acquaintance of mine has been doing these choreographed zombie/glitter dress-up shows for ages on a $20 budget with a bunch of keyboards and bearded weirdos. I'm sure you all have come into contact with similar things. Now there might be pitfalls there and the strength of the music as music is going to vary from performer to performer, but the idea that freaks and oddballs who never fit in can by force of will re-create the unobtainable fantasy world they've been fed since birth is groovy. IMO. Of course all this might be just me retreading Camp 101, I dunno, but I think it's neat.

I guess what I'm sort of getting at is that somehow Gaga represents a DIY spirit, applied to pop music, even though nothing about her entire aesthetic is DIY in the slightest - not the music, certainly not the production values (although there is some idea about all the costumes etc. coming out of a stable of her close friends or something)... more that the attitude/posture/relationship to pop is that of an outsider making the scene they want out of what's available to them. If that makes any sense.

(final addendum, all of the above is written from the perspective of a big-nosed weirdo who spent his teenage years listening to Smashing Pumpkins and Billy Joel and would very much like to be famous and surrounded by sexy people in glittered rubber costumes. so i'm a bit biased.)

yeah "speechless" is as much a billy joel bite as anything, at least melodically

Anyone else notice "Bad Romance" nods to/cops from ELO's "Don't Bring Me Down?"

well now i do

i have a half-baked theory going on that gaga's early bog-standard generic stuff was a trojan horse for what she really wanted to foist on the world, and "speechless" and "teeth" bear this out rather

Of course, that's sort of how Eminem started out, too, and for all the subsequent highs, we all know how that turned out.

Eminem started out with bog-standard stuff?

http://www.crossphazer.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/eminem_infinite_cover.jpg

well ok, but that wasn't exactly his public first impression. that's pretty much equivalent to gaga's bar band gigs upthread