Lady Gaga needs her own thread

I think one of the things that most characterizes lady gaga for me is that there is a broadness and lack of subtlety to almost everything that exists as an outward manifestation of what she actually does, while at the same time the essence of who she is as a celebrity/artist and the effect her performances seem to have on the public is kind of mysterious. Her lyrics, music, dress, stage sets, videos are all taken to a cartoon level of childishness, yet like with madonna there seems to be a lot more going on beneath the somewhat crass surface. I don't think she is a bad influence on children, because I don't think they or anybody could possibly take her storylines literally, but she does make a strong case for it being ok to be weird/different, which has got to be a good thing. I like that she doesn't conform to standard notions of beauty and glamour.

I've noticed that the whole product placement aspect of the telephone video seems to bother people. The "appropriation without alteration" aspect of it is very interesting, though.

at least among the people I know (mostly very casual music listeners), she is seen as a somewhat refreshing change to the cookie-cutter pop/rnb princesses of the last several years.

she does seem to like the idea of poisoning people....

I find her refreshing just from the standpoint of seeing someone genuinely capable of singing their songs

"Live to Tell" is a thorn in that song's side, but that's srsly the only one I can think of, and most of that is bcz it is a movie soundtrack video (clips of Sean Penn walking &driving around in the woods looking like a mouthbreather).

Well the video was boring as hell, but for the fact she wept away all the crucifixes and bangles and jewelry - that whole Madonnamania look - for the sophisticated image in the video, makes it important, marking the first and most important "re-invention" of her career; which though risky moved her star trajectory into the stratosphere.

Gaga needs to take notes on that if she wants serious longevity.

btw guys the Telephone video is great and I'm totally baffled by the idea that it's not. I mean it's fucking funny! What more can one ask for?

if u sit on their ass and tell me u don't love any of madonna's two DECADES' worth of classics, ur just flat-out lying

you really think madonna made "classics" for more than just one full decade??????

Her career is pretty much unblemished from the standpoint of influence and commercial success from 1982 through 2002; it wasn't until American Life that people started giving her the stinkeye

I may be biased because I never sucked Ray Of Light's dick

does anyone seriously suck ROL's dick these days, anymore tho? - it's flaws have become really apparent with age. Still Erotica alone makes 90s Madonna classic and then there's This Used To Be My Playground, Secret, Take A Bow, I'll Remember, Beautiful Stranger on top + Don't Tell Me, Die Another Day and Hung Up from the 00s. All v. respectable in their own right, for a popstar past their first (unimpeachably classic) decade.

Erotica alone makes 90s Madonna classic

Shhhh... Geir may be watching.

but yeah just to follow up my previous post: it seems clearer and clearer to me that Gaga's shtick isn't liberation through shock (for despite the pastiche of Weimar decadence in "Bad Romance," it's "Disturbia" that most clearly borrows Manson's drapery) but liberation through unabashed goofiness. So if Beyonce is just at the world's-been-conquered stage in her career where she can just enjoy being goofy because who's going to stop her, Gaga's whole thing is the possibilities of eking out marginal identities and room for personal freedom within the interstices created by drag, costumery, big wigs, Warholery, and basically being the queerest thing on TV in the last decade.

Anyway it seems to strike a chord....can't remember if it was here or in 2009 Trax results thread where I was going on about this, but I think Gaga's appeal at street level has very little to do with anybody thinking her 'art' is particularly sophisticated, but a lot to do with people admiring and envying the amount of FUN she seems to get away with having. It's a different kind of liberationary politics than a lot of people may be ready to get down with, and I'm open to the idea that it's also kind of vacuous and lacking in content or complexity, but I basically appreciate what she's doing.

i think that's what saves her visual shtick, that ballsy goofiness.

she does make u laugh.

dont really care bc i kinda hate michel gondry videos tho

think Doctor Casino is otm here. I'm not really as interested in what lady gaga is doing as much as I am interested in why she's blowing up/pumping out #1s/is some on some world level event status right now.

