She is I

On a sunny Sunday, my alter ego is Lady GaGa.

Firstly, because she shares a first name with my other alter ego, the one you see here: Lady V. I accept that this might be confusing to some, so let me explain myself.

I am I, my name is not important. My alter ego (for the purposes of this blog) is Lady V. But Lady V exists as a separate entity because there are some people (admittedly, very few) who only know Lady V and not me. So the independence of Lady V makes it crucial for her to have an alter ego as well.

And the alter ego of Lady V is Lady GaGa.

I like Lady G (that's her affectionate nickname) because she is cool, theatrical and sexually provocative (as she makes it explicit in her videos, rubbing herself on a plastic sea toys) and in imaginative lyrics like: 'and baby when it's love, if it's not rough, it isn't fun').

So, Lady G for president and yeah, Britney eat our dust.

Queen of the damned?

I went to see lady gaga live in Belfast last week and i've been trying to write something about it for a while. The truth is I am not sure how i feel about lady g anymore, so I don't know what to write about her.

On the one hand she is clearly different from other popstars: she can play the piano (amazingly even), she can sing like a jazz singer, she is sexually liberated |(like only one other popstar-madonna), she writes her own songs, songs that are about her relationship with her alcoholic father. In the show she proclaimed herself as the queen of the freaks, the little monsters, her fans that she says she loves so much. She said repeatedly that she knows how to feel the odd one out, or feel like an idiot even, and she likes for her little monsters to feel at home with her, in the monster ball.

Now this is highly commendable, especially in a time and age where appearances is the one thing where people care about the most. To have a popstar, a member of the cultural elite of our times tell people that it doesn't matter how they look like is something.

On the other hand, there is no other way to put it: gaga is a shallow popstar. She has rilke tattooed on her arm, and dresses as if she comes directly from a fashion museum, but she is shallow. She writes and produces overwhelmingly shallow pop songs, with pop lyrics. The only thing that saves her is that her shallow lyrics are very sexual, something that is fairly oddball for a female song-writer.

And then it is her show: a weird mixture of theatricality, over the top-ness, wardrobe malfunctions (or not) combined with out of place personal confessions (about her alcoholic father for example and about how she loves us, the little monsters). Such combinations make the show look more mismatched than eclectic and make gaga look more schizophrenic and undecided than brilliant.

Covers are AMAZING

I have always adored covers - i don't know why... Perhaps because they give a new, a second chance to songs, perhaps because they remind us that there are many ways to see things, there are many ways to listen to a song. Often people think that good covers are reinventions of bad/mediocre/unknown songs. The cover that I have over here however is so NOT that... 30 seconds to Mars (indie American band that i didn't know but are fronted by Requiem for a Dream hottie Jared Leto) are covering Lady gaga's bad romance. And it's amazing. Stripped from the exuberant campness and theatricality of gaga, bad romance remerges as an epic, melodic ode to lost love, grief, despair and bad romance.

Enjoy... even without the classic roar 'ga ga ou la la'...

Art?

This is the new video of Florence and the machine's new single, drumming.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TpLXQorSQe8

It's an excellent song and i love it, i was a bit taken aback though I have to say when i saw the video. The issue is that this is a video by Old Florence who is hailed as an underground-y, arty singer, quite the opposite of Beyonce for example. The woman nearly got the mercury prize for christ's sake, and in the video she has a choreographed dance, in a leotard no less!!! Choreographed like a Lady Gaga video, not a Feist's 1234, mind you. And it's not that I have anything against choreography, quite the opposite. I just think that if mercury prize nominees produce these videos, that are a cross between Madonna's 'like a prayer' and Beyonce's 'single ladies' then what should we expect from the ladies in question themselves?

