This Fall, Lady GaGa stands a good chance at earning herself a second Oscar nomination. This is in reference to the Bradley Cooper-directed remake of A Star is Born. It's an incredible feat, especially given the career path that she has taken over the years. While she is ubiquitous and everywhere, it's more incredible to note that it's only been 10 years. With today marking the 10th anniversary of her debut album "The Fame," there's a sense that she gone from novelty to a new standard in ways that her contemporaries haven't quite. Whether it's he music that preaches androgynous relationships or her many, many bizarre outfits over the years, she is a figure that's hard to ignore, and not because of needless Twitter fights or acting rude. No, Lady GaGa has evolved over the years into a figure of mystery and art in ways that proved she was more than novelty. She was the real thing.
It almost seems quaint to look back on "The Fame" as a starting point for her career. To think of the lavish productions on her follow-up "Born This Way," the radical experiment that was "ArtPop," or her mature recent album "Joanne" is to see someone who has grown as a person in every way. Yes, she still performs at the Super Bowl halftime show in provocative outfits while jumping from the roof. She's still picking outrageous projects, such as the horror anthology series American Horror Story, to reflect just how kooky her interests are. But in 2008, it was all a bit simpler to think of a 22-year-old releasing the dance floor hit "Just Dance" with a synthesizer keyboard and possibly being just a one hit wonder. There was nothing exactly lasting about the song, other than its mere catchiness, nor was there much to suggest that songs like "Paparazzi" and "LoveGame" weren't more than surface-level satires of fame-hungry celebrities. Basically, nobody was ready for Lady GaGa.
The most obvious breakthrough from "The Fame" album came with the hit "Poker Face," which already saw the public quick to question her sexuality. What did she mean by "Bluffing with my muffin"? There was a lot of mystery behind her avant garde music videos, and the idea of a celebrity wearing outlandish outfits made her quick parody, even if she took after such provocateurs as David Bowie. She became a spectacle as well as a musician with a lot of fun dance songs. But much like "The Fame" and its subtext of materialism driving a personality, there was wonder if this wasn't all just a one hit wonder's cry for attention. After all, what reasonable person would go to an awards show in a meat dress, or be carried into another ceremony in an egg? There's a lot to the allure of Lady GaGa that goes beyond music.
In some ways, she is the quintessential artist of the 21st century mostly because that's how she treated her career over the decade that followed. She wasn't playing anything safe, instead vowing never to wear pants and spend her post-"The Fame" fame getting weirder while proudly embracing the LGBT community with "Born This Way," which gave such advice as "Don't be a drag/Just be a green/Whether you're broke/Or evergreen." The video featured people dressed in skeleton make-up, the cover of her album featuring her head plastered on a motorcycle, and everything in between was esoteric and experimental pop that turned the independently produced debut look quaint and lazy by comparison.
To focus on the entirety of Lady GaGa's career would take up too much effort for this column, though it's interesting to encapsulate the decade for which she has been a pop culture staple. Considering that A Star is Born is likely to at least carry us to an 11th year, she continues to surprise with the mature album "Joanne," which features acoustic ballads and an even rawer empathy than what she had done before, especially on the critically panned "ArtPop" album that saw her spiritual sequel to "The Fame" become misunderstood. Basically, she has created a career that has already featured plenty of ebbs and flows, as well as reinvention. She is an artist who provokes with her image, but always seems to feel genuine about what she's trying to do.
It helps that she was able to be a strong voice for a community that was marginalized. With "Born This Way," she evolved into a queer icon by embracing others. In 2018, the culture has changed significantly and it could be measured in part to performers like Lady GaGa giving flamboyance a positive spin. Even then, she never seemed to pander, even getting her own sexuality questioned along the way. Suddenly gender and orientation didn't matter as much. She was making music for the masses, and it was her job to steer them towards something more progressive. It's why her Super Bowl show was highly criticized going in, managing to wonder if she would make a statement as strong as Beyonce's "Formation" dance from the year before. Was a football game the place to get political? It's a testament to Lady GaGa that, without changing a single word, the music she chose (almost entirely hits) did that for her.
