Lady Gaga: Relentless fame chaser; pop-star persona immaculately manufactured by music moguls and PR powerhouses; passionate and intelligent devotee to David Bowie and Andy Warhol - the millennial child of all those energetic performers like Tina Turner and Madonna before her; highly vocal and guileless spokesman of the outcasts, the ostracized, the bullied, the ugly, the gay, the 'different'; successful social media star (Twitter); fashion icon.
She wears many masks, but maybe she's the sum of all those masks. And in the intriguing intellectual duet with Stephen Fry, both of them agree on that sentiment. I see no reason why I should disagree; there is a certain amount of validity to that statement.
As much as I cringe when her dance pop songs come on to fry and sizzle the radio speakers, she's every bit a cultural enigma and can hold her own intellectually in an interview unlike someone like Britney Spears or Selena Gomez, one might imagine. Before she dropped out from the NYU Tisch School of Arts, she wrote theses on Damien Hirst and Spencer Tunick (photographer specializing in nude installations). In the Stephen Fry interview, she refers to her music as "my work" and boldly declares her "performance art" to be Brechtian in theatre philosophy. Wait, Brecht what?
This sudden outburst of theatre academia from the constantly lipsticked mouth that spouts self-glorifying and insipid lyrics such as "Gaga, ooh la la" and "I like you a lot, lot, I think you're hot, hot" can only lead to TWO conclusions about her:
1) She apparently perceives her "work" differently from the masses.
Blonde ambition and dedication to accumulating fame, rebellious Italian-American Catholic school girl, provocative sexuality, viscerally shocking performance presentation, controversial depictions of Catholic beliefs and icons - now, where have we seen that before?
Right. A certain pop singer with an equally meteoric rise in the music industry on roughly the same premises. But this happened about one or two decades ago. Madonna made no bones about it though - she was a pop star, through and through. Her stylist and jewelry designer created Madonna's look - bleached hair, crucifix jewelry, raunchy fishnet stockings, lace tops and skirts over capri pants. She posed for nude photographs for Penthouse and Playboy magazines because she needed the money - an action which she later regretted deeply. For all her fame-mongering, one can almost say that Madonna admitted it openly. Unlike her recent millennial incarnation who is a warped mash-up of David Bowie, Prince, Cher, Madonna, etc. masquerading as ingenuous high-heels-in-gym reality, Madonna knows she's an entertainer. She doesn't call her music and catchy pop songs "performance art".
Performance art is the kabuki theater. It's the Ballet Russes. It's Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. It's definitely not about gyrating your butt in latex to songs about clubbing and dancing and superficial relationships with boys. And let's call her out on it. Lady Gaga's music is frankly, quite terrible. The dance anthems are infectiously catchy car tunes that dispel the last vestiges of sleep from your head during the morning rush. They invade departmental stores and trendy cafes and sleazy dance clubs in equal measure. But three weeks or three months later, another pop song from another pop singer takes over. It's called pop music for a reason - popularity is arbitrary and fleeting in this cruel industry that is fueled by heavy-handed PR and music record Goliaths who push out the songs onto the radio waves. And despite Gaga asserting that she bares her naked soul for her records, her songs are flat, emotionless and robotic. Any lack of soulfulness in her inflections or heartrending poetry in her lyrics is quickly glossed over with the veneer of electro-synth beats and costumes made out of bubbles. And what is great art without great emotion bleeding out from every corner?
The most frustrating part of it all is that Lady Gaga actually has some talent, and can sing better than Madonna.
2) She's actually smart and talented.
Before she became Gaga, she was just plain old Stefani. Stefani was a bright-eyed, intelligent teenager who was quite skimpily dressed in her awareness of her sex appeal. After she dropped out from the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, she started a band and was singing Fiona Apple-like ballads when Rob Fusari discovered her in a night club on songwriters' night. As a "dance, urban pop producer" who helped pen hits for Destiny's Child and Will Smith, Fusari convinced Stefani to work with drum machines and beats. Gaga's music was a slow, burning evolution from Fiona Apple to Nirvana/Zeppelin-like rock, followed by dance/urban pop with the influence of Fusari who hooked Gaga up with RedOne, the songwriter who co-wrote the massive hits "Poker Face" and "Just Dance" that propelled Gaga into the industry limelight.
There's nothing wrong with a musician experimenting with their sound, trying each one on for size before they settle with one that they're comfortable with, or fusing many different sounds together into their own distinctive sound. But with a voice like that, and a purported love for performing, Gaga could have done anything. And she does, trying her hand at jazz and rock'n'roll, albeit tellingly, after 'The Fame' was released. Read that last phrase however you want to, but as a classically trained musician and pianist who started taking piano lessons when she was four, Gaga could have been painting much more imaginative and inspiring soundscapes with her voice and talent.