Where is art heading towards?
Will Antony show us his abs, JLS style, in his new video, I wonder....

busy

I am always busy. Have no time for anything. Is this right? Is this how it's supposed to be? Today i was teaching for 6 hours, my throat hurts like mad and i feel drowsy. I go to work every week feeling like a phoney, i know i should be doing so much more than I am, my lectures could be so much better, my control over my life and my work could be so much better. But still I am, like always, a last-minute person. Will this ever change? Will I ever become this perfectionist who finishes things well in advance and feels on top of things? I don't know. And I don't care. All I want is for this term to end, so I can sit and do nothing for a couple of weeks, feel like myself again and try better next time.

Something tells me however that I will be writing a similar post in April....

I don't want to leave you with my grumpiness though, so here is lady gaga in her new, outrageous video where she wears skimpier clothes and dances like a cross between thriller and twist and shout. Genius or dramatically overdone?

Caution: sexually explicit lyrics (remove children from the vicinity of this post)

Oh, he treats me with respect, He says he loves me all the time,
He calls me 15 times a day, He likes to make sure that im fine,
You know I've never met a man, Whose made me feel quite so secure,
He's not like all them other boys, They're all so dumb and immature.

There's just one thing, That's getting in the way,
When we go up to bed your just no good,
its such a shame!
I look into your eyes, I want to get to know you,
And then you make this noise, and its apparently its all over

Its not fair, And i think your really mean,
I think your really mean, I think your really mean.

Oh your supposed to care, But you never make me scream, You never make me scream,

Oh it's not fair, And it's really not ok, It's really not ok, It's really not ok,

Oh your supposed to care, But all you do is take, Yeah, all you do is take.

I lay here in this wet patch in the middle of the bed,
i'm feeling pretty damn hard done by i spent ages giving head.

Then i remember all the nice things that you've ever said to me,
maybe i'm just over reacting maybe your the one for me.

There's just one thing, That's getting in the way,
When we go up to bed your just no good,
its such a shame!
I look into your eyes, I want to get to know you,
And then you make this noise, and its apparently its all over

Its not fair, And i think your really mean,
I think your really mean, I think your really mean.

Oh your supposed to care, But you never make me scream, You never make me scream,

Oh it's not fair, And it's really not ok, It's really not ok, It's really not ok,

Oh your supposed to care, But all you do is take, Yeah, all you do is take.

I am finding so many female songwriters writing sexually explicit lyrics, these days (see my earlier post on Lady Gaga). The question (apart from whether women are really sexually liberated these days) is whether these are parallelisms with other things and they do not just talk about sex. So, although this song is clearly a 'spaghetti western ode to the premature', when Lily sings "you're supposed to care, but all you do is take" perhaps she means something more. Perhaps? Perhaps, men who 'never make you scream' are also egotistical idiots?

If this reading is correct, it really takes away all the sexual liberation bit from women and is thus deeply unfeministic. I remember when I saw 'y tu mama tambien' when I realized that this sexually liberated woman was only willing to have a threesome with those guys because she had cancer and was dieing, I became so upset. I mean, can women never be sexually liberated for the hell of it? Does there always need to be some other hidden, deep reason for their liberatedness? I sure hope not...

Reinvention

Madonna is the queen of reinvention, or so people say. That's why she is so successful.

Sometimes she is a dirty 'virgin' with a 'boy toy' belt.
Then she becomes a live pin up in Dick Tracy.
Then she is an unstoppable nymphomaniac, circa 'satisfy my love' and the Steve Meisel book.
Then a siren/japanese geisha.
Then a cowgirl.
Then a disco queen.
Then a rapper.
And so on and so forth.

Lady Gaga follows big 'M' footsteps, having reinvented her style (copying Madonna relentlessly in the process) more times than one can count with one and only album (The Fame and the Fame monster are one album. Really.)

Every year around my birthday, I think about reinvention. Is reinvention the mother of rejuvenation, in other words do people keep themselves young when they reinvent their style?

I don't know.

I guess I should reinvent myself but I am too bored.
My self works fine for me, for the time being, I guess.

Until one year I wake up and feel this deep need to renew myself and become some sort of aerobic queen or something else equally preposterous.
Till then, let's have cocktails and celebrate our old and boring selves!!