quote:Originally posted by Kwea: I think she has a good voice, and I LIKE pop music so that doesn't bother me. I do think her choice in clothes is atrocious though, stage presence/performance or not.
Part of the point of her "look" is that she wears the outfits she does because she likes them, and that's all the justification she [i]should[i/] need. I don't happen to like that look any more than you, but you've got to admit that the motivation behind it is a helluva lot more "authentic" than the thirty million emo kids trying to outdo each other in the eye shadow department.
Lady Gaga is this year's equivalent of Freddie Mercury (or Madonna, if you prefer a non-LGBT example), that rarest of celebrity breeds: the intellectual pop star. One can admire her brains and ambition, even if one doesn't personally care for her aesthetic.
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I think I approve because she writes her own music and clearly has a great voice. Plus, I love the songs. I all around approve of her as a performer, and it is only as a performer that I need to have any kind of opinion.
She has developed a public persona, and...I think that's very healthy. In fact, I think it is fantastic that she has a public face and keeps a private face for private. I like that in entertainers. I especially like that her public face is so outrageous - that she isn't faking sincerity and an innocent old me act for her public face, which is...less healthy.
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She strikes me as someone who has seen fame crush a lot of people, and is determined not to let that happen to herself.
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I'm like katharina in that a major cause for me to respect an artist is that they write and perform their own music. It's a sad indictment of our music scene when people are surprised that a singer sings their own music. To quote Lady Gaga "That's part of the gig isn't it?" I think her aesthetic tastes are not very similar to my own, but I too respect her reasoning behind it. She's making a statement that that is who she is and she doesn't want to hide it. She's does that as a means to encourage her fans to be themselves. That's an important lesson. Some of her music is a bit too sensual for me, but that's fine if somebody else enjoys it. She has a beautiful voice, clear talent, and some of her songs have messages I think are good. I admit I wish she'd stick to being a brunette, but more power to her if blond is doing it for her these days.
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Blackblade (and kat ), I agree. I don't think it should be surprising that a singer actually sings live in concert, and I wouldn't pay crap to see anyone who doesn't.
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quote:Originally posted by Tarrsk: Lady Gaga is this year's equivalent of Freddie Mercury... that rarest of celebrity breeds: the intellectual pop star.
I think the argument can be made that Brian May was the brains in Queen.
quote: May earned his PhD in Astrophysics in 2007 and is currently the Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University.[1]
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So Lady Gaga has this new video out that is causing some stir. It is rather decidedly NSFW. Here is a link to both the video and some commentary about it (which I do not entirely agree with but I think is a fun read anyway).
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I love Lady Gaga's music. I love this SONG (the lyrics are shallow, but the music is great). I hated this video, however.
Apparently, the song was just an excuse to make a disjointed, incoherent short, which tries too hard to be shocking. What the heck does any of it have to do with the song?
Sigh...I was expecting something better. I mean, the video for Bad Romance was fantastic.
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I don't like much Tarantino stuff so I don't really mind not really liking the video (in that they have a similar feel). It was okay. I hope she does things primarily because she feels it's beautiful/enjoyable/interesting (which is the reason she tends to give in interviews) and not primarily due to shock value (which is what it comes across as, sometimes).
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I pretty much avoid everything about her except for her music, but I love her music so much. Me and my friends sing all of her songs for no reason all of the time. I like how pretty much every song on both of her albums are enjoyable. I don't care about all of that asthetic stuff.
I just wish she would make a song as fun to sing a long to as Tik Tok by Ke$ha. I love quoting that song, it's even fun to do without singing the lyrics.
I just did finish going through an electro pop phase (right after my rap phase). Now I'm moving on to indie pop. (stuff like Suburban Kids With Biblical Names, Jens Lekman, Nouvelle Vague)
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So... am I supposed to respect her now? you know as an artist... and not for the soft-core nudity that may or may not play on MTV at night.
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I read a bit here and there, after the review started with MJ I decided to skim. Humorous writing, the consternation towards the sanwiches was great and the vid definitly raises the question of is it still sexist/rascist if the stars are female and minorities themselves?
