It takes a serious load of conviction to unironically adopt the unicorn as your personal symbol. And then write a song about it that equates unicorns with motorcycles. All without looking foolish. Lady Gaga pulls it off because she’s way beyond being concerned about looking foolish. She’s looked ridiculous so many times in so many ways that she’s completely transcended all our normal human standards. Because if there’s one things she’s got loads of, it’s the courage of her convictions. Therefore, when she makes a mixed metaphor of unicorns and motorcycles and the liberation of the open road, it totally works and we believe her. Even people who claim not to like Gaga eventually have to admit her songs are genuinely empowering.
“I want your whiskey mouth all over my blonde south” – one of the single sexiest lines ever in a pop song! You can take it as a trashy vulgarity, or you can take it as an example of new-model female sexual empowerment. I’ve bitched a-plenty about Lady Gaga’s lyrical shortcomings, but I’ll give it to her, this song has some great lines. You could say she’s trying too hard with the whole empowerment thing, but I say, she’s the only pop star of her caliber who thinks and cares about the impact she has on people’s lives. A lot of pop stars pretend to have a message, but it’s only a marketing gimmick. Gaga’s love for her fans is unique. She kind of reminds me of older-generation rock stars, who had the freedom to move about and interact with people as they wished, whereas today stars are so trapped by the endless circle of tabloids and paparazzi that they’ve begun to see fans almost as a threat. I loved reading Keith Richards’ recollections of just driving cross country, going into bars, meeting fans and jamming in the middle of nowhere. Most big stars don’t have the freedom to do that now, and certainly Gaga is too well known to make such a journey. But the important thing is, she sees her fans as more than a million sentient little cash machines, and that’s an attitude that has become very rare in the music industry.
I can’t believe I’ve gotten so far on this blog already! A couple more years and I’ll get all the way through my list and have to start over. When I started on A I wasn’t really expecting to make it all the way to H. But now I have, and it’s gonna be a good one. Let’s kick it off with Lady Gaga, live in Paris. My Lady is illustrating all the things I love about her and all the things that frustrate me. One the one hand there’s her go-for-broke sincerity. There’s her voice, an instrument that can’t be denied. There’s the way she’s not the least bit abashed to look absolutely ridiculous. She may be absurd but she doesn’t care, and that’s how she pulls it off. There’s something almost childlike in her gleeful enthusiasm for dressing up and singing out her thoughts. On the other hand, there’s her songwriting. She’s taken one of the silliest songs she’s ever written and turned it into a ten minute piano ballad, the better to showcase the high school journal banality of her lyrics. And truly, her lyrics are beyond retarded. Those words could have been written by a disgruntled eighth grader. Gaga either doesn’t realize that, or she’s playing an enormous dada joke on the world. She seems convinced she’s written her generation’s Get Up, Stand Up. She hasn’t but, on the sheer strength of her conviction, her silly song really is an anthem, at least for anyone who feels stymied in their quest for a valid identity. The freedom to dye one’s hair or not may be what’s commonly called ‘white girl problems’ and would elicit a condescending pat on the head from Bob Marley, but ‘white girl problems’ are important to us white girls, and self-expression is important to everyone. Even Marley would, if he were here today, agree that what one puts on one’s head can be a vital signal of who you are and where you stand in the world. Come to think of it, he may have written as many songs about his hair as Lady Gaga writes about hers. Now if only she could find someone to help her with those pesky lyrics.
