Lady Gaga needs her own thread

"MONSTER" is still kicking my ass

i had it on at a party the other night, and it sounded so fresh, cutting and inspired.

Wasn't recruited by Illuminati, but the show was tremendously great

"speechless" is beautiful, fuck

teeth has been kinda in my head

"speechless" is beautiful, fuck

^^^my process of appreciation of the fame monster. "speechless is a pretty decent george harrison guitar rip, isn't it --> wow, speechless is really something --> speechless is stuck in my head. always."

The exegesis blog post is amazing. Makes you wonder if Matthew Barney + Bjork = Gaga, but the dates don't quite work.

"If you're on an island, stranded, and all you have is sticks and leaves and pineapples, you're gonna make a boat out of sticks and leaves and pineapples," she said. "I view glamour and celebrity life and these plastic assumptions as the pineapples. And I spend my career harvesting pineapples, and making pies and outfits and lipsticks that will free my fans from their stranded islands."

This is really the heart of the appeal of Gaga for me, aside from the songs being great - - I recognize this thing she's doing, taking all the hugeness of celebrity glamour/pantomime as a toybox that's open to everybody, including big-nosed weirdos who presumably spent their teenage years listening to "Radio Ga Ga" and/or "Lady Stardust" as discussed upthread. This is why the "my fans are my favorite artist" thing works for me - it would undermine the whole fucking point of the show if it weren't a mirror pointed back at the fans encouraging them to fashion their own celebrity out of whole cloth and/or pineapples.

Whether that's a viable dream or not, it makes sense to me. An acquaintance of mine has been doing these choreographed zombie/glitter dress-up shows for ages on a $20 budget with a bunch of keyboards and bearded weirdos. I'm sure you all have come into contact with similar things. Now there might be pitfalls there and the strength of the music as music is going to vary from performer to performer, but the idea that freaks and oddballs who never fit in can by force of will re-create the unobtainable fantasy world they've been fed since birth is groovy. IMO. Of course all this might be just me retreading Camp 101, I dunno, but I think it's neat.

I guess what I'm sort of getting at is that somehow Gaga represents a DIY spirit, applied to pop music, even though nothing about her entire aesthetic is DIY in the slightest - not the music, certainly not the production values (although there is some idea about all the costumes etc. coming out of a stable of her close friends or something)... more that the attitude/posture/relationship to pop is that of an outsider making the scene they want out of what's available to them. If that makes any sense.

(final addendum, all of the above is written from the perspective of a big-nosed weirdo who spent his teenage years listening to Smashing Pumpkins and Billy Joel and would very much like to be famous and surrounded by sexy people in glittered rubber costumes. so i'm a bit biased.)

yeah "speechless" is as much a billy joel bite as anything, at least melodically

Anyone else notice "Bad Romance" nods to/cops from ELO's "Don't Bring Me Down?"

well now i do

i have a half-baked theory going on that gaga's early bog-standard generic stuff was a trojan horse for what she really wanted to foist on the world, and "speechless" and "teeth" bear this out rather

Of course, that's sort of how Eminem started out, too, and for all the subsequent highs, we all know how that turned out.

Eminem started out with bog-standard stuff?

http://www.crossphazer.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/05/eminem_infinite_cover.jpg

well ok, but that wasn't exactly his public first impression. that's pretty much equivalent to gaga's bar band gigs upthread

yeah "Bad Romance" has always reminded me of "Don't Bring Me Down"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Zs95QrCOvng

Apparently this is Megan Phelps' (of Westboro Baptist Church infamy) version of "Poker Face":

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xhyx1wtP9S0

I thought those were the lyrics on screen for a moment

i heard Monster coming out of someone's earbuds on a train today. it was exciting. i tried to give him the "oh, i know" look but i'm not sure if he caught on

What's the "Oh, I know" look, surm?

http://raraahahahromaromamagagaoohlala.com/

xp lol i'm not really sure, which is why i don't think he got it either

http://raraahahahromaromamagagaoohlala.com/

― t(o_o)t (ENBB), Tuesday, January 12, 2010 9:51 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

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the Monster line "Wanna talk to her, she’s hot as hell" is my favorite pop lyric of the moment! yay

http://i49.tinypic.com/2m7xksp.jpg

A+

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1246267/Schoolgirl-10-accidently-hanged-dressing-gown-cord-danced-Lady-GaGa.html#ixzz0dmdoO35R

There is absolutely no reason Lady GaGa's name should have been used in that headline. Pathetic. Definitely a horrifying tragedy, but no reason to publicize it like that.

Is this why you Britishers hate the Daily Mail?

tip, iceberg

That Oprah performance where she's hitting the car windshield w/ a mace and trying so desperately to make it dramatic confirms that she's still biting off more than she can chew with the crazy setpieces (see also: awkwardly sitting at the piano in crazy outfit on SNL, looking down to make sure her fake blood was running on the VMAs). So much of what she does could be awesome if it came off effortless and not so amateurish.

do u like any of her other newer songs besides BR?

I think I've only heard a couple once or twice, and they didn't stick, but again haven't really givent hem a chance to. What are the best ones?

I'm big on "speechless", which is sort of a weird billy joel/queen ballad, and "alejandro" is nice too

monster. alejandro is eh

oh and TEETH

http://content.ytmnd.com/content/2/3/c/23cf3beb3bd3c2199734e20bc363bcfc.gif

Apparently, Daily Mail hate Lady Gaga.

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

one of our local drag performers made a vid to Bad Romance. it's good, y'see:

<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/L33CqwDq3Lo&hl=en_US&fs=1&";></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/L33CqwDq3Lo&hl=en_US&fs=1&"; type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

it's my first time trying to embed anything and I fucked up! nooooooooooooo here's the normal link

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L33CqwDq3Lo

oh wtf

"alejandro" is massive imo

lol @ amon gif

welcome to ILX, Ivan

i find "speechless" genuinely moving and "telephone" is such a banger. SOMETIMES I FEEL LIKE I LIVE IN GRAND CENTRAL STATION! the crookers remix is great too

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAme2dwt--g

yes that is good

I like "So Happy I Could Die" - very nice, striking chord change at the end of the chorus. "Alejandro" is AWFUL though.

I was also really annoyed by this live performance of "Speechless", where at one point she paused and adopted an anguished facial expression, presumably as a heavy-handed means of achieving pathos.