Lady Gaga

[Kim]

Say what you will about Gaga, but I think she's got the goods.

What do y'all think of this? I like it! I'm guessing Tony Bennett doesn't work with slouches?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zgfxLqFHb8

[policefan]

You know what, I really like it too.

(It's nice to see her more focused on her voice than on her costume)

[moonstone]

[quote="policefan"](It's nice to see her more focused on her voice than on her costume)[/quote]

True, she does have a good voice on this but I just can't get my head round that revolting raw meat dress that she wore. Yuk!

[luna_virgo]

The video at the link has been removed.

She definitely has a good voice, and plenty of ambition and and stage presence, but at some point she's got to do something original. So far I haven't seen her do anything that Madonna, Bowie, Elton John, Cher, etc. haven't already done better before she was born.

[luna_virgo]

Was this it?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPAmDULCVrU

[DirtyMartini]

[quote="luna_virgo"]She definitely has a good voice, and plenty of ambition and and stage presence, but at some point she's got to do something original. So far I haven't seen her do anything that Madonna, Bowie, Elton John, Cher, etc. haven't already done better before she was born.[/quote]

But I think that's the point: before she was born. We all (or many of us) remember the 70s and 80s from personal experience; that was our thing. Young pop listeners now only know the 70s/80s as history/retro.* We see it all as a continuum, but to them "Born This Way" is/was new; unless their parents were plying them with Madonna growing up, "Express Yourself" -- which is (gong help us all) now 20ish years old -- would be that old song they heard on YouTube afterward because bloggers kept bitching about it. (Hell, two now commonplace words in that last sentence didn't even exist back then.) My money says most young whippersnappers would still prefer the Gaga version. I can't say that to this day I don't prefer the Guns 'n' Roses "Live and Let Die" cover for similar reasons.

Madonna hasn't done anything theatrically memorable since, I dunno, Sex maybe? When was the last time Elton John got dolled up, or David Bowie, or Cher. For us that's living memory; for them it's ancient history. To the kids these days Gaga's theatricality is new and exciting. Yeah, "Born This Way" is basically the same song as "Express Yourself," but at least it's still kinda different from all the mind-numbing sameness of the rest of pop music of the last decade. When surrounded by Britney Spearses, Gaga must look like Disneyland.

I think of Gaga like a mix of Madonna, Elton John, Freddie Mercury, and Laurie Anderson: part pop star, part showboat, part talent, part performance artist. She's not my thing, but the two things I like about her are that she really can sing on pitch, and she is blatantly conscious of the tropes that she's working within. She's got both the land of Oz and the guy behind the curtain visible simultaneously, which takes a lot of smarts to pull off.


*Otherwise they would realize those dumbass haircuts are the same greasy-looking nerdcuts we're all wearing in childhood photos that make us cringe.

[smax]

thoughtful points which were compellingly and eloquently made DM, however I reserve the right, even as a child of the mid-70's, to think of Gaga as a twatstick.. I know i'm not meant to like her 'cos i'm not a gay man, a hairdresser or a young girl (ducks). i'm being provocative.

i may deplore of the results but at least she tries to be relatively original and thoughtful. She can dress herself in Pork Chops and have a lobster on her head to detract attention away from her piss poor material.

[luna_virgo]

Lots to respond to here! smax, I share your curmudgeonly view. I have several gay male friends (with generally good taste) who adore her, and I'm still not impressed.

DM, you make some good points, but I think you underestimate young listeners. When I was a teenager in the 80's, I liked a lot of the current pop music, but I didn't put it in the same category as The Beatles, The Doors, and other artists who were mostly before my time but still classic. I was listening to Simon and Garfunkel when I was in college, 20 years after they broke up, and when I saw Paul Simon play a few months ago, there were college-age kids there singing along with his old songs. Will anyone be singing classic Gaga tunes 20-40 years from now? My guess is no.

[sockii]

Lots to respond to here! smax, I share your curmudgeonly view. I have several gay male friends (with generally good taste) who adore her, and I'm still not impressed.

DM, you make some good points, but I think you underestimate young listeners. When I was a teenager in the 80's, I liked a lot of the current pop music, but I didn't put it in the same category as The Beatles, The Doors, and other artists who were mostly before my time but still classic. I was listening to Simon and Garfunkel when I was in college, 20 years after they broke up, and when I saw Paul Simon play a few months ago, there were college-age kids there singing along with his old songs. Will anyone be singing classic Gaga tunes 20-40 years from now? My guess is no.

^I have to agree with this. I have a lot of younger-than-me friends on LiveJournal and Tumblr who are amazingingly passionate and knowledgeable about classic rock and new wave music, and who wouldn't get caught dead listening to most of today's so-called "top artists".

Of course, they may not be the "mainstream teenage masses" who consume whatever is the latest pop sensation that comes along, which is fine for what it is - consumable and eventually quite forgettable.

I don't really know where I rate Gaga at this point - she comes along as so annoyingly pretentious and ~artistic~ sometimes, which annoys me a lot more than if she just admitted that she's creating enjoyable yet infinitely derivative, unmemorable pop music, and she's fortunate she actually has a damn fine voice instead of being just another auto-tuned wannabe.