Besides her propensity towards platform shoes and big hats, Lady Gaga is best known for her zealousness. The take home lesson from a Gaga album is one of empowerment and self expression. Her gung-ho enthusiasm for spreading this message has been genuinely inspiring for her millions of little monsters, and an irritant for non-believers. She’s made it her mission to make every last one of her fans feel good about themselves. That’s an admirable ambition, especially compared to pop stars who make it their mission to purchase as many gold-plated toilet seats as possible before the world stops buying their singles. I think Gaga’s messiah complex is adorable, but she does have another side. There’s a second theme that always runs through her music, a less charitable one, but if anything even more personal. It’s the bad romance theme. From what’s known of her personal life, she seems to have spent most of her adult years pining and writing songs for some no-account bartender who keeps dumping her. She understands that you can be as empowered a strong female as you can, but sometimes you’re still a doormat, and you want to be. Love can be beautiful, or it can be degrading. Because sometimes you want nothing more than to lower yourself, make an offering of yourself, degrade yourself, cheapen yourself, change yourself, prostrate yourself, sell yourself, whatever it takes to get his attention even for a minute. You want to be his hooker. That’s not exactly healthy, or empowering, but it’s something lots of otherwise liberated women go through. Maybe some of us always have such a high self-value that we never allow ourselves to sink that low, or maybe some of us are always lucky in love. But a lot more of us are drawn to drama, attracted to dysfunction, and inexplicably turned-on by inequality of power. We like to grovel, and we like our bad romances. And of course, we like bad boys who treat us poorly, because good boys are wimpy and boring. Yeah, sure there’s lots of you who’ll say “that’s bullshit, I only like nice guys!” Well, good for you, but I like bad boys, and it sure sounds like Lady Gaga likes bad boys, with all the trouble they bring. It’s the eternal conundrum – when you can have any man except the one you really want, what’s the point of being empowered? Is it because you’re simply attracted to what you can’t have or what you know will be bad for you? Maybe you’ve become spoiled by all the attention and have set the bar at an angle nobody could ever hope to match. We’re lucky, us modern women, we have more freedom than we know what to do with, and we become confused. What we love in Lady Gaga is how she’ll wave the flag and encourage us to be our strongest, proudest, most empowered selves, but she knows just as well as anyone that in love we’re still helpless, stupid, and self-defeating.
To summarize the year in the bluntest way possible: January and February were awful; March and April were alright; May, June and July were amazing; August and September were torture; October was ok, November was boring and December was good. That all the highlights of 2011 were sex, drugs and rock’n'roll is either great or humiliating, depending on what view you take on such things. I didn’t achieve jackshit, but I wasn’t trying to either, and I got some of what I wanted, though not nearly enough. Just like the year before. I saw an amazing line-up of concerts: Robyn, Diamond Rings, Gogol Bordello, Brownout, Love Inks, Bobby Birdman, YACHT, The Kills, The Decemberists, Liza Minnelli, Lucinda Williams, EMA, CSS, Morrissey. There were some sad moments; saying goodbye to Elizabeth Taylor, Amy Winehouse, Clarence Clemons and Cesaria Evora. Also upsetting, Jack White’s triple whammy of betrayal; breaking up the White Stripes, divorcing Karen Elson and associating himself with ICP. He’s got some major making-up to do. In the end, the uneventful nature of 2011 should be taken as a good thing. Everything was beautiful and nothing hurt, almost.
1) In music, Lady Gaga has been the guiding light of the year. I’ve had to swallow my elitist tendencies (that’s ok, they were unattractive anyway) and admit that I’ve fallen in love with Gaga and her messianic gospel of self-love. Her boundless enthusiasm for all things theatrical - be it haute couture, lengthy videos, half-crazed TV interviews, opulent arena shows, or those inescapably memorable hit singles – is a blinding blast of sincerity in an ocean of staged, wooden, pre-scripted and impersonal ‘stars’ who have nothing to present of themselves besides their glossy backsides. All of which would be null and void if it weren’t for the most vital thing: she can sing circles around nearly every one of her peers and many of her elders too. Her songs might be lyrically incoherent but that doesn’t stop them from delivering, with the cutting efficiency that only a pop song can have, her message of paws-up! empowerment. Which would be intolerably cheesy, except that she believes it so hard, and that makes us believe it back. Therefore, Born This Way, album of the year.
2) Proceeding in no established order, then. Recent years have shown a heartening trend of artists growing gracefully older, making great work from a mature perspective, and proving that if you’re never too old to rock’n'roll if you’re too young too die. One example was the comeback of Lucinda Williams, who finally made her album of happy woman blues. She’s still preoccupied by past loves who wronged her, haunted by old friends who died, and concerned with the regular hardships of life, but age (and presumably, married contentment) has taken the edge off. The very title, Blessed, hints at her contemplative attitude this time around. I think it’s her best since World Without Tears, only without tears.
