Lady Gaga needs her own thread

All I needed to know about the popularity of "Bad Romance": the emo-loving anti-pop/anti-life recruitment editor at the newspaper has been humming the chorus all day, and sheepishly apologizing each time.

I fucking love her videos, and thought her MTV Awards performance was fantastic, but not one of her songs has been worth a crap yet. "Paparazzi" comes closest to being good, but even that falls flat for me. The melodies and choruses just aren't strong enough, and they're musically very ordinary. They have to be worthy of the videos, and so far they're not.

if u think theres no 'tacky queer music' in mainstream r&b youre kidding yourself

finally gave in and listened to 'bad romance'. she's still a regrettable being but it's easily the best song i've heard from her. faint praise, but it's a decent song

i'd love to know who in mainstream r&b makes "music strictly for tacky queers" so i can buy their album

ne-yo?

when I think of rnb for tacky queers I think of something like Boom Boom Pow, except better.

It's hardly new or surprising that she's as successful as she is...even among the TACKY QUEERS. She wrote for Britney and obviously can write annoyingly catchy, disposable pop, but it's still pretty impressive how we're talking about her in the context of competing with hip hop/r&b....or rather, you are. I loathed even hearing people say "GaGa" up until I saw her acoustic performance of Poker Face, which was beyond entertaining. I think she's purely a spectacle at this point, with the potential to be more later. It's like, I'm reluctant to give her ANY credit, but you can't deny the obvious "Gaga Effect" that's taken place in music since her arrival. For better or for worse, she is going to be referenced for a while.

i think what annoys (annoyed? havent decided if im indifferent yet) is that it came across as so obviously trying hard to be exactly that.

Ne-Yo? Queer, certainly. Tacky...isn't that sort of the opposite of how he tries to code? His music's all buttoned-up class most of the time.

I won't deny that GaGa plays to the cheap seats and the trashiest common denominator, but there are enough redeeming qualities buried underneath all the bullshit that my attempts to write off or ignore her altogether have been unsustainable. What bothers me most about her at this point is that she has a half-decent idea of a commentary on the state of music, fame and celebrity in the 21st century, as well as raw musical chops (plays a decent piano, has a decent voice, knows her way around a hook or two) but somehow manages to (either through lack of effort or lack of experience) only release half-assed product most of the time. Like...the videos and the music and the performance art are all strike as if they were made by someone who had a really brilliant idea once but doesn't quite remember what it was.

i wasn't serious about ne-yo

boo!

im just thinking mostly of https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0dZqghXe5FY

so obviously trying hard to be exactly that

OTM. There's something I find very grating about music or art or whatever that seems to be calculatedly designed to appeal not to me as a person, but instead as a demographic. Like women who insist that they "love the gays", there's an air about it all that makes (made?) me want to run for the hills.

So...um. At this point I guess I love the idea of her and hate the reality of her. Or grudgingly tolerate it.

I'm not trying to position her as some sort of rnb/hip hop conquerer, her producers and collabs and overall sound certainly make it an undeniable aspect of her career and that's how she's managed to be so successful, by straddling the genres and capturing as many music demographics as possible. I think Just Dance with the Akon and Colby O'Donis (?) guest spots was very strategic in that regard. But she has veered away from that since. She has managed to use that opening to take some things to the top of the chart that aren't typical of what's commonly been reigning, and as you said she's going to be referenced for a while, and nobody loves to reference hit songs like wannabe hit songwriters.

lol @ this being yet another gaga analysis thread

I'm genuinely surprised by the resistance and negativity. She's only occasionally GREAT (Pokerface, duh), but is generally at least decent and, it seems to me, deserves a lot of credit for authoring her own music and image in a field usually attaches "stars" as decoration to other people's work. Plus she's kinda subversive, in a dumb/funny garishly contrived way that's both grating and perversely appealing. I can't say I LOVE her, cuz the material's way too uneven so far, but I'm more than willing to give her the benefit of the doubt for a while.

Why all the hate?

because ppl give her backhanded compliments like "subversive, but i dont really like most of her songs"

lol @ this being yet another gaga analysis thread

― hoos-kingofthedrugs (deej), Thursday, November 12, 2009 8:15 PM (30 seconds ago) Bookmark

how could it not?

I like her Queen-sounding ballads, but I want to LOVE them.. I think if she perfected her songwriting further she could nail these.

because ppl give her backhanded compliments like "subversive, but i dont really like most of her songs"

― hoos-kingofthedrugs (deej), Thursday, November 12, 2009 8:16 PM (40 seconds ago) Bookmark

Are you saying that people (like me) who are intrigued by her image/style and maybe like a couple songs are the reason that other people get all irritated by her? I'm not sure I understand...