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That video was possibly the most stupid thing I have ever seen. I have lost what little respect I had for either of them.
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Honestly I don't think so. I don't particularly LIKE it, and what I first watched it I wasn't sure what to think, but having read several takes on it I honestly think there's some worthwhile stuff there. (There's also some less than worthwhile stuff in there, and I don't think it's the greatest video ever, but dismissing it as pretentious crap seems to be missing the point).
First of all, I did not find any of the "exploitive" stuff particularly sexy. I'm sure there are people out there who are turned on by it, but in general I think it was crafted on purpose to be deliberately weird, in a way that lets it be a commentary on exploitation rather than pure exploitation on its own. (While it's not very clever about it, the video is a pretty blatant anti-misogyny piece. And I think this IS a big deal, all by itself. Gaga's stated that her goals are to stretch the definition of what a pop video can be, and the vast majority of pop videos treat women like objects. "Telephone" does that... but a) in a way that I think makes most people rather uncomfortable instead of turned on, and b) the "objects" turn around and kill a bunch of people, which is a pretty distinct message from the passive sexy girls we see in most videos, c) the relationships between the women, while cartoonish, feel more like they are actually about the women as opposed to about putting on a show for men.
Could they have done it without being so deliberately shocking? Yeah, but then most people wouldn't have heard about it.
Also, from what I can gather, Gaga being nude isn't just a matter of "hey look at me I'm naked," but it's kind of giving a "screw you" to the people spreading the rumors about her being a transexual.
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"You wanna insult me by making sexist and erroneous comments about my body, my womanhood that I am proud of? Well I wont have it, I am sick of tired of women just being physical scenery in videos and bowing to the wants of a mysogynistic society. So in short here is my protest, look at my vagina."
Correct me if I am wrong, but that is your argument Ray from a first person is it not?
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The video was meh, but I don't understand how some people are actively repulsed by it. She's doing for a lot of gen x'ers what rock and roll infamously did to parents decades before -- marked the end of their ability to understand why 'kids these days' watch/listen to 'that stuff.'
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quote:Correct me if I am wrong, but that is your argument Ray from a first person is it not?
Yeah that's pretty much it. But I don't think it's as ridiculous as that makes it sound - as I noted, an important part of the video is most of the stuff that looks sexy and exploitive is constructed in a way that also makes you really uncomfortable, so that it's not really the same thing as a video that just throws around a bunch of naked women for gratuitous eye candy.
You might say the video is not as successful at this as I am claiming it is, and that a lot of it ends up being more hypocritical than poignant. And I might agree with that. But I don't think it's accurate to say that the video is nothing but meaningless garbage.
quote:The video was meh, but I don't understand how some people are actively repulsed by it. She's doing for a lot of gen x'ers what rock and roll infamously did to parents decades before -- marked the end of their ability to understand why 'kids these days' watch/listen to 'that stuff.'
Hmm. Interesting. I reminded of the Battlestar Galactica motto - "All of this has happened before and will happen again."
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Just because I thought it sucked doesn't mean I didn't get it. I did. I just think she is all I said, and more. She's a drama queen, and I think I have had enough of her already.
That video was one of the worst I have ever seen, and just because it was trying to be preachy doesn't make it good, or worthwhile, of even fun to watch. I don't care is she wanted it to be fun or not, I just seriously disliked it, and now pretty much her as well.
Although I thought the comment while she was naked was the funniest part of it all.
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quote:The video was meh, but I don't understand how some people are actively repulsed by it. She's doing for a lot of gen x'ers what rock and roll infamously did to parents decades before -- marked the end of their ability to understand why 'kids these days' watch/listen to 'that stuff.'
Hmm. Interesting. I reminded of the Battlestar Galactica motto - "All of this has happened before and will happen again."
Yep. Happens in other places too.
For example:
quote:* Anita Mui The Hongkong diva's 80s hit song, Bad Girl, was banned in Guangzhou.