3) The Kills have made their best album yet. Blood Pressures is their most professional sounding record, which is no detriment. They don’t rock any less hard for having learned to use the studio to better advantage. The album is dark and mesmerizing, like Alison Mosshart’s persona. She’s become a leading light for me, a new rock icon who deserves to be remembered as one of the great frontmen. She and Jamie Hince have great chemistry together but how far will the duo go, I don’t know. But I’m certain that someday Mosshart will be subject of many ‘I saw her when’ tributes.
4) SuperHeavy definitely takes the cake for best surprise of the year. Just when it seemed that Mick Jagger would only get off his pile of money to marshal another greatest-hits tour for the Rolling Stones to amass more money, here he comes with something entirely fresh and off-the-wall. Jagger’s choice of super group was seemingly random, but turned out to be impeccable. With the help of Dave Stewart, Damian Marley, A.R. Rahman and Joss Stone, Mick gets to indulge his taste for the exotic, combining flavors of Bollywood, Kingston, rap, funk, soul, and the blues-based rock’n'roll he helped invent. It could’ve been weird, it could’ve been self-indulgent, it could’ve not worked at all, but it work it does, and how. I can’t stop being delighted to get such a treat.
5) Again with older people rocking out like there’s no tomorrow. Tom Waits is another veteran who suddenly found his creative spark burning brighter than ever. Waits has never really had a slump in his career, he’s been consistently himself for decades, staying in character and undistracted by passing fads or the winds of fashion. Though he’s never let us down, it feels like he’s upped his game. Bad As Me stands out for sheer relish and for that has brought on a bout of critical and commercial success. The old devil has grown in stature from fringe-dwelling eccentric to a figure of such coolness he can not only write a song sending up The Rolling Stones, he can then compel a certain Mr. Richards to come play on it.
6) More of oldsers doin’ it like it’s new. Paul Simon was never given to childishness anyway. Come-ons, double entendres, party anthems, glorification of drugs and cars, none of those things were ever his thing. He’s written some great love songs, which all are somehow tinged with mournfulness, as if every love was already heavy with regret. On So Beautiful Or So What he’s right on track with the formula he mastered with Graceland, a combination of African and Latin beats, equal parts blues, piano pop and gospel, and a view of the world as a place of sadness and beauty, redeemed by love. And of course, a little humor at his own expense, as in The Afterlife, where he’s an ordinary schlub trying to get into heaven and finding that it’s a bureaucracy, and the girls still don’t like him.
7) I know I’m the only person on the planet to say this, but I really liked Lulu, Lou Reed‘s collaboration with Metallica. The record got blisteringly bad reviews across the board. It topped many a critic’s worst list. Clearly not one of those critics was a Lou Reed scholar. They all complained that it’s too weird and doesn’t sound like regular Metallica. No one saw it in context of Reed’s career or noticed the many references to and parallels with Berlin. Admittedly, I can’t recommend it for everyone, but for lifelong followers of Lou Reed, it’s a must. It’s hard to listen to, yes, but it’s not the first time Lou Reed has been hard to listen to. There have been many moments in his career that I find unlistenable. For example, Lulu is considerably less painful for me than The Blue Mask. Reed continues to be a challenging, uncompromising experimenter. I had misgivings about such a strange mash-up, but found myself getting thoroughly drawn in by Reed’s storytelling, his powerful lines, and his wrenching delivery.
8) This year I fell for Florence. The first Florence + The Machine was good, but Ceremonials was epic. Florence Welch has come into her own on this one. She knows the power of a big emotional climax, and provides climax after climax, every song a cresting wave. I can only describe the music as opulent. A minimalist she is not. There’s layers of tumbling sound, everything and the kitchen sink it sounds like, but expertly marshaled for maximum effect. And of course, the style, the look the personality. Red hair!
