GaGa for America’s next great pop icon

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Lady-gaga.net - Every generation needs its cultural icons.
Our parents’ era relied on some of the greats — The Beatles, Marilyn Monroe, Aretha Franklin, Andy Warhol. The ’80s got two of the greatest icons of any generation in Madonna and Michael Jackson. The disaffected youth of Generation X found a kindred spirit in Kurt Cobain.

So, who does that leave us with? Our generation, whatever people are calling it, is struggling to assert its identity in a highly globalized, digitized and increasingly turbulent world, and we are looking for someone who will speak for us and do so in a manner which also speaks to us and to our experiences and cultural values.

I’ve heard compelling cases made for Beyoncé, Eric Cartman and J.K. Rowling. All of these are valid, but I’m going to throw another candidate into the pool. I believe the potential voice of our generation is none other than Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, better known as dance-pop artist Lady GaGa.

I first came to this conclusion watching her appearance on last weekend’s episode of “Saturday Night Live,” as she duked it out with Madonna. The skit was some ridiculous faux talk show about house music, but it makes sense as a forum to study her impact. House music is all about excess, glamour, everything dripping with sexuality — all which seem to be thru-lines in discussions about the state of pop culture and the values of American youth.

Much in the same way Kurt Cobain was the explosive culmination of the alienation and entropy that followed the “greed is good” 80s, Lady GaGa is a wild exaggeration of both the positive and negative values and desires our culture has posed upon this generation: fame, excess, success, ferocious innovation, openness and an appreciation for diversity.

She has taken the obsession with this persona building and fame-for-fame’s-sake to which we have become so accustomed and turned it into 24/7 performance art.

But what’s remarkable about this is despite constant paparazzi exposure and so much time spent on building herself as this character, we still know little about her. In the same way the superheroes of old held mirrors up to society and revealed truths about how we operate without ever revealing their own truths, so does GaGa speak volumes about what we have become.

But it’s not just her persona that makes her our celebrity soapbox.

This weekend, Lady GaGa will have the opportunity few cultural icons actually come across — the opportunity to dine with policymakers and have the potential for conversation — when she attends the Human Rights Campaign’s fundraising dinner in Washington and dines alongside keynote speaker President Barack Obama. The next day, she will speak at the National Equality March, promoting equal rights for the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and questioning community.

GaGa, who has both spoken and sung with great frankness about her bisexuality, told a crowd following the “SNL” appearance according to GO Magazine, “I really believe in this cause, and as a woman in pop music I think that this is really an important weekend, and it’s not a f***ing joke.”

Lady GaGa represents what hopefully is a larger sea change in the American consciousness that has come with our coming of age: We are no longer satisfied with being young and fabulous, but we are looking to change the world.

Of course, there’s no rule that says you can’t have fun or dress fabulously while starting a revolution.

Gwen Stefani was quoted by LATIMES.COM on Lady Gaga's performance during the MOCA 30th Anniversary gala this last weekend;

 

Gwen = “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing. This night is over the top and just stunning. Lady Gaga is truly an intense singer and performer. Good for her. Art is so vital.”

Lady Gaga: I've Always Felt Like "A Freak"
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Lady Gaga insists she doesn't wear those outrageous, over-the-top getups merely for attention.

"I want to create a space for my fans where they can feel free, and they can celebrate," she says on The Ellen DeGeneres Show Friday (check your local listings). "I didn't fit in in high school, and I felt like a freak. So I like to create this atmosphere for my fans where they feel like they have a freak in me to hang out with, and they don't feel alone."

In high school, the Yonkers, N.Y., native, 23, says she felt like an outcast because she wanted to be like "Boy George." She adds that it "took a long time to be OK" with who she is.

"I want my fans to know that it's OK," she says. "Sometimes in life you don't always feel like a winner, but that doesn't mean you're not a winner."
She also reveals she penned her tune, "Speechless" for her dad, who just had open heart surgery.

"He had an aortic valve transplant," she says. "I was on the road, and I was having a lot of trouble missing my parents and wanting to be with my dad. So I wrote this song called 'Speechless' for him to sort of beg him to get this surgery, and it worked."

