silktempest's Full Review: The Fame [Bonus Track] [PA] by Lady Gaga
A Virgin Megastore is about to close in Broadway NY. LADY GAGA’s debut The Fame was all over the place (as I picked THE VELVET UNDERGROUND and PRINCE, to name a few discount households, before the inevitable).
The image pretty much summarizes what the LADY is about. Credit crunch is sinking down the smithereens of a post-MP3 recording industry. Still, all that she wants is dancing to it. Just Dance topped Billboard Hot 100 and it is not hard to decipher the event.
Twice as vulgar, still not as outrageous as KATY PERRY, with some hits penned for THE PUSSYCAT DOLLS overcompensating for her relatively low-key profile, the LADY is a tramp. She has the hunger for fame of young MADONNA and, of course, her pedigree from NY underground is a favorable feature next to KYLIE MINOGUE’s Aussie heritage, or the latter’s association with 1980s cheese. Some indulgence for critics (she loves BOWIE – oh – as well as MADONNA), the girl is a solid investment in hard times of vanishing fortunes.
Mediocrity pays off when there’s no floor under your feet. Eclecticism for the sake of eclecticism reinforces your confidence in the available set of resources. Diluting investments save larger losses. And hiring the NEW KIDS ON THE BLOCK’s producer (RedOne) at least brings some palpable experience of showbiz highs and downs, even if mean being marketed as girl band of a sole girl sometimes. Fortunately we are saved from THE KIDS themselves – (LADY GAGA made a cameo in their last unknown record, in case you missed the opportunity).
Just Dance is just that – mildly entertaining NY Electro, with Europop beats reminding you of uncountable early 2000s one-trick-pony producers, sprinkled generously in eclectic, frantic, handicapped crisis-driven urgency of a single-girl girl band. LADY is a more accomplished vocalist, even if less remarkable, than PERRY (or BRITNEY). A poor man’s AKON cameo from vocoded teen artist COLBY O’DONIS reminds you where her intentions are placed at – market shares. Crass choreographies lay bare any subtlety.
After the discounts were over (overtly symbolic to say the least – most of times 10%, in a store about to close) CD discounts were relegated to compilations or, worst, videogames replaced them altogether. As games took the lead, LADY GAGA unfolds Lovegame – an apt title. Another BACKSTREET BOYS-nostalgia item disguised as Electro for Indie fashionists, Lovegame includes an embarrassing near-rapping from the LADY – cheap fun, indeed. The jigsaw production and the plaintive lyrics (Boys/Girls/etc) will save you from buying BRITNEY’s Circus – if you need to justify this kind of investment.
New Pop Divas are post-modern selves. Don’t expect outrageous declarations – they are images turned (lip-sync) singing entities. Criticism is something important to new Pop Divas – they always include, at least, an ambiguous homage/diatribe to those people that assure their cash keeps coming in, that assure their places in collective unconsciousness. BRITNEY and PERRY felt like Mannequins. LADY, in PARIS HILTON mode, prefers to address Paparazzi.
The mid-paced Electro distillation of voyeuristic self-stimulation is her contribution to this questionable emergent canon. As with Hilton, she sings surprisingly well, but beats aren’t worth a penny and production values mechanistic and boring to death. Her love/hate relationship with Paparazzi obliterates the critical point – these people are relevant because we made them such. The missing piece of the spectacular social romantic triangle, the public, waits for her sophomore album – or for JARVIS COCKER’s return from his mediocre wilderness of indulgence.
Losing senses, insensible behavior and futility follows. Beautiful, Dirty, Rich is her funnier attempt of an “anthem” of sorts. The infectious “I’m so-so-so-sorry” chorus is a winner. The TING TINGS-meet-SPICE GIRLS insensitive eclectic approach deliver in spades, with a Pokemon guitar and some fractured percussion providing adequate background for this rags-to-riches-to-gutter tale. Even some unexpected irony arrives in the NINA HAGEN-ish zigzagging vocals. LADY GAGA plays better when she reciprocates the 1980s form-over-substance, after poor attempts on bribing them.
Eh, Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say) brings it all back to Earthy limitations. LADY GAGA is just a cheesy Synthpop entertainer lost in the wrong century. 20 years ago synth people was so bored with multi-track programming and lacking on ideas they turned their eyes to…Reggae Music. Yes, the minimalist Jamaican genre, which was surfing its own Electronic tide. And then we have Synth-Reggae-Pop culminating with…ACE OF BASE. But the LADY attempts something more contemporary: PARIS HILTON’s Stars Are Blind (a sly rip-off of UB40, which in their own way profited from other peoples’ songs). Apart from the introduction, nothing else I can say – should I? A song built upon KYLIE MINOGUE’s missteps from late 1980s. The title is just perfect.
