Lady Gaga, Pussycat Dolls and a Taxonomy of Vacuous Pop

Oompa Loompa, do-be-de do
I've got another
crap outfit for you

Oompa Loompa, do-be-de de
If you want to look like a tool
then dress just like me

Why not wear a bin liner to work?
Look like an attention seeking jerk

Top it off with fake tan and a hat
Then you'll look like a prat

I don't like the look of it.

Oompa Loompa do-be-de da
If you wear odd clothes
you can be a pop star

You will get a number one or two
Like the Oompa Loompas do-be-de do

Do-be-de do

she ugly

christina aguilera has made uneven fake tan her trademark, its prolly an ironic reference

sorry bro but christina's tan never looked that bad! also she's actually hot

http://www.realself.com/files/imagecache/blog/christina%20aguilera%20bad%20fake%20tan.jpg

I used to really hate xtina for a lot of the reasons that ppl hate on gaga now, but to her credit her pretension rocket never got off the ground while gaga's went into orbit.

Also, would Leona Lewis qualify as vacuous pop?

ok that tan isn't so hot but she does NOT always look like that

what are these "same reasons"? they seem SOOOOOO different to me

fucking leona lewis' tan is like, vomit inducing

ew like i saw her on tv with that tan, and i really could NOT believe no one said anything to her. she likes like burnt sienna

*looks

yeah for one, xtina had great songs.. xxxp

I dunno, I remember about the time of Stripped when she was, you know, expressing herself and stuff and I hated the production on almost everything she did and the way she sang, with I dunno what you call it, kinda like what country singers and alanis morisette do, where a syllable gets broken in two and the notes comes from a different part of the head, the way she did it made it sound like what a load of girls I knew who were into singing did when they wanted to sound like Mariah Carey. Also I was a huge Britney fan and I was true to the cause lol! Admittedly there is no comparison with Lady Gaga that is unfair, sorry x.

ok. i know her singing style was weird. but like i said on a thread a while ago, she is working with Ladytron to "soften her style" or whatever. also, dirrty will always be fucking amazing, so will fighter and pretty much the entirity of stripped, trumpet singing or not.

leona lewis has a fake tan? wtf?

yeah they are sooo different, but Candyman is a weirdly pretentious singe, much more wtf than any Gaga single IMO, and its kinda since then that I like her a lot more, that last single was fun and she seems like she would be kinda cool now, also amazing that she isn't a weirdo yet.

I think her next album will be good to fwiw

well, the last xtina was a mixed bag, but on the whole it's really fuckin good (Back to basics). yes candyman was very pretentious and kind of annoying.

blueski i hope you're kidding. do i have to post pix

i never want to hear candyman again, but i liked that she put it out and it made me root for her more than anything on stripped which is not my bag

some of the other songs on Back to basics, u would really like.

blueski i hope you're kidding. do i have to post pix

pls

http://www.leona-lewis.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/leona-lewis-sydney.jpg

:(

this is a much better look on leona
http://cm1.theinsider.com/media/0/69/53/leona-lewis.0.0.0x0.428x419.jpeg

I think a lot of what is so infuriating about Gaga is that no matter how otherwise pretentious she is, that her music itself is far in the other direction of being totally workaday. If she could at least stick to one extreme, she would be more ignorable.

looks more like makeup than fake tan to me but i'm not an expert

stripped is a pretty amazing album imo. needs a poll at some point.

i can't decide whether i'd rather gaga's music lived up to the image or whether her rhetoric lived down to the music.

My dislike of Gaga has lessened somewhat since I realised the following:

a) I really like Cascada's very gagaist "Evacuate the Dancefloor"; and

b) Few if any people actually appear to swallow her schtick wholeheartedly;

c) Only the disco stick song actively annoys me when it comes on the radio now.

If I ignore her copy she's basically just Dannii with a better hit rate?

She seems less of a "problem" in this regard than most other leading lights of nu pop. I'm much more likely to read something disagreeable in a Daniel Merriweather review than I am in a Gaga review.