Lady Gaga says her papa is "doing better."

http://www.usmagazine.com/stylebeauty/news...aign=newsletter

The Business Of Lady Gaga
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In an interview last winter, Lady Gaga recalled her anguish at being ignored as she performed at a bar filled with drunken NYU students. No one paid the slightest attention to her until, fed up, she decided to strip down to her lingerie. “I started playing in my underwear at the piano and I remember everyone was all of a sudden like ‘Whoa!’ And I said, ‘Yeah, you’re looking at me now, huh?’ ”

Yes, we are. In the cacophony of the music business, Gaga has broken through the clutter with muzzle velocity, becoming a superstar in scarcely a year. Her first album, The Fame, is the best-selling debut album of 2009. Her single Just Dance has been viewed 87 million times on YouTube. Gaga’s tracks have clocked 20 million downloads this year. One of them, Poker Face, is the most downloaded tune in the history of U.K. digital music.

Before she was Gaga, she was Stefani Germanotta, an obscure go-go dancer who worked burlesque bars in lower Manhattan. A precocious talent, she played piano by age 4 and clinched a seat at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts at 17. But her fame and commercial success hasn’t followed the career template of Madonna (a trained dancer who worked her way up the club circuit) or winners of American Idol (where pop stars are selected by celebrity panel).

Gaga’s business model starts with an incongruous product. Listen to Gaga’s Poker Face and you might imagine it’s Britney Spears in a track suit. But watch the video and you’ll see a work of conceptual porn. Gaga, a 23-year-old blonde with bulletproof bangs and 3-inch lashes, slinks across stages in gleaming metal bustiers, smoked latex underwear and thigh-high stiletto boots. Performing Paparazzi at the Video Music Awards, she ended the set dangling above the stage in gauzy white La Perla lingerie, horrifying her audience as fake blood gushed from her bosom.

All this debauchery is purposeful fodder for social media and the mainstream press. “She’s a perv, but Lady Gaga understands viral marketing better than anyone on the pop scene today,” says magazine industry veteran Simon Dumenco. By showing up wearing a bird’s nest or a model of the solar system on her head, every Gaga appearance becomes an item (11,500 mainstream media stories cite her this year). “She is directing every frame of her music and her life, imagining how clips will appear on YouTube and what people will tweet after she appears on the VMAs,” says Dumenco.

She’s meticulous about imagery, especially the sets of her live shows. Preparing for a gig in Los Angeles, she discovered that a stage had been painted a radiant shade of white. “This isn’t the freakin’ ice capades!” she yelled at the crew. It was repainted.

On Gaga’s Twitter page, 1.6 million people track her outlandishness. They learn of Gaga’s problems with hairspray and get updates on her father’s recent heart surgery. Having that many followers can be perilous. Last month Gaga posted a link to one of her own videos on fashion icon Alexander McQueen’s Web site. After a single tweet by Gaga, her rabid fans streamed in and crashed the site’s servers.

Gaga leverages buzz by sharing the limelight with other, mightier entertainment brands than her own. “There’s an art to fame,” Gaga once told Vancouver television. Performing with members of the Bolshoi ballet, she wore a hat designed by Frank Gehry that resembled a mini Bilbao and played a piano painted by Damien Hirst. This year she collaborated with Beyonce and Michael Bolton. In October she showed up on Saturday Night Live with Madonna, where the two of them, dressed in matching dominatrix gear, tussled in a mock catfight (and near kiss).

One surprise: Gaga’s outré sexuality hasn’t fazed corporate marketers. Branding guru Steve Stoute, who paired Jay-Z with Hewlett-Packard, is working on a handful of tie-ins for Gaga. This month he inked a deal for her with Mac cosmetics. Next will be Gaga-branded electronic sunglasses, he says, similar to the ones that often cover half her face in concert.

Also in the works: a rock opera whose soundtrack may come from her new album, The Fame Monster, released this week. Gaga’s 41-city “Monster Ball” tour begins Nov. 27 and reportedly involves 14 costume changes. The tour will be tough to match Gaga’s own standards. As she reminded herself in an interview, ” ‘Now that you have everybody watching, Gaga, you’d better be f***ing great.’ “

X FACTOR: SIMON COWELL GOING LADY GAGA

 

RAUNCHY Lady GaGa is to sex up the X Factor with her most outrageous stage outfit ever.

 

But the eccentric Poker Face star, Lady GaGa is keeping 50-year-old Simon Cowell guessing about exactly what she will wear on next week’s X Factor Sunday show.

 

Adventurous GaGa, 23, is famous for wild outfits that have seen her shooting sparks out of her bra, and wearing only gaffer tape over her nipples.

 

And producers are said to be in a spin about how far she will go on the hit ITV1 show to leave fellow performer Janet Jackson, 43 – famous for her own nipple-flashing “wardrobe malfunction” – in the shade.

