The Trouble With GaGa

This post has been a long time coming, but I am notoriously behind on the times, so I’m just getting to it now (seriously, the last time I listened to the radio, Hanson was in style.) The point is, I’m just now finding out about this whole Lady GaGa thing. Now, I’ve heard the name get thrown around, but it took me a while to actually hear a song. Specifically, I had to look her up on YouTube once I found out she’d be on SNL. Let me just say to the uninitiated (as I was), the things I saw on the videos are currently burned into my retinas, and I’m not sure they will ever go away. But past that there was little more than repetitive techno beats with blithely nihilistic and inane lyrics. I had to listen to parts of four songs before I actually found one that had a discernable melody. It’s a sad realization that unlike the crappy pop songs from the 90’s which had memorable (albeit annoying) tunes, the crappy pop music from today has really no true tune, just a series of noises ran through digital programs that occasionally resemble words. Entirely unimpressed, I ended up watching her segments of SNL anyways out of boredom. You might understand why I’d be surprised when this happened:



Taken aback, I went to the most reliable source online to find info on what other music she’s done. After all, I hated “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree”, but love everything else KT Tunstall does. Reading her bio and musical description on Wikipedia, she apparently started singing in the womb, learned piano by 4, wrote a ballad at 12, and spent college performing piano pieces based on European philosophers. From the description of what she can do and the comparisons made, she should be making the equivalent of David Bowie’s “Life on Mars” sung by Freddie Mercury and played by the love child of Billy Joel and Gershwin. But going back to reality, what we got is a bubble headed fashionista droning “muh muh muh muh”. Oh, fate is cruel.

So here it is. Lady GaGa, if you’re reading this, please, think about what you’re doing. The world has enough pop tunes with pseudo electronica beats (Madonna will only retire once she dies, and we all know that’s not going to happen.) We need real music, something you physically are capable of making. Think of the children, GaGa. Think of the children.