If RIHANNA released only songs like Disturbia we would have something like Poker Face. A disembodied SEX PISTOLS riff (Pretty Vacant) turned cabaret Electro and a chorus worthy of PINK – just slower – and we have asinine cheap fun. Cheesy vocoders. Mamamama. With me! Mamamama. Oh! Oh oh oh oh. Speak and spell choruses. Etc etc. Additional oohs for the FERGIE rapping tricks.
The Fame, like a MGMT song, could mean a beefy guitar riff or a digital handclap – why not both? Coming across as a Rock N’Roll PUSSYCAT DOLL, the LADY trades choreography for shaking ears. The song about champagne and “endless fortune” tries to represent all the fame enterprise through name-checking, not the mention the inevitable vocoder. But this is merely description, something one-dimensional. Underneath the surface Gangsta Rappers and DAVID BOWIE, among others, injected context in where the LADY only sees a never-ending abstract litany of party and booze.
What do you do for money honey? AC/DC meant a lot of things. LADY GAGA only hints at them in her own account of being a mistress for Money Honey. Circular beats aping TIMBALAND never rebound that good but the LADY has a crazy zigzagging voice, which overcompensates for the blatant call to poorly demanding dancefloors. There are even some layers to it – implying that her love is for the money only, but the remaining delights of flesh are something to think about. It’s conforming hedonism in times of wrecked selves and empty pockets.
Again, Again is a piano cabaret number, tying Electro to Broadway with the blink of a stained glassed eye. As if ONE REPUBLIC got drunk and hired PINK. It’s hard to know what to make of it. The LADY sings convincingly, with her own brand of affected blue-eyed-soul. The number solidifies her image as an entertainer – even though does not much good to album coherence. She wants to be a star and she thinks she deserves it. Does her?
Starstruck features SPACE COWBOY and FLO RIDA – and that’s pretty much what’s relevant about this. They know what a vocoder is for and the adequate measure of a beat. But the LADY is a loud and proud producer. So she buries their voices and plays her own twisted karaoke around. If being Starstruck is akin to wasting star power in such an arrogant way (with questionable results)…Eh, eh. FLO RIDA’s low delivery is just overbearing in such a tired set of shiny, overstretched plastic beats. The one time she risks something, you wish she never had.
After the star-studded freefall, something more introspective – an ALICIA KEYS-meets-LENNY KRAVITZ-meets-SHERYL CROW soul-searching diatribe, Brown Eyes. “If everything was everything/Everything could be everything”. Eh, eh. The cheesy guitar solo is interesting, if only because it is a guitar solo and because party is really over. Why don’t big girls just cry? The LADY b!tche$ her former beloved one with disarmingly, shockingly straightforward, banal terms. Cheap revenge. Save the record’s money for a letter bomb.
Another Arena Rock for abandoned households, another Surf ballad for the deserts of our political reality, arises in the guise of Summerboy. Another frustrating novelty from the LADY who is really GAGA. At least she includes a PUSSYCAT chorus to save the day from those utterly generic riffs and sundry melodies. Sometimes the LADY sounds as if DEBBY HARRY never existed at all – it’s a pity for a nuyorican.
The ingredients for an above-average Pop number are there – banality, cheesy beats, ordinary riffs, artificial enthusiasm, a decent entertainer with experience in the business and some production-wise ambitions. But everything downwards to mediocrity once her social climbing posture takes center stage. Even with a joyous coda (for the first time, in the last song of a 14-song record, displaying some subtlety or maturity) can’t disguise the desperate ego going with the motions. It’s creativity one need to save the economy – not bland careerism or affected rhetoric’s. In those days of disgrace even a mediocre careerist can make hers/his way into the market. But remaining there (before it collapses) is an entirely different matter.
I Like It Rough (oh, with a beat like this?) is the last threat in the LADY’s repertoire, the bonus track. This time we have another RIHANNA sinking balloon – as if she really liked CHRIS BROWN’s behavior and composed a theme song. But…She won’t let you win. Neither the song, which is just subpar PUSSYCAT dance-fluff. The most blatant use of vocoded Pro-Tools this side of Piece of Me. Trading safety for quality, that’s what you get. See ya.
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