 

A show source said: “Getting GaGa is a big coup for the show, but she is so unpredictable that bosses are desperate to find out what she’ll be wearing before the big day.”

 

http://www.dailystar.co.uk/news/view/11037...oing-Lady-GaGa/

In the Boston Herald:

 

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GaGa's lambs get the chop

 

SIMON VETOES HER X FACTOR DEMANDS

 

When Lady GaGa was told she could have whatever she wanted to make her X Factor performance spectacular, ITV wasn't prepared for how outrageous she would be.

 

Like a kid in a sweet shop she got to work on her grand plan for this weekend's show.

 

With a Poker Face the singer insisted she needed to have fluffy lambs and hundreds of butterflies floating around the stage as she performs Bad Romance.

 

But when talk of zoo keepers came about, beads of sweat started to form on Simon Cowell's forehead.

 

As much as he would have loved the show turning into a circus, health and safety jobsworths came down on the plans like a ton of bricks.

 

Now the animals have been replaced with hordes of semi-naked male dancers in an outrageous GaGa-style extravaganza.

 

It's not the first time the Just Dance singer has gone a bit lala with her demands. She wanted a lion to go on stage with her at MTV's Video Music Awards but the request was declined.

 

An X Factor source said: "Simon wanted her on the show because he knows she will put 110 per cent into the performance.

 

"She has never done anything mediocre since she hit the charts.

 

Gaga's Rating "She is always way out there with her costumes and dance routines. But not even he was prepared for what she had in mind.

 

"He thought the animals request was a joke but then realised it was Lady GaGa.

 

"Simon is an animal lover and wasn't against having the lambs running around, but he said no because of health and safety.

 

"After the MTV awards GaGa knew that getting animals on stage was a long shot but she was just pushing her luck.

 

"She had other ideas and she's thrilled with what the X Factor team has gone with.

 

"People are still going to be stunned."

 

We wonder how Janet Jackson is going to follow it up when she goes on after Ms GaGa...

 

Source

GaGa Teams Up With Bono To Fight AIDS

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Lady GaGa has joined forces with Bono to help combat AIDS - she's designed her own set of headphones to raise funds for his RED campaign.
The U2 frontman launched the charity product range in 2006, previously working with rapper Dr. Dre to make his own set of earpieces.
Bono, who recently signed a deal with sportswear company Nike to create red shoelaces, has now enlisted the Poker Face hitmaker to help boost the scheme.
He says, "This is a very big day for everyone involved in the fight against AIDS. Nike is about winning, and if we keep our concentration over the next few years, things might start to turn around.
"Lady GaGa is the latest (RED) warrior to get involved. You know Dr. Dre did those Beats headphones, the big ones, you see people wearing around their neck? Well, Lady GaGa is launching her own (RED) headphones and they are the best sound money can buy."
http://www.contactmusic.com/news.nsf/story...ht-aids_1124342

Shady Lady: The Truth About Pop Music's Lady GaGa

Lady Gaga explains "Dance In The Dark"

"Baby does her dance in the dark," Lady Gaga sings, "'cause when he's looking she falls apart."

 

If you thought the pop superstar was referring to something as simple as a night out at the club in "Dance in the Dark," from The Fame Monster, you don't know Gaga very well — and you're flat-out wrong. As she explained to The Los Angeles Times, the tune is about a rather more intimate experience — one that takes place not within the bass-blaring confines of a nightclub but between two people alone in a bedroom.

 

"The record is about a girl who likes to have sex with the lights off, because she's embarrassed about her body," Gaga explained. "She doesn't want her man to see her naked. She will be free, and she will let her inner animal out, but only when the lights are out."

 

The song goes on to reference two supernatural trends-du-jour — "Around her kiss is a vampire grin/ Moonlights away while she is howling at him" she sings — as a means to express how people rely on external cues to cope with internal anxiety.

 

"She doesn't feel free without the moon," Gaga said. "These lyrics are a way for me to talk about how I believe women and some men feel innately insecure about themselves all the time. It's not sometimes, it's not in adolescence, it's always."

 

And it applies to everyone, regardless of whether you have a string of Billboard chart toppers or you're listening to the track in your car. Though acknowledging that she's in a "deeper, more compassionate place" since writing her debut album, The Fame, Gaga made clear that she continues to struggle with issues of body image and self-doubt in her own life.