It's tough to really just assess "The Fame" in a retrospective because to be honest, it's probably the least interesting thing about her now. Sure, it had "Poker Face" give her controversy over lyrical androgyny, but that's more interesting as a study of humanity at the time. Her special edition, "The Fame Monster" was arguably more impressive with the even greater "Bad Romance" showing her bout her luscious voice in between garbles and a verse that turned Alfred Hitchcock references into dirty innuendos (what do YOU think Rear Window's reference was about?). She was ambitious, pushing art in ways that was more than autobiographical. If it had any relation to her, it was emotional and raw, mostly trying to capture a sense of deeper meaning in the feelings of difference that her fans - later named Monsters - faced every day. She wrote anthems for them.
In some ways, Lady GaGa as a fad has passed long ago. Even then, she has never stopped trying to make art that provokes. Even as she has matured, her Oscar-nominated song "Till it Happens to You" detailed campus rape and had an introduction at The Academy Awards by Vice President Joe Biden. If that's not a testament to how much she's trying to be more than a girl in a meat dress, then what is? "The Fame" was the opening wall to a fortress, itself a daunting task for mainstream audiences to embrace. Had "The Fame" failed, who knows what would've happened to her career. Maybe she would've never gotten as potentially interesting as she could've. Instead, she's made art and music more interesting, and it's thankful because as artists like Katy Perry showed, people usually become too conventional and boring with time.
In some ways, she is the quintessential artist of the 21st century mostly because that's how she treated her career over the decade that followed. She wasn't playing anything safe, instead vowing never to wear pants and spend her post-"The Fame" fame getting weirder while proudly embracing the LGBT community with "Born This Way," which gave such advice as "Don't be a drag/Just be a green/Whether you're broke/Or evergreen." The video featured people dressed in skeleton make-up, the cover of her album featuring her head plastered on a motorcycle, and everything in between was esoteric and experimental pop that turned the independently produced debut look quaint and lazy by comparison.
To focus on the entirety of Lady GaGa's career would take up too much effort for this column, though it's interesting to encapsulate the decade for which she has been a pop culture staple. Considering that A Star is Born is likely to at least carry us to an 11th year, she continues to surprise with the mature album "Joanne," which features acoustic ballads and an even rawer empathy than what she had done before, especially on the critically panned "ArtPop" album that saw her spiritual sequel to "The Fame" become misunderstood. Basically, she has created a career that has already featured plenty of ebbs and flows, as well as reinvention. She is an artist who provokes with her image, but always seems to feel genuine about what she's trying to do.
It helps that she was able to be a strong voice for a community that was marginalized. With "Born This Way," she evolved into a queer icon by embracing others. In 2018, the culture has changed significantly and it could be measured in part to performers like Lady GaGa giving flamboyance a positive spin. Even then, she never seemed to pander, even getting her own sexuality questioned along the way. Suddenly gender and orientation didn't matter as much. She was making music for the masses, and it was her job to steer them towards something more progressive. It's why her Super Bowl show was highly criticized going in, managing to wonder if she would make a statement as strong as Beyonce's "Formation" dance from the year before. Was a football game the place to get political? It's a testament to Lady GaGa that, without changing a single word, the music she chose (almost entirely hits) did that for her.
It's tough to really just assess "The Fame" in a retrospective because to be honest, it's probably the least interesting thing about her now. Sure, it had "Poker Face" give her controversy over lyrical androgyny, but that's more interesting as a study of humanity at the time. Her special edition, "The Fame Monster" was arguably more impressive with the even greater "Bad Romance" showing her bout her luscious voice in between garbles and a verse that turned Alfred Hitchcock references into dirty innuendos (what do YOU think Rear Window's reference was about?). She was ambitious, pushing art in ways that was more than autobiographical. If it had any relation to her, it was emotional and raw, mostly trying to capture a sense of deeper meaning in the feelings of difference that her fans - later named Monsters - faced every day. She wrote anthems for them.
In some ways, Lady GaGa as a fad has passed long ago. Even then, she has never stopped trying to make art that provokes. Even as she has matured, her Oscar-nominated song "Till it Happens to You" detailed campus rape and had an introduction at The Academy Awards by Vice President Joe Biden. If that's not a testament to how much she's trying to be more than a girl in a meat dress, then what is? "The Fame" was the opening wall to a fortress, itself a daunting task for mainstream audiences to embrace. Had "The Fame" failed, who knows what would've happened to her career. Maybe she would've never gotten as potentially interesting as she could've. Instead, she's made art and music more interesting, and it's thankful because as artists like Katy Perry showed, people usually become too conventional and boring with time.
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