This just HAD to be done!

Why is Lady GaGa playing a piano? I thought she was like, electronica-garbage-something?

She does play/write on piano and synths, though I don't know that she regularly uses them onstage, and have no idea if a piano sound is actually present in any of her finished songs. /wikipedia

She also makes me feel tired (and is completely self-taught at it).

I just noticed that she's trending on Twitter, and clicked to find out why. Turns out it's partly because Dane Cook described her as "like sour milk. You know it's not good. But you still wanna smell it just to make sure."

Why is Internet popular culture just a series of depressing people trying to top each other in faux-outrageousness? It's like watching a cartoon of a big fish being swallowed by an even bigger one. I somehow do think consumption is the big metaphor here, not in the capitalist sense, but just in an ugly, chomping, nasty way where people take in other people in big bites and compete to see who can be loudest. None of them seems to actually have the brains God gave a dog, though I have the awful feeling that they're all quite intelligent, these people: anyone who rode the brief moment when MySpace was making stars as long as they could, and then jumped at exactly the right time.

I admit, WITH STRONG RESERVATIONS, that I feel a bit of solidarity with Gaga because she gets beaten with some of the same sticks as Kristeen, Bjork, and most other female artists who wear or sing unusual things: people making fun of her clothes, calling her crazy, saying "I'd fuck that person but I don't listen to her music," generally not crediting her with agency, humor or self-awareness. This is unfair. That said, I think she's a *bad* artist, on every possible level. She is, as you say, a hack - a condition which doesn't forbid intelligence, sanity, agency, humor, etc, but which does make her an insipid performer who has nothing whatsoever to actually say.

In particular, she seems peculiarly un-self-aware in her self-awareness, not exhibiting any real understanding of the idea that knowing oneself is a means to be used, and not an end to be widely admired. Also, obviously, she hasn't got a bit of originality, and isn't wise enough to realize that -while genius steals- stealing is not a sufficient indicator of genius. And I like Andy Warhol, but there's nothing more life-denying than trying to emulate him, especially since we've arrived in an age that already embraces him passionately, and yet she seems to find it all rather subversive. So, seriously, yes. Let's all feel a little rage together whenever we hear the name.

Rach:

Someone posted a clip of Ga Ga on Facebook playing piano and singing without any wild outfit or makeup (I think it was a rehearsal clip), and I gotta admit she sounded good (although I just can't get into her music).  At least she's one of the few pop tarts who evidentally can play...

BUT...

There's just NO excuse for the style-stealing, AND if she has so much talent, she must truly be in it for the $$$ considering the over-produced CRAP she puts out.

I just think that all this Lady GaGa & Katy Perry slaming is boring, sorry... I enjoy their music, but I love KY's to death... and in that case, I love KB (Kate Bush) to the afterlife.
 
No one outside KY camp seemed to really care about those outfit "stealing" moments. It's not like a swan dress being stoned on every fashion review.
 
all the

True---but still

(BTW--KATE BUSH rules!)

                  Dane Cook described her as "like sour milk. You know it's not good. But you still   
                  wanna smell it just to make sure." (quote from Rachel's post.)

GaGa is just ew to me.  Not even in the same class category as Bush, Young, or even Perry.  So I've learned to just dismiss anything she wears, anything that comes out of her mouth, or any odor she emits.

Lmao: "any odor she emits." Because she definitely does look smelly. hahaha

http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2009/05/27/the-new-issue-of-rolling-stone-the-rise-of-lady-gaga/

Here Gaga is wearing something bubbly on the cover of Rolling Stone. This time, though, it's much further from KY's dress, to the point where I doubt any outsider would even see a comparison with the Chalayan one that may or may not have inspired both; indeed, it has largely departed from being a dress. And it's Rolling Stone so the photography is hateful. I'm kind of into the Plexiglass corset, though.

I have to admit you're right, though, Elliot. The larger world doesn't really care about this, and if we're going to go into anti-pop-culture fugues, there are many more targets.

I'm listening to "Have You Ever Worked With Anything HI-TEK" right now. It's pretty cool. Are there any Chicks on Speed fans here?

http://themoment.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/19/fashion-deja-vu-lady-gaga-strikes-again/

Interestingly, the New York Times slammed Gaga for "copying" the dress...from Chalayan, in the process quite harshly critiquing anyone who does what they derisively call a "hands-at-home" version of high fashion (they also wonder, smugly, if she's banking on the fact that her fans "don't follow fashion the way we do," because after all, the old "if you disagree, you're out of touch" argument is always so cute and fair).

I find this stance horribly elitist and anti-DIY. By this kind of logic, nothing that comments on, riffs on, or repurposes anything else can be real art; it also essentially denies that anyone can sincerely call themselves an artistic dresser without actually designing all of their own clothes from the ground up with no outside inspiration whatsoever. Yikes stripes.

That said, obviously, and at the risk of another round of this kind of talk out of me: I think there's a difference between a musician who is not a member of the cultural elite taking elements from an elite-famous designer, and a musician taking from another musician with less cultural power. I find the former a legitimate appropriation of a glamour which the world is actively trying to keep out of one's reach; I find the latter an exasperating, famous, well-baubled hand grasping hard onto something hard-won.

I have no idea which one it actually was in the case of Gaga's creation, and I am, at this point, ladies and gentlemen, COMPLETELY DONE TALKING ABOUT BUBBLES FOR THE EVENING, and sort of resent that I found this NYTs article which brought up these questions and complaints which I found so interesting, because it exposed me to FURTHER TALK OF BUBBLES.

I still love the shit out of KY's dress, though. What a total refutation of the NYTs' points. I mean, look at it.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/michaelalangoldberg/487986195/

Such absolutely natural stagewear. The way it interacts with the lights, and the way the duct-tape (?) X and pins introduce a sense of pain, without which the effect might have been too frothy. That dress is still my friend, replaced though it has been at the peak of my KY style affections by the TAKE ME...SERIOUSLY skirt. If I had any money, and it were on auction today, I'd buy it at the auction and wear it around town.

This post is done now. I'm just glad that, whatever our feelings on the matter, we're having a conversation about Lady Gaga that doesn't involve the words "doesn't," "wear" or "p*nts" in some kind of linear sequence. Do you have any idea what an achievement that is these days?

OK, good night!

If anyone has photos of KY in the bubble dress, please post as many as you can find here. thanks.

Hey Forum-Admin,
You have any idea why?
Is it because the more we have "out there" and flood the internet world, the more likely Perez or dlisted is going to find it in search and start giving KY some exposure?

Cuz, that would be um.... brilliant.