 

"[T]he song isn't called 'Dance in the Light,' " she said. "I'm not a gospel singer trying to cross people over. What I'm saying is, 'I get it. I feel you, I feel the same way, and it's OK.' "

I found this awesome mashup cover of "Paparazzi" and "She Will Be Loved" by Maroon 5 on another blog. LOVES IT!

 

Lady Gaga Wants 'New Sonic Energy And Lyrical Style' On Next Album

 

'I've evolved, but artists should evolve,' she offers.

 

The Lady Gaga of today isn't the same Lady Gaga who released "Just Dance" off her album The Fame in 2008. This Lady Gaga promises that when she releases her next LP, the follow-up to her recent release The Fame Monster, it will be completely different than what her fans are used to.

 

"Well, I'm going to write new music ... that's the beauty of writing your own music — you don't have to rely on songwriters and producers to write hit songs for you," she told MTV News. "So I'm going to write a new album and I'm going to have new ideas."

 

Gaga, who is currently on her Monster Ball Tour, thinks the trek could inspire her new album just like the last one did. "Most certainly I have no f---ing clue what they're going to be yet, because I'm just starting this tour, and I wrote The Fame Monster during the last tour, so ... I assume that it will inspire some kind of new sonic energy and lyrical style," she explained.

 

"I find The Fame Monster to be completely different than The Fame," she added. "I've evolved, but artists should evolve. In the '70s and the '60s, artists evolved all the time — from album to album the music was changing, the feeling was changing, the artists seemed almost entirely different than who they were five or six years before."

 

Gaga's producer RedOne recently spoke to MTV News, teasing about what the duo have in store for the next album. "I don't want to say, because you always want to shock people," he said. "And you don't want to let people know, so that when they hear it, [they go], 'Oh my God.' "

 

Source

Edited December 29, 200915 yr by 300Mirrors

Lady Gaga stays true to her image – no matter what

Before you read the article posted below, I want to say that, yes, it is a bit negative. I’m only posting it because of the back story given, since we don’t know much about Stefani. It’s a pretty good read.

NOLA.com — True story: I once sunbathed topless in France with Lady Gaga. No, really.

Okay, technically at that point she was still Stefani Germanotta, a freshman at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts. It was early summer, 2005. Her younger sister was in the same grade as my younger sister at the Convent of the Sacred Heart in New York City, and the Germanotta family met mine during a vacation in Nice.

In my late twenties, I hopped between family roles as oldest young person and youngest old person. So when the teens (Stefani, her sister and my two sisters) wanted to go to the beach sans parents, I was acceptable as a chaperone. When the grown-ups were cocktailing, I got to join in.

At the beach, Stefani bummed a cigarette, whipped of her top, and (as I recall) talked about sex and David Bowie. Over drinks, the parents discussed whether it was a good idea to allow Stefani to take time off from school to work on music; she’d just gotten a development deal from Def Jam Recordings.

“Development deals can go nowhere,” I said. “She should stay at Tisch – it’s a good school.” Oops.

Recently, the Internet has become fascinated with a video of the nascent Gaga performing (as the Stefani Germanotta Band, still brunette, wearing jeans) at the Bitter End in the West Village. It’s totally possible that I was at that show; my sisters had dragged – um, brought – me to one while I was in New York the fall following Katrina. The bar was full of Sacred Heart girls and their well-dressed parents; the video was probably taken by someone’s mom. Stefani led a rock four-piece band from behind the keyboard, with cascading, dramatic piano ballads that were part Tori Amos, part Elton John.

Soon after that gig, Stefani did withdraw from Tisch to focus (as she’s said in interviews) on music, clubbing and drugs. I remember my stepmother telling me how shocked she’d been at her wasted appearance and skimpy outfit when the families went out to dinner together.

“I just wanted to put her in a pair of jeans and some sneakers, and feed her a bowl of pasta,” she said. “Plus, she kept calling herself ‘Gaga.’ It was ridiculous.”

Over the next few years, (updated via regular emails from my sister) I saw Gaga slowly take form. She changed her name, bleached her hair, and began to eschew pants. She collaborated with Semi Precious Weapons, a bloodless attempt at the New York Dolls’ Lower East Side glam mayhem, and DJ Lady Starlight, another variation on the sexually aggressive electroclash of Peaches. (She performed at the 2007 Lollapalooza festival with Starlight, and got arrested for indecent exposure.) She was dropped by Def Jam and signed to an imprint of Interscope, toured small gay clubs and got one of her songs, “Quicksand,” recorded on Britney Spears’ “Blackout” album.