But it has since turned out that she is no Tori Amos (before she sold her soul after 'Boys for Pele') nor Alanis Morissette who fused rock influences into their own brand of pop in an uncontrived manner with brutally honest lyrics. Instead of deftly exploring and experimenting with musical boundaries, Gaga chooses instead to rehash the physical appearance of Ziggy Stardust, Alice Cooper, Michael Jackson, Annie Lennox, Grace Jones et al to suit the sexed-up millennium - a layer of theatricality applied to what is otherwise really boring music.
Oh, we get it, Gaga. You adore performing - it's your life and soul. You live for the crowds of adoring 'Little Monsters' whose deafening cries and tweets ring in your ears and on your computer/mobile devices long after you've hung up your costume for the day. Music appears only to be a vehicle for you to showcase your outrageous costumes and performances. And it's becoming increasingly clear that Gaga loves performing more than the monotonous music that she's churning out much like the ageless, emotionless android that she seems to be.
Meanwhile, she also claims that she doesn't just want to "lolly in the materialism of fame", but rather, to be an outspoken voice for the ostracized and the bullied. This layer of marketing magic dust sprinkled upon Gaga by her PR fairies to capitalize on her individuality might appear to be nothing more than annoying glitter that needs to be blinked out by the eyes of the more percipient observers, but one can't help but be taken by her unstudied charm and tongue-in-cheek humour during interviews. Yes, my eyes might roll over at her disingenuous ambiguity regarding her past sexual history with females (friends and family have corroborated that Gaga never showed any sexual interest in females) in order to push forth this marketing image. And Camille Paglia makes a salient point about the disconnect between Gaga's self-portrayal as a bully victim and marginalised artist, and her real status as a popular artiste, in an otherwise excessively scathing article. But she does come across as being really sincere about all her fans, even going to lengths to write a unifying anthem for them encapsulated in the song "Born This Way". Perhaps Gaga shrewdly understands the power of a strong fan base for fame and success (I'm looking at you, Taylor Swift), but honestly, this is the most positive thing about Gaga even if it's all been just one big marketing ball of wool pulled over the fans' eyes.
That this unconventional and contradictious personality has willingly catapulted the plight of being unconventional into the mainstream consciousness is perhaps the singular reason why the society at large seems to be so infatuated with Gaga, who is the subject of millions of one-liners and numerous articles whirling through cyberspace with unstoppable force. Fashion blogs dissect Lady Gaga as a fashion icon and discuss her new perfume, cultural critics analyze the impact of her iconic status on society, and music critics are in two minds about Gaga's display of "extraordinary excess" in her hard-hitting electronic dance pop. What gets her detractors most riled up is the fact that Gaga with her bad music, questionable outfits, and heightened sexuality can actually stand for something socio-culturally and politically positive. We all know her music is otherwise passable and average at best, her costumes and general outrageousness merely repeating cultural and musical history, and her voice strong and technically superior but unmemorable unlike Amy Winehouse or Freddie Mercury. But like how Batman became the symbol for untainted goodness in the city of Gotham (sorry for this lame metaphor - watching TDKR twice in a week can do that to you), Gaga is an open call to arms for individuals trapped by their individuality. I'm not complaining if she holds such a positive and inspiring message for others, but the truth is that as a symbol of sorts, anyone can be Lady Gaga, anyone can become the imitable plastic barbie that she is. And long after Gaga is gone, others will take her place.
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In an industry where talented musicians and singers are sidestepped for "personalities" and "performers", Lady Gaga's individualistic personality was a match made in heaven with the music industry and relevant for our time. And like the fact that she wears so many hats (figuratively and sartorially), she also has a very, very keen sense of understanding of the industry that she knows how to use to her business advantage. Judging by the copycats that has since been spawned by her performing legacy (Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, etc.), she has definitely left a major impact on mainstream pop music.
Since we're still listening to her influences Michael Jackson and Annie Lennox/Eurythmics today, might we hear "Poker Face" on the radio ten or twenty years down the road on a radio station that plays the 'classic hits' and get to lament to our sprogs, misty-eyed, about how music was so much better in the past?
"Yeah, she's that crazy old woman who still wears weird stuff, you know?"