She had infuriated the Chinese authorities when she chose to sing the song on the last day of her concert there in 1995.
* Teresa Teng TERESA Teng's ballads were labelled "spiritual pollution" and banned in China in the early 80s.
Of course, both ended up being huge mainstream pan-Asian stars but especially in the former case, were labelled as being too sexually provocative earlier.
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quote:That video was one of the worst I have ever seen
y'all ain't trying very hard. Any given day, tv's regular music video lineup will show off at least a hundred music videos that are way worse than Telephone. No jokes.
I mean, go watch lil jon's Get Low on youtube. Beginning to end. you're watching a fantastically well-known video for an iconic hit that's above the, uh, music video's 'industry standard,' and I dare you to tell me it's better than Telephone.
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quote:Originally posted by Raymond Arnold: Hmm. Interesting. I reminded of the Battlestar Galactica motto - "All of this has happened before and will happen again."
yeah I kind of imagine in, like, 30 years or so, I'll see a music video my kid is enjoying and it'll sound like a Merzbow album cut to nonstop pictures of thrusting genitals, and I'll be all like "I absolutely cannot understand why you listen to this stuff."
Then, POW, I get deported. welcome to oldville. here's your goiter.
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The videos of her as "Stefani Germanotta" were very good. It saddened me to realize that she and Lady Gaga were the same person. And it really breaks my heart that she apparently found more success as Lady Gaga.
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quote:Originally posted by Kwea: Not in my opinion. Mind you, there are a lot of bad ones out there, but most of them don;t seem to think they are better than the others.
So this is based in large part upon ... the pretension you infer to the end product itself. Not uncommon, sure, buuuuut.
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In part, but not in large part. I'd say. I never said that a lot of video's were good, just that this was worse than most of the ones I have seen.
Crap is crap, but calling it art doesn't make it smell any better IMO.
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quote:And it really breaks my heart that she apparently found more success as Lady Gaga.
As Lady Gaga, she's unique. There's hundreds of girls with good voices playing the piano out there. How's Michelle Branch's career doing? A tier up, you've got Regina Spektor. Another tier, you've got Tori Amos.
And these are the really successful ones. There are so many others trying to make it in this mold. My favorite is Terra Naomi. You should totally check her out if you haven't already.
Whereas, Lady Gaga is her own category, not necessarily with her music, but with the whole package.
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Kirk, I know! It's funny--every article I've read or heard about that clip describes the audience as being stunned by his performance, but with the exception of the one person listening with rapt attention, everybody else looks bored out of their skulls.
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Not just bored: actively hostile. There's this one girl sitting behind him who looks like she wants to pry out his brain with her eyeballs.Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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quote:Originally posted by katharina: Calling it crap doesn't make it bad. You're wrong about the video and her work.
No, I'm not. It is a matter of taste, and I did say IMO.
What's next, a clown suit with holes cut for her breasts to stick out?
I enjoy some of her music, and she has a good voice, but I just don't understand the appeal of the rest of it. It seems forced, fake, and trite to me.
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quote:Originally posted by TomDavidson: Not just bored: actively hostile. There's this one girl sitting behind him who looks like she wants to pry out his brain with her eyeballs.
OK, so I found higher-quality another video with more adoring fans. Not sure if this is a different camera, or the first one was just cropped:
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There's a (slightly) older girl in the audience who looks stunned -- as if shocked that something so small and cute can be worthy of interest -- and, well, intrigued by his performance. It reminds me of that moment in Goonies where our hero kisses his brother's girlfriend in the dark and totally rocks her world -- and she finds out a little bit later. The facial expression is exactly the same.
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As insane and nonsensical her persona is, she's a wonderful musician and song writer, and seriousy, I think it would be better if people separated the two when judging her.
Just listening to the song Monster is amazing no matter how many times I tune it up. As a lover of Pop music I can appreciate her work just as much as I love Bowie or MJ.
It's not like she's Ke$ha or someone who's music is one dimensional and sad.
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