This is the day of Gen-Y: they who have only known unfettered access to ideas via internet and growing steams of communication.
Theirs is a multi-referential pop ideal, as culture ‘eats itself’ like an Ouroboros, constantly regurgitating and re-consuming the bitmapped images they have seen before.
It’s not that there are no new ideas, it’s just that the reconfiguration of old ideas into something new (like a Julian Schnabel “found objects” collage) IS the defining tone of the now.
The litmus test of the times: pop music – and all the promotional imagery that comes with it - has come to reflect the values of pop art more than ever before.
Like a mother bird, regurgitating into the mouths of her squealing young, Lady Gaga is re-feeding us the sounds and images that we may or may not know we’ve grown up with.
Lady Gaga stands for all that is weird and wonderful about the youth of today: she is unconventional, underground affiliated, unashamedly bi-sexual and an grotesque beauty that is far more beguiling than something we might have otherwise asked for.
When the Lady herself drew comparisons to Andy Warhol, many of her detractors scoffed, but lest we forget that the man himself was abhorred by the establishment up until his death: he with his own celebrity magazine and the host of his own TV show live from Studio 54. How could this be a real artist?
But there is something so very real about the artistry of Lady Gaga. There is a wit and an awareness to her work that makes her seem so much smarter than her predecessors. She seems to transcend the modern day notion of celebrity: never to be seen with a yoga mat under one arm, a Starbucks cup in hand or pumping gas, the girl under the veil, Stephanie Germanotta simply does not exist outside the gilded frame of Lady Gaga.
A bowerbird of contemporary pastiche, Lady Gaga has woven a scrim of pop moments from the last half-century on which to project her vision of art today. She makes associations to inspirations such as David Bowie and Queen, but her references are so vast, the combination, measure and timing of her choices leave us feeling we are watching something utterly now, if not entirely new.
Like Hitler pilfering the swastika from the Hindus and the red banners of ancient Rome, Gaga takes her wig cues from the German transsexual character Hedwig (from Hedwig and the Angey Inch), her maniacal stage presence and a penchant for wearing underwear in public from Grace Jones, and her preference to leave her circular sunglasses on during interviews from John Lennon (or is that Yoko?) The accumulated result is something that is familiar yet intangible.
Her musical sound is a conglomeration of the past also: her song formations seem to reference europop of the 70s and 80s and are more closely resembling Boney M than Britney Spears (even the intro to Pokerface “mum mum mum mah” is the hook out of Boney M’s ‘Ma Baker’) and her predilection to white-chick-rap (“bluffin with my muffin”) takes us from Bondie to Peaches and back again.
In Gaga, we see the culmination of an artist whose skill goes beyond the ability to sing and write successful pop songs. We see the evolution of a performance artist, bringing the underground into the public’s sphere of awareness. For it was in the burlesque scene of Manhattan’s Lower East Side where Gaga crafted her onstage persona. There, she was inspired and tutored by the artist Lady Starlight. Together the duo formed ‘Gaga and the Starlight Revue’ which eventually played at Lollapalooza.
There is a completeness to her work, an overall story being told, which seems to elude so many artists of today. Whereas the usual process of creating a pop album involves purchasing songs from many different writers and brining in as many producers as the record company can afford to invest in, Gaga herself is the source and output of the work. As well as performer, she is the primary writer of both words and melodies and the producer of every track– skills she honed in the years at Interscope Records she spent writing songs for other artists like The Pussycat Dolls.
So quick was she to examine her life under the intensifying spotlight since her star has risen, the resulting meditation was the considerably darker eight new tracks which make up her latest EP, The Fame Monster, ready for release before she had finished promoting her first album, The Fame.
In Gaga, there is the defiance of a mould. This is a girl who has created something that is as culturally valid as it is marketable and engaging – a genius not so readily available, just look at the debris of wannabes past; the scrap heap of one-hit-wonders and pop reality TV ‘winners’.
Tom Ford has said that every decade defines its style in its latter half: when you think of the archetypal imagery of the 60s, 70s and 80s, it is usually made up of ideas that have came to fruition in the second half.
Only in retrospect can we gauge what we have inherited from a period. If the former head of Gucci and YSL is correct, now is the time in which this decade’s legacy will be formed. In Lady Gaga we see an artist who is defining today in a way that wont be fully understood until tomorrow.
Before she was Gaga... Stephanie Germanotta showcases her voice at an NYU event. Barbara Walters interviews, Gaga removes her sunglasses. Duet with Beyonce (included not only because it's a mesmerising video, but because Gaga is almost 'plain clothed') Her best video yet, Paparazzi.
Thanks for enlightening me. I am so glad to have wathed all those clips and read your words. I understand her so much better now that I have given it more than a passing glance.
ReplyDeleteWhat an incredible artist.
DAN. i am still speechless. did u get my facebook email!! people should pay to read this holyy shitt.
ReplyDeleteDarren, I'm in love with your writing, always have been. Great blog.
ReplyDeletehttp://www.siggielonglegs.blogspot.com/
Although I appreciate your argument Gaga and her cultural assault angers me so much I have to respond.
ReplyDeleteNothing she claims to be is apparent in her music. She is a vacuous desperate figure, there is a terrible lack of autneticity to her which is uniform across her style, music and interviews. She is too much too soon and leaves nothing to be shocked or suprised by. Her references to artists as talented as Bowie, Warhol, Yoko and even Kate Bush are laughable. She is a postmodern nightname who seems to lack any original or alternative thought, she seems as though she has been scripted. She wears everything as though she is a circus or freakshow. It is not as though she wears things with a comfortbale condifidence that of someone who cannot help but be an individual. She seems way too aware of her own 'artistic' expressions. There is not a sense that she is who she is, something which people like Bjork and Kate Bush cannot hide and are true originals. Gaga is everything that is wrong with a younger generation that is overloaded and gradually embracing all the ugly nature of the modern world. Her music regarldess of if she writes it or not is so terrible that anything she does becomes redundant as her 'talent' is not there to back her up. I find her songs overproduced, sonically appaling and homogenous. Every thought or impulse she has that might seem contrvoersial or interesting is something that Madonna already did in the 80's and 90's. Madonna built an image and a persona that evolved and build to an outragoeous sexual crescendo she was always pushing the boudnaries, intelligently and in her own way. I hope Gaga is engulfed by the the ridiculous persona she has tried to model for herself. Where else does she have to go?