I can't say I LOVE her, cuz the material's way too uneven so far, but I'm more than willing to give her the benefit of the doubt for a while.

I think it's a combination of this with the out and out pretension displayed from the outset? When first presented with GaGa, a hitherto unknown pop artist who dresses fairly garishly, rambles on about Andy Warhol and how her project is a deconstruction of fame, but whose music does nothing to follow through on her stated goals, gut reaction is to write her off as the celebrity equivalent of an undergrad student babbling about post-modernism to sound intelligent. It was all a bit too calculated to feel genuine, a bit too 'quirky' for its own good.

i dont think anyone here is saying they 'hate' her really tho

is it like totally lame and old-fashioned to ask that someone make some decent songs before they get credit for having a persona or whatever?

the gaga songs i've heard are boring, hookless, rote pop exercises. they are so dour and un-fun.

http://1.media.tumblr.com/tumblr_ks4tqt7qLJ1qzeu42o1_400.jpg

It's a question of - what is she: musicians or performance artist? And she scans initially and presents herself as a pop star (i.e. musician first and foremost). So while the image and so forth might be interesting, the central part of the package (the music) is sometimes good but never great.

Re the quality of her songs overall:

One of the problems with having written one incredible, indelible, perfect pop hit along with all your other perfectly decent journeyman work is that it tends to make the rest look like, well ... like perfectly decent journeyman work. You know?

poker face is 'incredible' 'indelible' 'perfect'??

what is this indelible perfect pop hit you speak of

yeah she could really be more show-not-tell instead of just going "this is post-modern! it's pop art! it's very gay and transgressive, can you handle it america!?"

If she were just an entertaining persona - a self-aware Paris Hilton writ large, lampooning our fucked up and strange relationship with the concept of celebrity fame and money I would be totally down with her. But her shtick includes videos, albums, and songs. So the middling quality of those necessarily have a bearing.

its super great but i prefer the song when presented by the avant-pop artist nosferatu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YBNOkGsI47E

now thats subversive

@Alex in Montreal: you phrase that as if performance art/musicianship are mutually exclusive?

i kinda feel like if you look back at some of the more high concept or kind of subversive stars in pop history, probably most of them made a big impact well before they really got credit for exactly what they were doing or started to really spell it out for people

lol criss angel poster

Pop star fails to sufficiently satirize pop music for non pop music fans shocker

It's like, I don't want NO gaga, I just want the Socratic Ideal of GaGa and not this bullshit real world version we are stuck with.

xp Not mutually exclusive! More that, if music is being included as part of your performance art, it had DAMN better be as good as a) your ideas, b) the rest of your performance and c) the music of the genre/scene/etc. that you are participating in/commenting on

If you try to satirize something you're not better or smarter than in any way then you're just..I dunno, Meet The Spartans?

NV i think the point here is that ppl who LIKE pop music find her stuff middling at best

Pop star fails to sufficiently satirize pop music for non pop music fans shocker

Yeah, whatever.

a) most of us ARE pop music fans.
b) she's made it perfectly clear that this is what she intends to do.

shes poorly satirizing all the way to the bank tbf

if you're going to claim the title of satirist/cultural commentator/provocateur and declare this fact in every interview you have in your first four months or so of exposure, you should not be surprised when people judge you on the basis of those claims.

xp so?

she's kind of like Marilyn Manson in how she just hammers home her agenda constantly and is like, looking around the room to see if she's getting the reaction she's looking for

so kudos for a successful business plan in this economy xp

marilyn manson could be a worse comparison

i don't really understand what that sentence means

sure, i mean she has achieved her goal of being famous

Ugh. That's awful.

So...somehow I missed that she put out an album of duets with Tony Bennett, and it did pretty well? Huh. It sounds okay.

Dissed by Sondheim!
http://www.broadwayworld.com/article/Stephen-Sondheim-Calls-Lady-Gagas-SOUND-OF-MUSIC-Oscars-Performance-a-Travesty-20150313

daaammm

http://www.cnn.com/2016/03/28/entertainment/cnnphotos-before-she-was-gaga/?iid=ob_homepage_deskrecommended_pool&iref=obnetwork

New single "Perfect Illusion" out in September
http://www.ew.com/article/2016/08/17/lady-gaga-perfect-illusion

will co-star in Bradley Cooper's new version of A Star Is Born :o

as Norman Maine

She will do this year's Super Bowl halftime show.

A Star Is Born
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6V0-_2tIfew

Cooper directed it(!)

Doesn't look like my kind of movie, but hope it's good / does well...

zzzzzzzzz

I'm sure Coop's A STAR IS BORN will revive interest in her catalog. My rankings.