In my opinion She sings very well (live, avoiding lypsyncing), plays the piano, is original, provocative, good looking, a bit freak, genius, looking mad/insane sometimes... I love Lady Gaga!
I completely agree actually. I'm not a huge fan of her music (or the genre), but she's an absolutely brilliant businesswoman, musician and designer. She meticulously engineered herself to be sellable, and was extremely successful at it.
One of my favourite radio quotes of all time was from Lady Gaga when asked about "the tiny penis issue". She said "I'm not offended. My vagina is offended."
The old idiom is all publicity is good publicity. The comedians that are making jokes at her expense are actually increasing her cultural domination, which increases the likely hood potential fans will find her.
The irony here is that I remember fully there was huge commotion that people thought she had a V-slip during one of her concerts, and I was reading it everywhere. Then about a month later people were claiming she had a penis. I'm sorry, but the mass media is quite frankly retarded. How you can apparently see her vagina and miss seeing a penis and then claim she has a penis is beyond my comprehension. I'm sorry, but I believe it's ever more evidence that P-Zombies exist and simply go along with what's expected..
We said the same thing about Madonna in 1984 (except maybe the piano part). Good thing someone has picked up the blueprint and started up again. Pop music was really suffering lately.
Lady Gaga is such a uniquely positioned figure in music, and you have to give her all the credit for that. What she has been able to do with her image would be a remarkable accomplishment for a career of effort; to do the same in such a short span of time with really just one album (counting The Fame Monster as part of The Fame) is goddamn ridiculous. Hell, just look at her Google trending: http://www.google.com/trends?q=lady+gaga
She just really is that different from anyone we've seen before, so much so that she's remarkably undefinable-- an extremely difficult quality to obtain, convince, and especially to exude, yet she made it look more than effortless. She made it look natural.
To attempt to sort through her persona, list and categorize everything about her, and draw a concrete explanation for how exactly she did it seems...strangely pointless. You just get the feeling your chosen descriptors would always be slightly off the mark, that the right words would always be on the tip of your tongue but never appear, that you'd always be missing something about her.
So I'll just end like this: Maybe you're not the hugest fan of Gaga or her genre, maybe you think her lyrics are too severely lacking in depth to take her music seriously, maybe you don't find her to be all that noteworthy, maybe you even think she's just a passing fad and don't understand what all the hype is about. I couldn't completely dismiss any one of those sentiments. But let me ask you this: the last time you heard one of her songs the whole way through...was your foot tapping? That's what all the hype is about. That's why she can go anywhere she wants with this.
The article mentions the Madonna similarities. When I first saw Lady Gaga doing talk show interviews, media appearances, I thought; this woman knows Madonna is a spent force and is stepping into her shoes. Madonna has proven conclusively that there is a market for a global controversial female solo artist, provided the talent is there. So she's taken Madonnas trademarks (controversy, stunts, outfit changes, catchy tunes, simple stage name) and turned the volume up for a new generation. And the success has followed. Good luck to her.
Less than a month ago, I had never even heard of Lady Gaga before. Ever.
Then I read a nearly obsessive review of her on a social networking site. Then I noticed her showing up on last.fm profiles and other music websites. Then I started seeing her name in every other blog I came across. Then I saw her all over the front pages of mainstream news sites.
Now I'm reading about her on a TECHNOLOGY/STARTUP news aggregator, of all places.
I still haven't taken the time to listen to her music, but I'm already impressed. I'm sure I just wasn't paying attention, but Lady Gaga went from occupying absolutely zero braincycles in December to becoming a name that I have heard literally every other day from every other outlet for the past four weeks. I've been crossing more hype about her than for the iPad.
Like TFA, I couldn't hazard to say whether or not she's just "another fleeting pop novelty," but she's obviously doing something right.
I was personally surprised how much of her music I'd heard simply passively listening to the radio; short car rides, coffee shops, stores, etc. I'm not exactly her target demographic, I generally hold a strong dislike for pop/dance music. However, she's a talented singer (doesn't lipsync), a great writer and she's a talented pianist, so I have to give her credit for that (or rather, she doesn't lose any credit for being talented, unlike the thousands of other craptastic musicians making millions). I'd even go as far as recommending her music.
She's certainly a prodigy, but the question is whether she'll burn out or not.
Yeah, I am not really interested in the music - she's good, I'm just not a fan or anything. I posted it here because I thought the article had interesting insights about branding and media awareness that would be useful to startups.
Heh, I find it funny how the media jumped into lady gaga and her 'european electro vibe' within the last year.
Any music enthusiast should have known about her long before that.
