My opinion of Lady Gaga comes, of course, with heavy subjectivity. As a gay man, I find it hard to say anything negative about a woman who managed to get a song with the prominently featured words "gay, straight, or bi, lesbian, transgendered life" onto Top 40 radio stations across the country. That she makes good music and can sing the hell out of a phone book are bonuses.
She is particularly on my mind today after Sam and I spent the seven-hour drive back to the City from Palm Springs on Tuesday with her new album blasting in the car twice over. Maybe three. Months ago, before it was released, she touted it as the album of the decade. I wrote it off as damning bombast, but after hearing the finished product, I could easily be convinced otherwise, if I even need convincing at all.
However, beyond what I felt was an album filled with song after song of aggressive beats, catchy hooks, and the provocative weirdness that defines Lady Gaga, the performance she recently gave in the UK at a local radio station's music festival simultaneously justified and enhanced my adoration. I know that I already wrote about her sometime ago, but I just feel like the statement bears repeating: I have not felt this way about a pop star since my early teenage years when I discovered Madonna, Erotica, and her mildly scandalous "Girlie Show" concert tour. And that was some discovery. . .
All to say that I love Lady Gaga, and around every turn when I feel like I can't respect her more as an artist, she decisively proves me wrong.
Her performance for Radio 1 in Carlisle, England, included all the theatricality one would expect from a Lady Gaga show, including an entrance by way of a coffin with an obviously pregnant (and prosthetic) belly, a cross emblazoned across the crotch of her panties, and an orgasmic writhe on top of a baby grand piano. She also sat (mostly) properly at the piano and played a beautiful acoustic version of her newest single, "The Edge of Glory," bringing herself to tears.
In an interview for NME magazine, she was quoted as saying, "If you fucking rip my hairbow and my wig off my fucking head, my shoes, my bra, every single thing on my body, and you throw me on a piano with a microphone, I will fucking make you cry." Hearing her massage the chords out of her piano and singing to a crowd of 20,000 as intimately as she would have to a group of 20, I kind of did myself.
I have long had a weakness for female singers and a piano. I think it goes back to the makeshift piano bar I frequented years ago in the early evenings at a gay club in midtown Sacramento, where I first heard Jason Robert Brown's "Stars and the Moon," a ballad that described a woman's journey through life looking for fortune and prestige from her relationships, only to achieve both and realize that she sacrificed love and passion along the way. I sat pianoside, watched the girl sing, listened to the maestro pianist accompany her, and helplessly felt a moist twitch behind my eyes.
Much like how I felt watching Lady Gaga at this performance.
At one point in the show, she brought out a jazz trumpet player for a cover of "Orange Colored Sky," telling a story of how she was in the jazz band in high school, and this song was an homage to that awkward time in her life when she was a self-professed loser and generally thought of as weird. Then she launched into the song, and I thought, "How many miles away this is from those high school years, from her first single, from her last single, from anything any young female pop star is doing right now." I hoped it was prophetic in some way; after Lady Gaga is done with this iteration of fame, made her millions and cemented her solid and loyal fanbase (in which I proudly belong), I look forward to more of this acoustic aesthetic she showed, one stripped of backup dancers, elaborate sets, and publicity stunts--just a woman, a piano, and the memory of the girl who started out as a lounge and cabaret-style singer.
Flash, bam, alakazam indeed.
No comments:
Post a Comment