It still looked like slow going. My boyfriend (now husband) and I Googled her occasionally (if you can believe it, there was a time not too long ago when searching ‘Lady Gaga’ on Youtube only turned up four videos.)

“Well, she’ll make money off of the Britney song,” I said comfortingly to my sister. “She can be a songwriter for Interscope and go back to NYU.” Again, oops.

What happened next, of course, is a matter of public record: a pop phenomenon of hotly debated merit. On the one hand, most of the tracks on “The Fame” and the new “Fame Monster” albums are blatant, and weaker, imitations of just about every act that’s made good club music since the 70’s. On the other hand, can 50 million Gaga fans be wrong?

Almost exactly a year ago, Gaga played the New Orleans House of Blues – just over a month after the release of her debut album, “The Fame.” This Sunday, she’ll be at the UNO Lakefront Arena on the heels of her new deluxe package “The Fame Monster.” During that shift from famous to monstrous – or maybe a shift that began as long ago as those shows at the Bitter End – the music became far less the point of Gaga than Gaga became the point of herself.

Her songs are limp homages to Prince, Blondie, T-Rex and every single period of Madonna. The darkly interesting electro-glam derivations of Bowie and Queen that Rob Fusari, her first producer, crafted on songs like “Beautiful Dirty Rich” and “Brown Eyes” have given way to flatly thumping club beats under lyrics that seem less like well-crafted songs and more like fragmented conceptual poetry that’s either a sendup of America’s empty preoccupation with fame, or an unironic end result of it. It’s hard to tell – Gaga stays in character, deadpan all the way, even when she’s wearing a hat made of spinning metal parts.

And now she’s frequently referred to as a pop icon. (Yet again, from me to the Germanotta family – oops. Sorry.) An icon, literally, is something that stands for something, and it’s hard to pinpoint what that is in Gaga’s case. A sly commentator on the hollow nature of celebrity? The harbinger of a new age of arty, avant-garde glamour? A talented adolescent who, with the help of major-label marketing departments, tried on multiple personae until one finally took off?

It’s too early to tell. But everyone’s watching. And maybe that’s the point.
Source.

Lady Gaga Calls Susan Boyle “My Woman of the Year”

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Could a Lady Gaga-Susan Boyle collaboration happen in the near future? “Never say never,” Gaga recently told The Sun. Though the pop star admits their styles are “different,” Gaga said “it would be great to work with somebody of that talent.”

The 23-year-old Grammy-nominated singer, known for her eccentric fashions and far-out performances, has had several hits including “Poker Face,” “Paparazzi” and, most recently, “Bad Romance.”

Gaga expressed her admiration of the overnight sensation, calling her “my woman of the year.”

“This time last year nobody even knew who she was and now she is knocking the world’s most established artists off the album and singles charts,” Gaga said. “She has achieved more in this year than most artists will in a lifetime.”

Boyle broke U.K. album chart records in November, selling more than 410,000 copies of her debut album in its first week.

Source

Lady GaGa 'throws drink at homophobic man'

 

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Lady GaGa reportedly threw a drink over a homophobic man

who made offensive comments in a nightclub in Canada.

 

The 'Poker Face' singer was allegedly in an Ottawa club with

friends when an unnamed male made anti-gay remarks to

her and fellow star Adam Lambert.

 

According to the National Enquirer, he accused GaGa of being

a man and called Lambert a derogatory word. GaGa is

reported as saying: "Well, that's your opinion, isn't it? And

I'm not about to waste my time trying to change it."

 

The male then reportedly called the pair "freaks" and said

they were going to hell, to which GaGa replied: "Okay, that's

it. Call me anything you want, but when you start calling my

friends names, it's over - it's war!"

 

She apparently then poured a drink over his head and made

a quick exit from the venue.

 

GaGa has previously been an advocate of gay rights and

urged President Obama to enforce equal rights at a recent

march in Washington.

Source: DigitalSpy

Hope that's true. Go GaGa! :D

Has anyone heard about Lady Gaga’s new version of poker face?? The one where she changed the words to be about the organization (RED).. I haven’t heard it yet and I can’t wait! But I found a clip from her press conference where she talks about supporting (RED) and how she’s making a red headphone line where part of the proceeds will go to the organization.

Edited January 8, 201015 yr by mambojumbo

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:lol:

 

http://perezhilton.com/2010-01-10-leona-loves-gaga-too