...Lady Gaga

First of all, I just want to state very clearly that I like the music of Lady Gaga, I really do. Her catchy melodies are guaranteed to get me up on the dance floor, and it’s been many an evening where I’ve unreservedly sang along to one of her songs at Karaoke (or three, or five...) The point is, Lady Gaga deserves a proper analysis, because despite her millions of fans and hugely popular records, not to mention her avant-garde style of dressing and shocking stage antics, Stefani Germanotta leaves me feeling a little cold. Is she an artist? Personally I have never regarded her as such. For me, her outfits and lyrics are both devoid of any meaning, and her way of speaking is both patronising and pretentious. She wants you to love her or hate her, but honestly, until she brings out another amazing record, I’m feeling kind of apathetic.

At first glance she seems to be very different to anything out there, a very unique and talented songwriter. However, my first point is: does her superficial uniqueness equate to groundbreaking musician? In a world of highly sexualised bimbos and bland Indie outfits, is a woman wearing nothing but meat really bringing anything fresh to the music scene? (Meat? Fresh? Oh forget it...) My second point: what exactly is so incredibly different about Lady Gaga, anyway? If we’re judging on music alone, then while being very good at writing catchy hooks, her songs are easily comparable to other female solo artists of this generation. Many have said that she is not merely emulating her (rather predictable) musical heroes, that she is blatantly copying them and churning it out as her own work. If it wasn’t for the eerily hypnotic videos and the laughable outfit based publicity stunts, her music would be seen as quite pedestrian, if particularly catchy. Let’s try and untangle the music from the image. She sings about fame, about parties, about social anxiety, topics that singers have covered many times since Elvis first picked up a microphone. The girl could leave the house in nothing but a piano key necktie and flippers, but until her lyrics are original and have a deeper meaning to them, then I’m not buying this ‘unique’ label. (Besides, we all know Madonna did it first and slightly better, even if nowadays her image is more comparable to the child snatcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.)

Lady Gaga also involves herself with issues that touch her heart, like the inequality of homosexuals, and...wait, that’s about it. But that’s admirable, right? Surely it has nothing to do with the fact that she has a huge gay following? Ok, too cynical. Anyone who helps the cause of other more marginalised people, whether for completely altruistic reasons or not, should be given some kudos. However. Dedicating Alejandro to her gay fans, when the vague lyrics seem to depict either a heterosexual relationship between a third party female and the listener (“’Cos she’s no good for you, no good for you”), or between herself and several third party males (“Don’t call my name / I’m not your babe”)? Confusing. It seems as though Lady Gaga can stand on a platform and preach about gay rights, and have homosexual males writhing provocatively in her videos, but touching lyrics about a normal, loving homosexual relationship? Unlikely.

Speaking of her fans, I read a really interesting article by the columnist Camille Paglia recently, which, although perhaps a little too critical for the sake of being controversial (ironic really, given the subject of her article) did raise some interesting points concerning Lady Gaga and her ‘Little Monsters’. To sum it up, Paglia claims that Lady Gaga treats her fans as though they were mentally damaged, and that only she can understand their problems and issues. From her article in The Sunday Times (12/10/10): “[Lady Gaga] constantly touts her symbiotic bond with her fans, the “little monsters”, who she inspires to “love themselves” as if they are damaged goods in need of her therapeutic repair.” This troubles me. Removing taboos from both depression and mental illness is admirable, but glamorising it? Giving it a name that promotes inclusion? Anyway, as much as Lady Gaga protests that she herself was also an outsider, the reason she gives is superficial and probably untrue: all the girls were blonde at school, so her and her brunette hair didn’t fit in. And now she’s blonde. This privileged young woman, who went to a prestigious school in New York, who had support from loving parents every step of the way, who was bankrolled by music agencies to begin her career; how can she hold herself up as a beacon for emotionally unstable young people? How can she ever hope to reach these people, to really grab hold of their hearts and say, “I understand what you’re going through!” when her entire public persona appears to be false? She claims to love her fans more than any artist has ever done so in the entire history of pop music, yet she gives them nothing. They give her their adoration, souls, and money. She feeds them an elaborate network of lies and a false empathy, and to make matters worse, her music is also soulless, full of disconnected, unfeeling lyrics such as, “I wanna take a ride on your disco stick!” Lady Gaga never has a relationship with men, she just fucks them. Fans, I see a pattern emerging.

To get back to my opening point though, contentious as it is, I personally have never respected Lady Gaga as an artist. Not in the meaning of a musician (which in itself is a completely dreadful employment of the word; not every painter is an artist, why is every singer?) but in the original meaning of ‘one who makes art’. Here is a woman who (literally) wears her politics on her sleeve, who claims that there is great meaning in everything that she does. This is clearly not true. Lady Gaga is a young woman who started off a semi-talented musician, but needed something to separate her from the Amy Winehouses and Katie Meluas of this world. Her outfits are not layered with deep philosophies; they are just increasingly more ugly and shocking than last week's mess. It wasn’t as if she started off with a narrative in her work, wearing designs that created a real artistic discussion. What she did is she started wearing quirky things to get noticed, and as her outfits escalated in insanity she gave them clichéd and clumsy meanings, as if that were her intention from the start. One day, will she finally run out of things to drape across her naked flesh? Will she then let her music speak for itself, or will she turn up at Heathrow airport, having murdered a bystander, their flesh wrapped around her shoulders, the dripping blood causing her 8 inch platform boots to slip on the floor, a protest against the ‘Don’t Ask Don’t Tell’ policy? (See, I would consider myself fairly normal psychologically, but even I can come up with macabre bullshit. It’s not that hard. ) Seriously though, this stuff isn’t art. It wasn’t art when she ripped off glam rock, it wasn’t art when she moulded her hair into the shape of a button, and it isn’t art when she wears half a cow. It’s just excellent PR, which journalists lap up because they can’t be bothered to research real stories anymore.

Lady Gaga’s image is grotesque but no longer has the power to shock. Her music is catchy but soulless. And her persona is false, spouting contradictory rhetoric that uneducated teenagers lap up like she’s the first musician to ever philosophise about the music industry. I see her fans gang up on interviewers in comments on Youtube, screaming nonsense such as, “Don’t ask her about fake eyelashes, ask her about Freud!” Jesus. To be fair to Gaga, if her audiences are idiots then why not take them for a ride. You can’t get rich and famous without their pocket money, can you?

The Fame. Lady Gaga’s aim summed up in black and white. Unlike her hero, Andy Warhol, Lady Gaga could never make art out of her commercialism. It is fame, not high art, that she wants to achieve. Maybe to her, fame and art are the same thing.