Skip to main content

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.

Comments

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

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Made a Blog, I Made a Blog, Look at Me, I Made a Blog

I spend what can only be described as an obscene amount of time listening to music.  So, to convince myself that all that time hasn't been a complete waste, I've made a blog to share some musical knowledge I've gained over the years.  Thank you for being interested/bored enough to bother reading this, and hopefully, you'll learn a bit and discover some good new music. First, a bit about the blog name so you don't think it's complete retarded.  It's just an amalgamation of two song names, "Champagne Supernova" by Oasis and "Bitter Sweet Symphony" by The Verve (both absolutely classic britpop tracks, BTW).  It doesn't really mean anything, but it rolls off the tongue well.  Also, more importantly, it conjures up the lovely image of a melodious, alcoholic explosion of musical joy, and I sorta like that. Now a bit about my general music philosophy, illustrated by one of my favorite musical quote, courtesy of Lil Wayne, off of the song...

Lists 4 Bitches

Now, for some actual music.  First, my last.fm account if you want a quick snapshot of what I like.  (Yes, I know, the name is stupid, go ahead and laugh, I don't care...)  Also, I made you bitches a list...bitches love lists... Top 10 Songs of 2011 (so far): The Weeknd - Wicked Games :   This song is perfect.  The best track off of the most interesting album to come out this year (It's also free, you should download it and give it a listen if you haven't already: Link ).  The overblown drums and grimy guitars give the song a lot of momentum and a great ambiance, but really, the song is all about Abel Tesfaye.  His voice is hauntingly perfect (or perfectly haunting, either one works) and his songwriting is on point all the way through.  I tried to pick the best part of this song, but I just can't.  It's that good. Tyler, The Creator - Yonkers : Should have won Video of the Year.  At least he won Best New Artist. Kid deserved it. H...

Review: Kanye West - Yeezus

Rating: 6.6 Up until now, Kanye's always made music like The Beatles: high quality, palatable, and not particularly emotionally resonant. Yeezus is a completely different beast. It's somewhere between the Sex Pistols and early Nine Inch Nails. It's got brutal, simple electronic sounds and a punk mentality.  Kanye's apparently moved past Common and thrown his lot in with Chief Keef. I don't think he could've done anything more misguided. Look at it this way: Kanye's Strengths: Writing and finding great melodies Layering sound Kanye's Weaknesses: Drum programming Rapping (all of it - lyrics, flow & rhyming) Yet, for some reason, he's roped in Rick Rubin to remove everything that plays to his strengths and focus entirely on his weaknesses. It's like asking a drum 'n bass producer to cut out the low end and make a Brian Eno album. There's no way you're gonna get good results. Now, I will admit that, if you are looking for...