Listening to So Happy I Could Die at least twice a day now :/

Lady Garbaggio

listening to Speechless in the office let me appreciate it more. my coworkers are surprised and pleased to hear it's Gaga. what saves it is her enjoyment in singing it, and the Billy Joel sort of slant to the more obvious Queen angle.

This is from the Nicki Minaj thread but I figured I'd shift it over here where it's more on-topic --

tbh minaj has never worn, said or done anything that struck me as obviously gaga-esque or gaga inspired

― ronnie james dyao (some dude), Wednesday, March 24, 2010 3:29 AM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

most of it still feels totally wayne-derived or out of the missy/left eye/da brat wacky female rapper playbook

― ronnie james dyao (some dude), Wednesday, March 24, 2010 3:30 AM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

the rigid fembot thing reminds me a lot of how gaga poses/acts on stage

― J0rdan S., Wednesday, March 24, 2010 3:33 AM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

when has gaga actually done rigid fembot moves, i can't think of any examples. that seems more the province of beyonce imo.

― ronnie james dyao (some dude), Wednesday, March 24, 2010 3:36 AM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

maybe i'm being poisoned by proximity

― J0rdan S., Wednesday, March 24, 2010 3:39 AM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

also all the valley girl voices and harajuku girl stuff are clearly gwen stefani, who's really patient zero for a lot of the goofy female star stuff going on in pop the last few years

xpost

― ronnie james dyao (some dude), Wednesday, March 24, 2010 3:40 AM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

when gaga's on the charts
boy you gon think
you gon think she invented quirk

― ronnie james dyao (some dude), Wednesday, March 24, 2010 3:55 AM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

it's a gagafication, clap, clap bravo

― J0rdan S., Wednesday, March 24, 2010 4:02 AM Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Actually it raises the question, to what extent has Gaga been influenced by the aforementioned high-profile female rappers of the 90s/00s? Like it seems a pretty reasonable thing to interrogate, esp. re Lil' Kim and Missy, but I haven't run across anyone writing about that. Are people just more comfortable linking her up to Peaches or whatever indie electro type person, or has Gaga herself emphasized other lines of influence? (Or, I guess, is the connection all in my head?)

― Doctor Casino, Wednesday, March 24, 2010 8:14 AM Bookmark

i could be wrong, but gaga strikes me as such a pop/theater nerd that she probably never thought much about hip hop or incorporating it into her music until akon signed her -- the wacky 90s videos in mind when she makes her wacky videos are probably bjork, not missy

like i feel like she's in the same situation coldplay was in a few years ago -- rappers love her and she's just rolling with it, more than the admiration being totally mutual

Assuming she's that much of a theater nerd, I'd assume equal measures of both.

lady gaga doesn't care about black people

in speechless, her voice seems to be borrowing something from the likes of christina aguilera, combined with an old-timey male vocal effect. every note is huge. the song altogether sounds like splashes of enormity.

kinda expected i'd catch more shit for praising redone to the skies upthread. listening to how poor his track on the new usher is - as mostly all his outside work is - i almost want to suspect he does it deliberately just to create the drab landscape he tears up with gaga.

he'd produced some good trax here and there pre-gaga (kat deluna's "whine up" and "run the show", christina milian's "l.o.v.e.") but i guess circa gaga's emergence realised that the overdone electropinkpound formula was proving rather successful, so just went full-bore on it. (and i blame him for the sundry copyists, too.) haven't heard the usher track but gaga obviously forces redone to up his game - specifically the way the sound of the fame became so ubiquitous probably made them realise that he couldn't get away with repeating his usual formula. the synth madness on "bad romance", esp the shit going on under her first round of rah-rah-ah-ah-ahs, is still astonishingly good.

still have to mount a defense of "speechless" at some point...

Her career is pretty much unblemished from the standpoint of influence and commercial success from 1982 through 2002; it wasn't until American Life that people started giving her the stinkeye

In Europe, "Ray Of Light" was considered a return to form after two way below-par albums. I know they fared slightly better in the US, but she was largely written off here by the mid 90s.

