Reviews Music / Lady Gaga

Gimmicks won't die unless people stop buying into them.

Exactly. She doesn't let go of the gimmicks because she knows people wouldn't pay any attention to her without them. And Britney can't do anything? Britney used to be able to dance her ass off, and her stage presence was phenomenal. You may not care about gimmicks, but everyone else does.

Marilyn isn't relevent now, and ICP is underground, that's why they're not being talked about.

Nothing on Isane Clown Posse? Have you heard their music? They are terrible, and to compare them to Lady Gaga is a huge disservice to the lady.

And no gimmicks? Why? Why are you bothered by something that's entertaining? Why does it matter if they don't just sit on the stage with a guitar and warble out tunes. Elvis Presley was great because he put on a hell of a show, same with The Who, Aerosmith, Run DMC and other groups. Music is theater, I don't see how that's a problem, especially since Gaga's weirdness doesn't eclipse her talent.

• Insane Clown Posse

There's no talent to eclipse, in the first place.

Her lyrics make absolutely no sense, and half of her songs sound the same. It's just commercial, party music like what so many other musicians do.

She is custom-tailored to appeal to the brainless masses. The reason why she does better than the competition is that she is a freak, and (stupid) people have the habit to mistake ridiculous and outrageous for creative.

No talent? Have you seen that girl playing and singing live? She's talented. She's not perfect, but she's talented.

The fact that she is a good performer does not make her a good musician. In fact, she sucks as a musician.

Following your logic, I should be able to enjoy Gaga's music if I'm watching her sing and dance at a concert. However, if I'm listening to her songs on my iPod, at home or anywhere else, when she is not there to perform for me, her music is gonna suck all the same.

Broadway and the circus are good places for performers like her. Let those with some musical sense and song-writing talent work in the music industry.

Like who exactly? Who is more creative than her? Who is a better musician than her? And why, all I hear is "I don't like her" which is fine, but you're outright calling her bad. Just Dance does not sound exactly the same as Bad Romance, and if you'd listen to the lyrics they do tell a story.

If it was ALL about theatrics, then she wouldn't be doing so well on iTunes. She is vocally strong and can actually hit her notes (unlike, say, Taylor Swift live). If you're going to claim that she sucks as a musician AS A FACT, you might want to try backing that up with something more credible than "I think she sucks."

Not that I should worry about somebody who admittedly can't even decipher the lyrics to any of her songs, such as "Just Dance" or "Bad Romance." Protip- the titles are a hint.

your opinion is not a fact also if she sounds bad on your ipod then why is she on your ipod? simply put don't listen if you don't like there are tons of artists i dislike but i don't go around listening to them and then bitching about how bad they are

Lady Gaga is a talented musician and artist you might refuse to see it but it's true true she isn't the most talented but isn't it just stupid to compare who is more talented

Uh...that's kinda why we have reviews in the first place. So people can discuss things and either warn or recommend people to or off of certain works. I understand what the OP was going for, I just don't get why target Lady Gaga? I mean, she's hardly the only drama queen of a performer.

Above troper you used "don't like don't listen" wrong, this is the reviews page, this is where they're SUPPOSED to give their opinion, and nobody is required to like her, you don't have to lie about disliking her. I disagree when they say she's untalented (though some of her lyrics are kinda off), but that person has a right to express their opinion.

You're taking this a bit too personally though, disliking Gaga is not a personal attack on you.

Exorcise The Girl, I didn't even say I thought she was a bad musician. Her musical talent is merely unremarkable. So Okay Its Average. In fact, I complimented her actual musical talent as a springboard to complaining about her gimmicks.

Phrederic, you're absolutely right, this is a fairly random musician to choose to make this complaint about. Selling personality over talent is nothing new in this industry, she's just the straw that broke the camel's back for me so, yes, I singled her out as an example of what I find annoying about this type of performer.

I'm just tired of people trying to shock, or offend, or outrage. Its so obvious.

Thing is, musicians wouldn't be doing this shock strategy if people weren't buying it.

She's talking about Byemus, not you gibberingtroper.

Thing is, musicians wouldn't be doing this shock strategy if people weren't buying it.

THIS. People always wanna complain about musicians and their focus on looks, gimmicks, etc. but they don't understand that a musician's job is to sell records and make money. A label doesn't drop you cause you can't sing, they drop you if you can't make money. Musicians concentrate on gimmicks and looks because they wanna be successful, and that's what people spend their money on. No one gave a damn about Gaga back when she was normal, so she came up with this marketing strategy so she could be the superstar she wanted to be. I think she's a marketing genius; she knows just how to create controversy and make people talk about her and be commercially successful at the same time. And it's not like she's untalented-she's good, but there are millions of people out there just as talented as she is-they're just not smart enough to market themselves like she did.

