December 2, 2009

Lady Gaga, Singing Disgrace and Public Enemy #1 of Music (A Rant)

As many of you know, I am usually very widely accepting of different styles of music. Even if I'm not a big fan of a certain genre, I can tolerate it up to a point. However, Lady Gaga has earned herself a place among the few artists whom I absolutely cannot stand at all. Unfortunately for yours truly, she dominates top 40 radio right now, and I am subjected to her every morning when I work at Target. I have reached my boiling point, and this is the only constructive outlet I have for my frustration.

I now give you my top six reasons why Lady Gaga should lose her publishing rights, her recording capabilities, her touring licenses, and possibly her vocal chords.

1. Lady Gaga is a trend follower and has no originality whatsoever
When I hear Lady Gaga's different songs on the radio, all I hear is her attempting to copy the successful female pop stars who have come before her. Not one single star, mind you. She's trying to copy them ALL. "Poker Face" is her attempt at the bad girl sex songs that made Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera so huge. "Paparazzi" shows her trying to imitate the innocent, good girl styles of Mandy Moore. "Bad Romance" has her trying to be an independent punk chick like Pink or Avril Lavigne. Lady Gaga is trying to become a universal star, picking up every female ear in the 13-18 demographic and increasing her fame that much more. But none of her music is at all original or new. It's just the same old stuff that we've heard before. Why is that entertaining?

2. Lady Gaga is almost totally devoid of singing ability
Those who have only ever heard Lady Gaga on recorded material will, of course, immediately object to this statement, because even I will admit that her voice sounds good on record. However, her horrific performance at the VMA's (which I only watched because I was waiting for an instant replay moment of the Kanye West/Taylor Swift debacle) got me wondering, and I looked up some live performance videos of her on YouTube. The things I saw confirmed my belief that Lady Gaga cannot sing her way out of a pickle barrel. So how does she manage to sound so good on record? Well, she does what many other pop stars do in this age of technology: she overproduces the hell out of her voice. Talk about a raw deal.

3. Lady Gaga's lyrics promote the worst values and stylize completely unrealistic situations
Normally I don't get preachy about this sort of thing, but the things she says in "Poker Face" just horrify the crap out of me. And let's consider the logic of the song "Paparazzi" for a moment. According to that song, stalking a guy will make him fall in love with you. How often do you think that actually happens in the real world? I would say maybe one time in a million, and that one time is because the guy being stalked is a sociopath planning to murder the girl stalking him.

4. Lady Gaga has the worst stage name ever
Seriously, she couldn't just use her real name like 90% of the rest of the female pop stars out there? She had to pick a stage name that not only sounds completely ridiculous, but also makes absolutely no sense? What is the point of that?

5. Lady Gaga is ugly as sin
That's what really makes things ridiculous to me when I consider how successful she is. This isn't even a case where a person can say, "Well, her songs suck, but at least she's easy on the eyes." When I see Lady Gaga, I want to retch. She is disgusting.

6. Lady Gaga is Lady Gaga
For those of you scratching your heads at this, here's the longer sentence I would have used for the title of this point, if it weren't so long: Lady Gaga is yet another pop star perpetuating the cycle of musical mediocrity by cashing in on the trends of the day and using shock value to increase the buzz about her, while creating nothing new or original that contributes positively to society or people's lives. That really just sums all of these points and says what she'd have to do in order for me to have even a modicum of respect for her. I'm not holding my breath on that, though.

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