9) Speaking of epic and convoluted, the Decemberists were just those things on their 2009 album The Hazards of Love. That album was a musically and lyrically dense concept album. Now, on The King Is Dead, they’ve taken the opposite track, making it stripped down and folksy. Though I love the highly ambitious and complex concept album, the simplicity of songs for their own sake is its own charm too. It looks like this might be their last album in the foreseeable future, so enjoy it thoroughly. It’s sad that the most literate and intelligent band going has gone on hiatus. Perhaps Colin Meloy has an as yet untapped future as a novelist, and music was just a youthful pursuit, or perhaps they’ll make it back together after a restful year or two. Either way, not a bad note to bow out on.
10) Amid all these heavy hitters there’s room for something more out of the blue. The five-man duo YACHT combines high-energy electro-pop with an endearingly earnest New Age sensibility. Led by the androgynous Claire L Evans, they’re at one spiritual, cerebral and fun to dance to. Shangri-La takes as its topic dual visions of utopia and dystopia. But to call it a concept album would be reaching. YACHT has their worldview and iconography, but they’re still more interested in playing fun music than drawing out big ideas. If Evans isn’t a star now, she certainly deserves to become one soon. She’s got the stage presence of a guru, with the laying-on of hands for her following of devout fans.
Of course today poor production from a hitmaking artist is unheard of. Production is its own artform now, an end in itself. To be used for good or for evil. I’ll just use Lady Gaga as an example of how to use the latest, greatest, cutting-edge-est production values without getting drowned in it. Because she really knows what she’s going for. Born This Way is impeccable all through and through. I thin she said she “licked and made love to every note” or something, which is an icky way of putting it but about on target. Bloody Mary has to be my favorite BTW track. Gaga sprang to fame for making club songs, and she’s still clinging to her comfort zone of chest-thumping beats and mega-choruses. I like it more when she allows new elements to enter the picture, like the cabaret inflections here. She’s going in the right direction, and hopefully will carry on an evolution that allows her to ditch the tired comparisons to Madonna, and walk on some fresh musical ground. I’d say what Gaga is missing in her career so far is a partner. She’s got the voice and she’s got the tunes, but her lyrics are frankly idiotic. Words aren’t her forte, and that’s where a collaborator should come in. She needs to find her Bernie.
Lady Gaga wrote this song, which is exactly the kind of catchy but mindless song designed to be played at fashion shows, or possibly strip clubs. You’d think at first ‘what a dumb song’. Then you realize, she really means it. Jesus is the new black, fashion is the new Jesus, amen. Gaga takes fashion very seriously. Very, very. I just watched a documentary on Anna Wintour, who just about runs the entire multi-billion-dollar fashion industry single-handedly, and not even Anna takes fashion this seriously. For Lady Gaga fame and fashion are religion – plus she’s Catholic. No wonder designers love her. She’s the only person in the world who’ll wear ten-inch heelless platform boots to take out the trash, she’s beyond supermodel or movie star. That in turn inspires us little monsters to be our most fabulous selves. She truly believes in dressing up as more than ‘dressing up’; it’s a means of spiritual enhancement, self-expression, and artistic creation – it’s the way to become your self. Lots of us have adhered to that for a long time before there was a Gaga, but it’s nice to have a hero who mirrors it. I suspect Gaga has a bit of a messiah complex. She’s well aware how much her fans look up to her and makes it her mission to…to do something, I’m not sure what exactly her mission is, but she’s working at it very hard. She’s got a clear gleam of crazy in her eye. I don’t know how directly autobiographical her videos are, but they’re obviously stemming from some personal truth, and to judge from the new one, she might well be mentally unstable in the clinical sense. She’s in good company if she is. She’s putting herself on the line, for what grand end we don’t know yet, and that’s an element of danger and authenticity long absent from the fame arena.
I think this song escaped from Nile Rodgers’ basement in 1977 and time-traveled straight to Lady Gaga. With that chorus, it belongs underneath a disco ball. Lady Gaga hasn’t made a video for Bad Kids. Not yet. But fear you not, somebody has thought to sync the song to Gaga’s Thierry Mugler advert, which stands much improved. Gaga seems to find videos the most inspiring form of expression, and if she goes on to film one for each Born This Way song it will be no surprise. She’d probably do well, and garner just as much fame if she stops calling herself a pop star, singer or musician and just goes for ‘video performance artist’ instead. And I mean that as no putdown. She takes her videos very seriously, and has made a string of visionary one with no signs of diminished ambition. Next time, Gaga, forget about making a mere record album. Make it a full-length audio-visual art installation. Or just fuck music and make a movie already.