And now everyone's standing back like, "Dammit, I wish I could've come up with that before she did".

If you don't like it, go vote at the record store. The music industry will start focusing on talent over gimmicks/looks when people start BUYING INTO talent over gimmicks/looks. They're just trying to give people what they want. And by looking at these peoples' outrageous sales, it looks to me like the public WANTS gimmicks/looks over talent.

People say stuff like, oh, I hate singers who are more looks than singing ability...but when it came time to vote at itunes and etc., they all went to vote for Rihanna instead of Jennifer Hudson (who is flopping). If you guys would buy records from people who are talented and ugly instead of the people who are gimmicky/good looking, labels would start signing more of them and start focusing more on talent than anything.

Another thing about Gaga is that her songs are intriguing, as opposed to Love Song #235038 you have Bad Romance, which sticks in your mind. Maybe Love Song #235038 is better written, but it's less memorable. Being able to stand out and dominate pop culture like she has is a talent.

FYI, I'm pretty sure Exorcise The Girl wasn't talking about ME either. It was directed to the anonymous commenter (189.4.50.187) who was talking about Lady Gaga sucking "as a fact" and listening to her on his iPod.

Where to even begin? To all the people bashing (read, mainly the anon) her and saying she can't write music: please go read at least a little bit about music structure. Yes, I know that was pretentious, but ignorance of that kind just pisses me off to no end. You don't like her voice? Fine. You think she's gimmicky? Fine. But to say she can't write songs or sing? That's just bull. Anybody with a brain could tell you she can sing (even if it isn't their preferred style), and not just in the generic "Glee" form. Anon and others, you do realize that writing a pop song is actually VERY hard? It's much easier to just write some rambling rock song with a loose melody, rather than a strictly formed pop song that can standout. And that is exactly what Lady Gaga does. Many artists have to get somebody like Max Martin to completely write a song for them; Lady Gaga does not. Also, just to add to this: while her fashion is gimmicky, her music videos are most certainly not. They're art; Mind screw-y Tarantino-esque (see: Post Modern) art. They're exceedingly well directed, edited, choreographed; full of various symbolism and gorgeous cinematography.... Oh yeah, and would the whole sex thing even be part of the conversation if this were a male artist? No. No it wouldn't.

I don't even really think I addressed that to the OP, but whatever. I needed to get that out of me in some place that wasn't youtube.

By Tarantino-esque, don't you mean BLATANTLY RIPPING OFF TARANTINO?

(As an aside, Tarantino is a terrible artist. His films lack vision and inspiration. I laugh along with the others at the Pulp Fiction hamburger scene, if only because it's the culturally acceptable, gimmicky thing to do. Another gimmicky, culturally acceptable thing to do? Say that Tarantino is a post-modern genius. In fact, I'd wager that the phrase "post-modern genius" is an oxymoron, if only because true post-modernism falls outside usual genre classifcation.)

Anyway, Lady Gaga is pretty talentless when compared to quality electronic musicians like James Blake, Aphex Twin, Kraftwek et al.. Hell, she can put on a live show, but so can Nickelback, and I certainly don't think they're a good band.

That last video of hers ("Born This Way") was really weird and disturbing; specially that narration at the beginning.

I think Lady Gaga herself is one huge gimmick.

At longstreth: How can she rip off, er, homage somebody who has built their career off of ripping off, er, homaging others? I wont get into an argument about Tarantino, though, since that isn't what this is about: the only thing I will say is that I completely disagree with your feelings about Tarantino.

Secondly; yes. Compared to those musicians, she's not good at electronic music.... but that's because she doesn't, ya know, WRITE ELECTRONIC MUSIC. She writes pop music that incorporates electronic style. Her genre would best be described as Synthpop or Dance-Pop, with a splash of Electropop here and there. Artists of the same vein would be Madonna, Kim Wilde, some New Order, Taylor Dayne, Ke$ha (though with Ke$ha's quality, I shudder to put her in the same sentence as all these other people....) Robyn, a lot of Goldfrapp that isn't from Felt Mountain or Seventh Tree, I could go on... and comparing Lady Gaga in any way shape or form to Nickelback is just completely uncalled for and a total low blow.

And at Scarface675: while I respect your opinion that she might be one huge gimmick, you are aware that that was kind of the point of Born This Way. It's meant to be that weird and disturbing (though for me and some of my friends, it was awesome rather than either of those other descriptors).