Image credits from here: [1] and [2], [3]
This sudden outburst of theatre academia from the constantly lipsticked mouth that spouts self-glorifying and insipid lyrics such as "Gaga, ooh la la" and "I like you a lot, lot, I think you're hot, hot" can only lead to TWO conclusions about her:
1) She apparently perceives her "work" differently from the masses.
Blonde ambition and dedication to accumulating fame, rebellious Italian-American Catholic school girl, provocative sexuality, viscerally shocking performance presentation, controversial depictions of Catholic beliefs and icons - now, where have we seen that before?
Right. A certain pop singer with an equally meteoric rise in the music industry on roughly the same premises. But this happened about one or two decades ago. Madonna made no bones about it though - she was a pop star, through and through. Her stylist and jewelry designer created Madonna's look - bleached hair, crucifix jewelry, raunchy fishnet stockings, lace tops and skirts over capri pants. She posed for nude photographs for Penthouse and Playboy magazines because she needed the money - an action which she later regretted deeply. For all her fame-mongering, one can almost say that Madonna admitted it openly. Unlike her recent millennial incarnation who is a warped mash-up of David Bowie, Prince, Cher, Madonna, etc. masquerading as ingenuous high-heels-in-gym reality, Madonna knows she's an entertainer. She doesn't call her music and catchy pop songs "performance art".
Performance art is the kabuki theater. It's the Ballet Russes. It's Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet. It's definitely not about gyrating your butt in latex to songs about clubbing and dancing and superficial relationships with boys. And let's call her out on it. Lady Gaga's music is frankly, quite terrible. The dance anthems are infectiously catchy car tunes that dispel the last vestiges of sleep from your head during the morning rush. They invade departmental stores and trendy cafes and sleazy dance clubs in equal measure. But three weeks or three months later, another pop song from another pop singer takes over. It's called pop music for a reason - popularity is arbitrary and fleeting in this cruel industry that is fueled by heavy-handed PR and music record Goliaths who push out the songs onto the radio waves. And despite Gaga asserting that she bares her naked soul for her records, her songs are flat, emotionless and robotic. Any lack of soulfulness in her inflections or heartrending poetry in her lyrics is quickly glossed over with the veneer of electro-synth beats and costumes made out of bubbles. And what is great art without great emotion bleeding out from every corner?
The most frustrating part of it all is that Lady Gaga actually has some talent, and can sing better than Madonna.
2) She's actually smart and talented.
Before she became Gaga, she was just plain old Stefani. Stefani was a bright-eyed, intelligent teenager who was quite skimpily dressed in her awareness of her sex appeal. After she dropped out from the Clive Davis Institute of Recorded Music, she started a band and was singing Fiona Apple-like ballads when Rob Fusari discovered her in a night club on songwriters' night. As a "dance, urban pop producer" who helped pen hits for Destiny's Child and Will Smith, Fusari convinced Stefani to work with drum machines and beats. Gaga's music was a slow, burning evolution from Fiona Apple to Nirvana/Zeppelin-like rock, followed by dance/urban pop with the influence of Fusari who hooked Gaga up with RedOne, the songwriter who co-wrote the massive hits "Poker Face" and "Just Dance" that propelled Gaga into the industry limelight.
There's nothing wrong with a musician experimenting with their sound, trying each one on for size before they settle with one that they're comfortable with, or fusing many different sounds together into their own distinctive sound. But with a voice like that, and a purported love for performing, Gaga could have done anything. And she does, trying her hand at jazz and rock'n'roll, albeit tellingly, after 'The Fame' was released. Read that last phrase however you want to, but as a classically trained musician and pianist who started taking piano lessons when she was four, Gaga could have been painting much more imaginative and inspiring soundscapes with her voice and talent.
“I was classically trained as a pianist and that innately teaches you how to write a pop song, because when you learn Bach inversions, it has the same sort of modulations between the chords. It’s all about tension and release. But I want to do something that speaks to everyone. To me there is nothing more powerful than one song that you can put on in a room anywhere in the world and somebody gets up and dances. If you put a classical piece on, everyone’s not gonna mobilise. It’s gotta be something that resonates on a visceral level.”
- Telegraph interview
- Telegraph interview
But it has since turned out that she is no Tori Amos (before she sold her soul after 'Boys for Pele') nor Alanis Morissette who fused rock influences into their own brand of pop in an uncontrived manner with brutally honest lyrics. Instead of deftly exploring and experimenting with musical boundaries, Gaga chooses instead to rehash the physical appearance of Ziggy Stardust, Alice Cooper, Michael Jackson, Annie Lennox, Grace Jones et al to suit the sexed-up millennium - a layer of theatricality applied to what is otherwise really boring music.