1992 Erotica

* Released: October 20, 1992
* Label: Maverick, Sire, Warner Bros.

US: 2
Australia: 1
Austria: 5
Canada: 1
France: 10
Germany: 5
Italy: 3
Switzerland: 4
UK 2

* World: 5,000,000
* US: 1,890,000
* US: 2× Platinum
* CAN: 2× Platinum
* AUS: 3× Platinum
* UK: 2× Platinum

1994 Bedtime Stories

* Released: October 25, 1994
* Label: Maverick, Sire, Warner Bros.

US: 3
Australia: 1
Austria: 7
Canada: 2
France: 7
Germany: 4
Italy: 7
Switzerland: 4
UK: 2

* World: 8,000,000
* US: 2,309,000
* US: 3× Platinum
* EU: 2× Platinum
* CAN: 2× Platinum
* UK: Platinum

I can see how going multiplatunum and being top-ten albums across several different European countries could be seen as a sign of her being written off.

and like, the editing with all the food? i mean . . . why are we focusing on nasty scramble plates covered in syrup in a song about HER CELL PHONE

― big (surm), Tuesday, 16 March 2010 13:42 (2 weeks ago) Permalink

because she is poisoning people for calling her while she's trying to dance

― smoking cigarette shades? it doesn't even make any sense. (HI DERE), Tuesday, 16 March 2010 13:44 (2 weeks ago) Permalink

this response still cracking me up

^_^

and i know that it's complicated
but i'm a loser in love, so baby
raise a glass to mend all the broken hearts
of all my wrecked up friends

the pure ridiculousness and vocal power behind the line "i don't wanna be friends" in Bad Romance is fucking great

tonight i'm not takin no calls cuz i'll be dancin. i'll be dancin

the backing vocals in telelphone are something else: disturbed, big but compressed, luscious like a sea

and props to beyonce for her vocal solo

said this in my jukebox review but "telephone" strikes such a chord b/c it's obv not just about escaping yr boyfriend's hassling - it's about escaping these constant, intrusive lines of communication, blackberrys* buzzing and phones ringing, all these demands on your attention which, as wonderful as they are, completely do your head in at times. it rings true because the majority of clubs i've been in seem to have no/limited reception so the club as a place of escape from all of that is something i recognise.

*it's pluralised like this, right? as is proper noun

Well, also, going to the club has always had an "escape" function in pop, that resonates with people, so you tie that in with the specific escape from jealous bothersome nagging boyfriend (which is something people go to the club for, especially with their girlfriends - - - hence why this song has to be a duet with SOMEBODY to really work), and with the escape from texts/Facebook/etc., and "just dance."

Always as in since 2001?

uh what? u think club dancin pop songs started in 2001?

Lazy zing; I take that back

my thought was that the specific 'in da club' conceit is fairly new to urban pop, which is retarded, though I do think it's become lazy pop shorthand like rhyming 'crazy' and 'baby'

the club's functioned as a place of escape (and liberation, self-discovery etc) in pop for 30+ years now!

and yeah i agree that gaga's tapping into that deliberately, but tying it to a very specifically 2010 thing that people want to escape from is what lends it that extra frisson of recognition

Yeah! It's a nice, neat maneuver I think.

I like Lady Gaga a lot, but there's no way I'm going to pay $60 to see her at the fuckin' Xcel Energy Center in St. Paul, Minnesota. Sorry, Stephanie.

$60 for what exactly?

also btw this is maybe kinda obvious but the whole jailbreak, Thelma and Louise story of the video is the perfect blown-up, giant-size version of your best pal calling up and saying "leave that loser at home, let's go dance our troubles away."

Also, also, that little skip-step sashay thing that Gaga does just as she's being let out of prison is basically the funniest thing she's ever done, kills me every time.

omg YES

saw a pair of tickets advertised at face value on a toronto message board; $350 or somesuch. And the loonie is almost at par with the US dollar lately. Feel better? :P

$60 for a ticket for a seat in the farthest reaches of the monstrous Xcel Energy Center. Pff, no way.

fuck that