But I'll save my Gaga rage for now over the fact that Brian May actually supposedly wants her to tour/record with Queen. Sorry Gaga, you may idolize Freddie Mercury, but you are NO Freddie Mercury and will never come close.

[DirtyMartini]

DM, you make some good points, but I think you underestimate young listeners. When I was a teenager in the 80's, I liked a lot of the current pop music, but I didn't put it in the same category as The Beatles, The Doors, and other artists who were mostly before my time but still classic. I was listening to Simon and Garfunkel when I was in college, 20 years after they broke up, and when I saw Paul Simon play a few months ago, there were college-age kids there singing along with his old songs. Will anyone be singing classic Gaga tunes 20-40 years from now? My guess is no.

I'm not disagreeing with the compartmentalization of what's current or classic, or the ability to listen before one's time. Of course not -- I did it, too! I was just talking the matter of perspective for much of her audience. [ETA: Sorry, I should have made that clearer the other day.] (Luna, Simon and Garfunkel was (still is) one of my favorites, and the only people they were cool with then were my dad and the theater kids.) But if today two young men come along to sing songs full of sincerity with an acoustic guitar that sound kinda familiar, will they be dismissed as unoriginal because Simon and Garfunkel did it first or better?

Maybe that's a bad example because Simon & Garfunkel actually had material many would consider good and original -- though they, too, owe a lot to the Everly Brothers and the folk tradition. But if you take the longevity question and think in times closer to our own, I think it depends on the listener and what the artist does. Is anyone still singing Debbie Gibson tunes? Tiffany? Richard Marx? The only times I've ever seen Madonna's old tunes survive is because she's still active in being a celebrity, not because the material is any good. (Rick Astley's still sung, but of course, that's cheating.) Yet I still hear shit like Wilson Phillips on grocery store radios, and New Kids on the Block are or were very recently touring. (!) If not for oldies/pizza parlor radio, how much '50s/early '60s pop would survive? But does it matter if it would or not?

I don't think any of modern pop is memorable, so no, I sure can't imagine Gaga or most others being listened to in 20-40 years. But I'm also not that audience. Will you or I be singing classic Gaga tunes in the future, no, not so much. But someone like mother, had she been young now, maybe. Her tastes were straight-ahead Top 40 of the time period when she grew up, so her go-to repetoire while puttering around the house in this millennium were such classics as "Da Doo Run Run," "Copacabana," and "Boy From New York City" ("ooh, ah, ooh, ah, cool, cool, kitty"). Oh, and Abba without kitsch or irony. Drop her young self into today's world, and I imagine she'd be at least a Britney/Christina/Beyonce-lovin' fool. I think Gaga is a great voice that sings shit material, but give her a power ballad, and were my mother alive, she'd be serenading me with it at every holiday dinner.

[DirtyMartini]

I was typing while sockii was, but I think this says a lot about perspective:

I have a lot of younger-than-me friends on LiveJournal and Tumblr who are amazingingly passionate and knowledgeable about classic rock and new wave music, and who wouldn't get caught dead listening to most of today's so-called "top artists".

Of course, they may not be the "mainstream teenage masses" who consume whatever is the latest pop sensation that comes along, which is fine for what it is - consumable and eventually quite forgettable.

ETA: I had to catch a train earlier, but I wanted to be sure to add,

she comes along as so annoyingly pretentious and ~artistic~ sometimes, which annoys me a lot more than if she just admitted that she's creating enjoyable yet infinitely derivative, unmemorable pop music, and she's fortunate she actually has a damn fine voice instead of being just another auto-tuned wannabe.

I don't agree with every word of this^, but yep, a lot of them. And I wholeheartedly agree with

i may deplore of the results but at least she tries to be relatively original and thoughtful. She can dress herself in Pork Chops and have a lobster on her head to detract attention away from her piss poor material.

I do think someone could make something seriously good out of "Paparazzi," though. It's not my style and most of its lyrics suck (of what songs I've heard, most of her lyrics suck), but the idea is great and I think some lines of the chorus could be really effective in the right hands.

[sockii]

DM, you reminded me of a local Philly singer/songwriter who actually has become pretty popular for his version of Paparazzi, Peter Marinari:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0rna7gVOJbE

It is a song that can hold up to re-interpretations...actually quite a bit better than when I saw a clip of Gaga doing Poker Face accoustic on the piano - that was actually painfully laughable and I just hope it was part of her "performace art", mocking acoustic cover versions, and not meant to be a ~serious~ take on the song.

[luna_virgo]

(of what songs I've heard, most of her lyrics suck)

I do get a laugh out of the "bluffin' with my muffin" line from Poker Face.

[smax]

runnin' just as fast as we can,
holding onto one another's hand,
trying to get away into the night,
then you put your something somewhere, something else and then some words
and then you say...
>all together now<

i think we're alone now..

[luna_virgo]

i think we're alone now..

Excellent example. Tommy James & the Shondells, via Tiffany.

Of course you could make the case that nothing is truly original, everything is derivative of something. And dance music with a good beat and forgettable lyrics always has its place. I've seen a club dance floor erupt when they played Gaga/Beyonce's Telephone. But they were erupting to something else the next week.