Who is Lady GaGa?
Source: By Joshua Ostroff, AOL.ca
Posted: 12/03/08 3:44PM
Filed Under: Music
That’s what I wanted to know, so I headed out to Toronto superclub Circa on rainy school night. Lady GaGa has shot from obscurity to omnipresence in the blink of a fake eyelash. In fact, as GaGa pointed out onstage, her number one singles—the anemic anthems “Just Dance” and “Pokerface”—first topped charts here in Canada before going global.
Lady GaGa |
Lady GaGa performs for a Virgin Re*Generation fundraiser @ Circa nightclub in Toronto, ON.
Nov 30, 2008 |
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Which is weird, because her songs, especially breakthrough "Just Dance," sound like mid-90s euro-dance—y’know, Ace of Bass or that “What is Love?” song from the Will Ferrell SNL sketch. No wonder her MySpace quote is “Feels so retro-sexual.”
Much of the attention lavishly showered on the now-ubiquitous 22-year-old has focused on the fact that unlike, say, Britney, GaGa writes her own songs. Fair enough, except she doesn't write pop songs nearly at the level of Brit’s go-to svengalis Max Martin, Dr. Luke or Bloodshy & Avant. And the other artists that GaGa has penned songs for are the dismal likes of Pussycat Dolls and New Kids on the Block (with whom she's currently touring).
Of the six songs from GaGa’s debut The Fame that she sang onstage, only her two hits were vaguely memorable—and she was only vaguely singing them. Her pre-recorded backing vocal was so loud that when she pointed her mic to the audience to sing a line of “Pokerface,” her own chorus didn't get any quieter.
But the performance itself was pretty great, which may be the whole point. Surrounded by dancers apparently purloined from Duran Duran’s “Wild Boys” video, GaGa was dressed up like a miniature drag queen—hot pants, high heels, stegosaurus shoulder pads, ass-length blond wig and glowing royal scepter. (Christina Aguilera recently started a beef by telling an interviewer she didn't know if GaGa was a man or a woman, no doubt prompting X-Tina’s legion of gay fanboys to switch teams).
The whole thing smacked of club-kid performance art, which, in fact, it is. GaGa started out working with NY performance artist/go-go dancer/rock DJ Lady Starlight and the pair first made waves on a Lollapalooza sidestage last year. As well, GaGa’s opening video montage features David Bowie and Andy Warhol and her whole aesthetic is put together by “House of GaGa,” her crew of twentysomething fashionistas and artists.
Though GaGa was born upper-Manhattan rich—attending the same private school as Paris and Nicky Hilton—as a teen she started slumming around the Lower East Side club scene. GaGa went out on a limb to do electro-pop music and in the context of a dingy rock club, the bass-throb and over-the-top theatrics backing songs like “Beautiful, Dirty, Rich” must have been a gas.
But thrown into a superclub—or onto the radio—the art becomes mere artifice. If this was supposed to be a wink-wink homage to pop excess, like metal-ironists The Darkness, her fans seem to be taking it literal. And if her tounge is not in cheek, than GaGa has no excuse for penning lyrics like "I want to take a ride on your disco stick."
Sure, GaGa might be a more intellectually interesting person than Britney Spears. But until she can pen a song about the paparazzi better than “Piece of Me” or crank out a club banger better than “Womanizer”—GaGa did write a song for Brit's new album but it didn't make the final cut—she’ll never ascend to the pop princess throne.
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