Lady WhaWha?

-Robert Langellier

Disclaimer: Guys I was really uninspired today to write anything substantial, so I just kinda rambled on about Lady GaGa. Sorry.

I’m at a crossroads with Lady GaGa. For the duration of her existence on the radio airwaves, I cast her off as yet another synthetic pop label output. For all intents and purposes she still is, but there’s a cog in the wheel: I can’t stop listening to her, and I know my reasons to are faulty. But I can’t stop.

I’m not going to pretend like her music is good or decent, but at the same time, she’s also proven that she (Stefani Germanotta, not Lady GaGa), has immense talent as a singer-songwriter. I’ve known this for a long time, though, and that wasn’t what pushed me into my GaGa binge. At some point a couple weeks ago Tynan metaphorically sat me down and gave me a little 5 or 10 minute schooling on what he thought Lady GaGa was all about. Suddenly this poppet of the mass media was a fully conscious artist with a mastermind blueprint for social criticism. The outfits, the now-shallow songwriting, the “Fame Monster”, all fit well into the theory that GaGa the Warhol Protégé was making more than pop; she was making pop art.

I dismissed this at the time, because the idea seemed a little far fetched to me, and I still doubt its truth, as that would already make Lady GaGa arguably one of the most all-around skilled pop artists of our era. In all likelihood GaGa is simply a girl with a good body, a great voice, a piano, a fashion team, and a modern lust for celebrity. However, that didn’t stop the ideas from spinning in my own head, and even though I knew they weren’t true, I’d built up an image in my head of Lady GaGa as more brilliant than Tynan could have made. It was no longer Lady GaGa the Artist, it was Lady GaGa the Hell-Sent Pop Demon. The outfits, the creepy songwriting, the “Fame Monster”, all fit well into the theory that Lady GaGa was making more than pop art; she was becoming and consuming pop art.

The most terrifying creature in the media, she was both haunting and seductive. “Bad Romance” - from the bass beat to the animal-like, “Ga ga ooh la la” hook to the “Lahve, lahve, lahve” backing vocal to the French “I want your revenge” to the music video itself (creepy enough if she wasn’t making eye contact with you the entire time) - is a terrifying pop song. Ideal Lady GaGa was supernatural and omniscient in the media, a real-life sphinx with the body of Madonna and the heart of Marilyn Manson. She was a veritable Fame Monster transcendent of all human limitations, conquering our culture with an almost disinterested ease, and she would virtually own our eyes and ears as long as she so wished.

Of course, like I said, that was all in my head. I mean people are all just people, and no one is truly transcendent of human nature. I know that none of the above paragraph is true, but it’s still interesting because she’s clearly incredibly smart and conscious of whatever she’s doing. I know she’s no monster, but simply the idea (almost the hope) that it’s true keeps me fascinated enough to put her on repeat on almost a daily basis.

But wait! Now the very idea of her image has her in control of my eyes and ears as long as she’s in the media. So now the lines are blurred. Is she shock rocker, pop rocker, or pop monster?

Oh, Lady, GaGa, who are you?