The other issue - and why Dannii is a relevant point of comparison here - is rule 5 of my taxonomy, namely that persistence is its own reward in the realm of camp pop. Each time Gaga pulls off some truly horrifying photoshoot, sh's actually wearing down your (or at least my) resistance so that next time you're (i'm) more likely to laugh with her rather than sneer at her.

I disliked Gaga from the moment I read the press-release accompanying my for-review copy of "Just Dance". But it's a truism to note that simply by hanging around and getting noticed and talked about, artists tend to seem less and less defined by their stage-managed debutante presentation over time, regardless of how much they try to shore it up.; One doesn't need to backlash against gaga so strongly now that the idea of gaga-backlash is engrained into her public image so unmistakeably.

as i've said elsewhere, my resistance to gaga is on the verge of crumbling. it hasn't yet - thx for reminding me about "disco stick"! - but apparently i danced to "poker face" at a wedding last wkend :(

i mean, partially or even largely this can be put down to the regrettable rise of much worse people, la cunting roux. after dealing with elly jackson i find i have very little hatred left over for anyone else. except dan black, who thankfully hasn't become successful enough to annoy on a daily basis.

i don't get cascada at all tho. i don't hate it but i can't imagine having strong feelings, or ANY feelings, about it.

it's easy to dance to music you don't like if it has a strong beat. I have danced to flo rida's "right round" on more than one occasion and I think that song is stupid as balls

I like her a lot on the Wale song

'evacuate the dancefloor' is so great

Cascada's very gagaist "Evacuate the Dancefloor"

awesome.

I look forward to the Bonzo Dog Gaga band.

fucking leona lewis' tan is like, vomit inducing

― surm, Sunday, 20 September 2009 18:51 (Yesterday) Bookmark

Ummm... doesn't she have naturally tanned skin, also known as being a black woman?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ne2kRxUwndo

If you ignore the fucking ridiculous thing on her head, this performance is fantastic. I'm still not entirely convinced by the song but I am more convinced than ever that she's got some serious talent, which kind of makes how annoying she is even worse (ha, it's the "Kanye Effect").

omg cannot believe i watched almost 1.5 parts of 3 part lady gaga interview where she says fame is a thing u can get and i got it like paris hilton did - its a pretty tedious pov

she seems to think shes pimped some deep understanding of the mechanisms of fame - but its more like wow look how crazy that girl is dressed o hey this song is stuck in my head isnt it

Ummm... doesn't she have naturally tanned skin, also known as being a black woman?

― Samuel (a hoy hoy), Monday, 21 September 2009 12:53 (1 hour ago) Permalink

ummm, i know the difference between being black and having gross chemicals on your skin. thanks.

also lex, i think there was a poll on stripped! didn't dan start it?

anyway i think everyone gives gaga too much credit with all the buzz. it's like, that's what she wants...

she's just a talented, annoying pop star.

agreed completely, minus the talented part

idk she is definitely "talented" on a basic "can hit notes, write hooks" level, esp compared with the fucking amateurs we endure in the UK who can do none of those things, LA ROUX.

i think she's talented but is not translating that talent into songs i can stand

^^^^^ this

I heard a disco remix of "Paparazzi" on Saturday that was really, really great and just made me even more annoyed and irritated with the original.

cad otm

I just saw that MTV awards performance she did. It was really affecting because of all the costumes and because it's basically melodrama. Her voice wasn't very controlled, but she's moving around a lot. You don't really notice because of all the stagework, though. The shakiness almost made the whole thing seem more dramatic.

That's the only thing I've ever heard her do, though, except the disco stick song. This one, this paparazzi song, was okay. If I had a recording of that performance I would not listen to it.

Wait wait. I just remembered that I wasn't really posting to share my opinion, but that I wrote to ask what people thought of that performance.

Paparazzi is such a beautiful song. video's pretty good too, it turns out.

the VMAs were for me at least the first time she's edged into more entertaining than merely annoying territory

http://www.bollywood91.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/lady-gaga-vma-pictures.jpg

bottom right pic is Goldfrapp meets KISS

I love that term "Gagaist."