Lady Gaga's little shop of horrors
This morning I was on NPR's Morning Edition talking about Lady Gaga. (My new goal in life is pitching pop culture stories to NPR that make the hosts sound like their heads are spinning around and around, Meryl Streep-style.)
You can listen here, or read the basic text I riff on when I go into record a slightly looser, more natural-sounding version. The piece, essentially, is about how people are terrified of Gaga because they don't really get her, but they know they can't control her. Plus, let's face it, we're not really used to turning on their TV and seeing performance art.
Here are three Lady Gaga videos you really need to see—no matter what you think you think about Gaga and her music or her look or her existence. (She is singlehandedly 2009's best meme, isn't she?)
1. Even the most dancefloor friendly Gaga hit has a black hole of fear at the center—parties that never end, jealous boyfriends who never get enough attention, an abusive affair with fame. "Paparazzi" is a song with such a tangled relationship between the subjects and objects of desire that you could write a dissertation about it. (Somewhere, some cultural studies major already is.)
On the American Music Awards, she set her piano on fire and belted out a heart-wrenching ballad while smashing wine bottles on the keys:
If there's a tipping point for Gaga, it's got to be "Bad Romance," which has already racked up the kinds of view counts an artist like Rihanna enjoys a year after a song's release, though it's barely a month old.
Lady Gaga is beautifully weird, a cultural ambassador of oddity. She's executed a perfect attack on pop culture by not trying for one second to fit in. And she's not just selling sex, she's selling art—which may be the most terrifying thing of all.
Go Gagalicious:
+ Juxtaposition 101: The Pope & The Queen & Lady Gaga & Tupac Shakur
+ Like that Lady Gaga interview? Too bad!
+ When perf art goes pop
You can listen here, or read the basic text I riff on when I go into record a slightly looser, more natural-sounding version. The piece, essentially, is about how people are terrified of Gaga because they don't really get her, but they know they can't control her. Plus, let's face it, we're not really used to turning on their TV and seeing performance art.
Here are three Lady Gaga videos you really need to see—no matter what you think you think about Gaga and her music or her look or her existence. (She is singlehandedly 2009's best meme, isn't she?)
1. Even the most dancefloor friendly Gaga hit has a black hole of fear at the center—parties that never end, jealous boyfriends who never get enough attention, an abusive affair with fame. "Paparazzi" is a song with such a tangled relationship between the subjects and objects of desire that you could write a dissertation about it. (Somewhere, some cultural studies major already is.)
On the American Music Awards, she set her piano on fire and belted out a heart-wrenching ballad while smashing wine bottles on the keys:
If there's a tipping point for Gaga, it's got to be "Bad Romance," which has already racked up the kinds of view counts an artist like Rihanna enjoys a year after a song's release, though it's barely a month old.
Lady Gaga is beautifully weird, a cultural ambassador of oddity. She's executed a perfect attack on pop culture by not trying for one second to fit in. And she's not just selling sex, she's selling art—which may be the most terrifying thing of all.
Go Gagalicious:
+ Juxtaposition 101: The Pope & The Queen & Lady Gaga & Tupac Shakur
+ Like that Lady Gaga interview? Too bad!
+ When perf art goes pop
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