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Why the Lady Gaga Phenomenon is Over

There are only three things a great artist needs to do:
  1. Have great songs.
  2. Sing effortlessly in tune.
  3. Sing with complete abandon and faith in the music.
Lady Gaga's got the last two points taken care of, but, in her drive to do something incredible, crazy, and meaningful, she forgot about the first and most important point.  She forgot to write good songs. The Fame/The Fame Monster were spotty but they had their fair share of great songs (Just Dance, Poker Face, Paparazzi, Bad Romance) and quite a few decent ones.  Born This Way, on the other hand has only one truly great song, The Edge of Glory, and two other passable ones, You and I and Born This Way.  The rest of the album is interesting but utterly forgettable.  She also didn't help her cause by giving the one great song a terrible music video.  Adele, Beyonce, Britney Spears, and even J-Lo released better albums this year, and, when you're trying to be the biggest pop star in the world, fifth best among female pop artists is not even close to good enough.

She could still right her career by releasing a new album, within the next year, with a few great songs.  Unfortunately, she's not Madonna.  Madonna was a talentless shit who couldn't sing, couldn't dance, and couldn't write her own songs.  Her saving grace was that she had great musical taste.  Lady Gaga, on the other hand, is an immensely musically talented individual, with great performance and songwriting capabilities, who seems to have absolutely abysmal musical taste.  She just can't manage anything consistently good when she's given full artistic control.  Before she became big, she wrote stupid, boring, overwrought, slightly jazzy ballads, and now she's content to pilfer the 80's.  Take You and I for example.  It's nothing more than a crappy Def Leppard ripoff, all the way down to hiring Mutt Lange to produce.  It's a real shame.  So much talent and so much monetary investment gone to waste.  You know, Lady Gaga's been losing money on tour this whole time, putting on a ludicrously expensive show with relatively low ticket prices in order to build her image.  Whoever's been covering for her's gotta be kicking themselves right now.

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  1. Interesting read. Didn't know Madonna had that little talent haha

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