Lady Gaga - Telephone
How Lady Gaga Can Turn “Interestingly Weird” into “Epic Starpower”
Yes! Telephone! If you haven’t heard this song yet because you don’t listen to the radio, you can listen to it here, RIGHT NOW. Yes, it has the typical formula of a Gaga composition. Quieter intro. Then the beat and synth kicks up. The chorus is even more hyper - by then, if you’re not dancing, your small soul spirit animal has nothing in common with GG’s. If you are, feverously, you probably get it.
For me, “Stop calling; I don’t want to think anymore” recalls a precious moment I had at a dance club last Saturday. As Bad Romance came on and my friends and I went wild, a middle-aged man walked up to us, staring bemusedly. I could not contain my irritation at his intrusion into the purity of my happiness. “Go away! You’re ruining the song!” I told him politely, before launching into a Muppet-esque hair-flying jump-around with my two friends.
The interesting thing about Telephone, as opposed to Bad Romance, Paparazzi, or Just Dance, is that it indulges and engulfs a range of feminine dance floor impulses we recognize from the last few years. From the brief, pseudo-dramatic lyrical beginning, it moves straight into a dance beat that reminds me of Rihanna when Rihanna was good (2007-8) — but it also accomodates a Pussycat Dolls’ strut (2005-6). Then it becomes Lady Gaga’s characteristic vocalization - stuttering on a single sound - giving the dancers the option to get more vampy (2009-10) with it, to twitch/jerk, to pop, to jump, to get crazy before the bridge. It’s a dancer’s dream because the beat changes and the tone gets more comical/playful before Sasha Fierce’s (2003-2010) interlude. Which, to be honest, is a sort of random interjection of “angry black women.” It definitely allows a moment of fake-crumping. But it also seems a bit forced.
It seems like Rihanna went through a similar hit-making streak about two years ago (SOS, Umbrella, Take a Bow, Please Don’t Stop the Music, Disturbia, Live Your Life), and has sunk in her radio darling status. Hopefully Lady Gaga (Just Dance, LoveGame, Paparazzi, Bad Romance, Telephone) can keep up her promise to revolutionize pop music.
She’s on her way. Fashion and performance art are so integral to the Gaga package: she has a personal production team she calls “Haus of Gaga” to design her hair, costumes, and props. Just by the nature of her work, she is moving toward becoming the second true music video star (second to MJ), and just as television channels lose out to the ease of online transmission. An innovator in music she is NOT. A beneficiary of the contemporary media melange she IS. She has already proved that the content of her videos can expand the boundaries of what is expected from pop. Right now, the raw visual power of her music videos coupled with the sheer danceability of her tunes are making her into a celebrity. But if she can bring the social commentary more apparent in her videos into the songs themselves, OR create ways (form) and good reasons (content) to pass on the Gaga performance, she will find a direct path to more durable stardom.