Also, I would like to say that I do not believe her videos are gimmicky. Fashion; sure. But not the videos. I know I'm repeating myself, but it seems obvious to me that this is simply her and her collaborators expressing themselves. Notice how things have only gotten weirder since Paparazzi? That was no doubt intentional: not so she could stay relevant, but because with her popularity constantly rising, the more the music studio's money is guaranteed. And because of that, she is allowed to have more artistic control over her music videos. I'm sure she would've loved to make a video like Telephone for Just Dance... but she at the time did not have the money, the studio backing, or the popularity to do so. Make sense?

I was not comparing Lady Gaga specifically with Nickelback. My argument is:

A good live show doesn't make you a good artist. To demonstrate this, let's assume by way of contradiction that a good live show DOES make you a good artist. However, take Nickelback as a counterexample (they perform well live, but they don't seem to be lauded critically...). This is the contradiction, so a good live show doesn't make you a good artist.

Now, this doesn't automatically make Lady Gaga a bad artist. It just means that she has to demonstrate more than just live skill if she wants to be known as a good artist.

As an aside, it's interesting to see how "pop" musicians are in fact mining quite other genres. Take Britney's "Hold It Against Me", which is pretty dubstep-y, or even Gaga's "Judas", which has a weird sort of 80s hard rock feel to it (in my opinion, at least). But Britney and Gaga are both "pop" musicians. So is "Hold It Against Me" pop or dubstep or club or dance or what? Is pop even a genre? If you look at successful pop songs over the past few years, there's a lot of hip-hop, some rap, some club, some dance, maybe even some rock. And yet these songs are called "pop" songs. So maybe "pop" is less a genre and more of a classification. This kinda makes sense when you consider "pop" as "pop"ular music. So maybe it's not entirely fair to compare Gaga and James Blake, because they are doing different things with their music. But at the end of the day, I'd much rather listen to the latter if I was looking for an electronic vibe.

I will say that this guy knows what he's talking about, despite the fact that I will anger the gaga police (or Gagastepo is you want to get creative).

Judas is a deliberate homage to early metal.

The thing is that Gaga has clearly modeled her whole thing on David Bowie. The theatrics, the personae, the ridiculous costumes and impenetrable lyrics...

Uh, a mixture of Bowie and Madonna, with some Cyndi Lauper thrown in for good measure.

On a related note, Bowie is seen as a creative genius and Madonna as a schemer that's extended her career through outfit changes, but what's the goddamn difference between the two? They write pop music, have outrageous outfits and were major sex symbols in their era. How is Bowie "deeper" than Madge?

I meant to reply to this earlier. Oh well. You mention Nickelback isn't critically lauded; they aren't, but if we're throwing critics into the mix, then Lady Gaga has both: great live show, and critical acclaim. And she has tried. What more do people want? She's a social activist, makes essentially Dada-lite music videos, works harder than any other artist I can think of, writes much of her own lyrics and music, gets critical acclaim.... what more does she have to do? I'm sure I can answer that: NOT BE MAINSTREAM! I can bet you if she was not mainstream, she'd have even MORE critical acclaim and be worshipped by Indie Hipsters.

And, uh, that's called experimentation. Most good artists do that. Lots of artists "mine" from other genres to widen the scope of their work. Look at say, Led Zeppelin. Though they don't really write pop songs, they often sample from other genres to enhance their songs. You're very right in that Pop is more a classification than a genre. Pop really is genre-less. Nirvana was pop. The Beatles were pop. And Lady Gaga is pop. It's a classification of a style of songwriting; it's a style that commonly produces the most hits and appeals to the most people, hence why it's called "pop", short for "popular". It's also a hard style to write well, hence why so many pop musicians have others write songs for them.

To Phrederic; It's the same reason people deride(d) Madonna as a whore, and why David Bowie's a sex symbol. Or why Courtney Love is decried as a drug addled slut, but not say, Tommy Lee. Because they're women. Unfortunately, sexism is still really common within the music industry. Things are better though, I think. Madonna would probably be a lot better received today then when she first came out, due to our societal advances. It's why now it's moreso just hatedom calling the (sexual) female superstars whores, and not both the hatedom and the critics.

I guess I agree with you, although I do think she's a kinda crappy activist. I'm going to link to a Pitchfork article about "expressing yourself" and what that actually means. It's actually a good article, and I think it underlines a few problems with Gaga's message.

http://www.pitchfork.com/features/columns/7977-why-we-fight-14/

You're probably all laughing to yourselves because I just linked to Pitchfork and that makes me a conformist hipster and bla bla bla, but I digress.