Speaking of art, relevance and whether rock be dead or alive… Lady Gaga is divisive. I was slow to embrace her because of course, she’s popular and that makes me suspicious. Because also, though she was a big dresser right out of the gate, her first album was lagging behind the persona. The Lady was larger than life; the music was generic club stuff redeemed only by the strength of the singer’s charisma. Though The Fame had three great singles, it was otherwise boringly well aligned with commercial market standards. As her singles became ubiquitous one by one, Gaga continued to insist on herself as an artist. Granted she’s elevated dressing to an art, and that is no small achievement in itself. Through an evolution of two and a half albums, Gaga has revealed that she does indeed have an artistic vision. Her stated goal with Born This Way, besides total world domination, is to get her retro ‘huge choruses’ back on the radio and in the clubs. If the album sometimes sounds like all choruses, no verses, that’s precisely the point. She’s hellbent on reviving the unabashedly dramatic, catchy, bombastic, feel-good sound of 80′s arena rock. Whether this is a legitimate artistic achievement is up for debate, but it’s definitely the most fun on offer right now. It’s also a question where her mission takes her next – will Gaga develop into a musical force that matches her ambitions, or fall into a rut of churning out frivolously entertaining dance music? Born This Way is geared for fun and radioplay, but it shows signs of creative ambition beyond the dancefloor. Americano is one of my favorite tracks. Though it, like most of the other tracks, leans on beats, it also has a melody that sounds like an old classic you just can’t put your finger on. Americano’s bursts of Spanish, as well as the broken German of Schiese, are signs of a lively interest in breaking away from expectations. In fashion, Lady Gaga has already caught up to David Bowie as a prophet of platform shoes. Her music is still miles away from that level of import, but she’s clearly eager to play catch-up.
Only from Gaga. She makes a video casting herself as Mary Magdalen, and we breathe a sigh of relief and say ‘at least it’s not as pretentious as her last one’. That said, I rather quite liked it. I know some folks will continue repeating the dreary old complaint that sexed up Catholic kitsch is the providence of Madonna, and Gaga is just doing a cheap ripoff. For your information, Lady Gaga was raised a Catholic and attended a convent school, so her claim to the imagery is as legitimate as anyone’s. I think Gaga’s use of Catholic images in this video is fresher and more interesting than her own previous crucifix-licking in Alejandro. I like the portrayal of Christ and the disciples as a leather gang. It’s easy to imagine that if Christ were to show up today, he’d probably appear in a similar milieu. Remember, He was an outsider who made a point to minister to others on the edge of society – the poor, the sick, the undesirable. Portraying Christ as a tough cholo makes perfect dramatic sense, and in fact, that sounds like a movie I’d like to see. Maybe the Gaga could mastermind a modern-day remake of Jesus Christ Superstar? I’d pay to see it.
Meanwhile, I’m still fielding occasional flummoxed inquiries as to why it is I like Lady Gaga so damn much. It can be awkward when I bitch and moan bitterly about the dearth of anything decent on the radio and the general decline of Western civilization, only to be caught five minutes later dancing like a spaz to Poker Face. Well, I like aggressive big beats, and I like choruses that stick like glue to the inside of the brain, I like an over-the-top personality, I like costumes, and all those things Gaga delivers in spades. And underneath those things, which in the end are all surface, her music seriously speaks to me. Lady Gaga is nowhere near being a good lyricist. But she has an amazing gift for expressing sentiments that are so simple yet somehow meaningful. The reassuring platitudes of “just dance, it’ll be ok”, or “I’m on the right track, baby, I was born this way”. Or Poker Face – “he can’t read my poker face” – in itself a defiant philosophy of self-isolation. I wish he could read my poker face. And of course, “I want your ugly, I want your disease, I want your everything as long as it’s free” – the anthem for all of us who’ve marched, eyes wide open, into our very own bad romances. Perhaps I’m reading too much into a bunch of silly songs. But is it reading too much when I talk about my own life and I find myself quoting Lady Gaga?
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