Oh, we get it, Gaga. You adore performing - it's your life and soul. You live for the crowds of adoring 'Little Monsters' whose deafening cries and tweets ring in your ears and on your computer/mobile devices long after you've hung up your costume for the day. Music appears only to be a vehicle for you to showcase your outrageous costumes and performances. And it's becoming increasingly clear that Gaga loves performing more than the monotonous music that she's churning out much like the ageless, emotionless android that she seems to be.
Image from here
Meanwhile, she also claims that she doesn't just want to "lolly in the materialism of fame", but rather, to be an outspoken voice for the ostracized and the bullied. This layer of marketing magic dust sprinkled upon Gaga by her PR fairies to capitalize on her individuality might appear to be nothing more than annoying glitter that needs to be blinked out by the eyes of the more percipient observers, but one can't help but be taken by her unstudied charm and tongue-in-cheek humour during interviews. Yes, my eyes might roll over at her disingenuous ambiguity regarding her past sexual history with females (friends and family have corroborated that Gaga never showed any sexual interest in females) in order to push forth this marketing image. And Camille Paglia makes a salient point about the disconnect between Gaga's self-portrayal as a bully victim and marginalised artist, and her real status as a popular artiste, in an otherwise excessively scathing article. But she does come across as being really sincere about all her fans, even going to lengths to write a unifying anthem for them encapsulated in the song "Born This Way". Perhaps Gaga shrewdly understands the power of a strong fan base for fame and success (I'm looking at you, Taylor Swift), but honestly, this is the most positive thing about Gaga even if it's all been just one big marketing ball of wool pulled over the fans' eyes.
That this unconventional and contradictious personality has willingly catapulted the plight of being unconventional into the mainstream consciousness is perhaps the singular reason why the society at large seems to be so infatuated with Gaga, who is the subject of millions of one-liners and numerous articles whirling through cyberspace with unstoppable force. Fashion blogs dissect Lady Gaga as a fashion icon and discuss her new perfume, cultural critics analyze the impact of her iconic status on society, and music critics are in two minds about Gaga's display of "extraordinary excess" in her hard-hitting electronic dance pop. What gets her detractors most riled up is the fact that Gaga with her bad music, questionable outfits, and heightened sexuality can actually stand for something socio-culturally and politically positive. We all know her music is otherwise passable and average at best, her costumes and general outrageousness merely repeating cultural and musical history, and her voice strong and technically superior but unmemorable unlike Amy Winehouse or Freddie Mercury. But like how Batman became the symbol for untainted goodness in the city of Gotham (sorry for this lame metaphor - watching TDKR twice in a week can do that to you), Gaga is an open call to arms for individuals trapped by their individuality. I'm not complaining if she holds such a positive and inspiring message for others, but the truth is that as a symbol of sorts, anyone can be Lady Gaga, anyone can become the imitable plastic barbie that she is. And long after Gaga is gone, others will take her place.
In an industry where talented musicians and singers are sidestepped for "personalities" and "performers", Lady Gaga's individualistic personality was a match made in heaven with the music industry and relevant for our time. And like the fact that she wears so many hats (figuratively and sartorially), she also has a very, very keen sense of understanding of the industry that she knows how to use to her business advantage. Judging by the copycats that has since been spawned by her performing legacy (Katy Perry, Nicki Minaj, Rihanna, etc.), she has definitely left a major impact on mainstream pop music.
Since we're still listening to her influences Michael Jackson and Annie Lennox/Eurythmics today, might we hear "Poker Face" on the radio ten or twenty years down the road on a radio station that plays the 'classic hits' and get to lament to our sprogs, misty-eyed, about how music was so much better in the past?
"Yeah, she's that crazy old woman who still wears weird stuff, you know?"
Wow. That is a really, really indepth article about a seemingly shallow pop star haha.
ReplyDeleteI hate "shock" tactics/gimmicks. And while I may not agree with the means she utilizes in her pursuit of fame, I can't deny that she's an incredibly talented artist who is possibly the next definitive pop icon of our era.
Thank you so much for popping by my blog! Am really glad I found yours :)
xx
My turn to be wowed, Lenne! I didn't actually think anyone would even skim through my ramblings. Thank you for commenting, and I love your blog and photography! :)
Delete(+ the awesome hair too!)
What an incredible and thought-provoking (not to mention extremely well-written) analysis of Lady Gaga's presentation of her "work" (pop) and the image she chooses to project and to manipulate. An excellent post threaded through with sharp insight.
ReplyDelete