The economics of Lady Gaga
online.wsj.com
online.wsj.com
She just really is that different from anyone we've seen before, so much so that she's remarkably undefinable-- an extremely difficult quality to obtain, convince, and especially to exude, yet she made it look more than effortless. She made it look natural.
To attempt to sort through her persona, list and categorize everything about her, and draw a concrete explanation for how exactly she did it seems...strangely pointless. You just get the feeling your chosen descriptors would always be slightly off the mark, that the right words would always be on the tip of your tongue but never appear, that you'd always be missing something about her.
So I'll just end like this: Maybe you're not the hugest fan of Gaga or her genre, maybe you think her lyrics are too severely lacking in depth to take her music seriously, maybe you don't find her to be all that noteworthy, maybe you even think she's just a passing fad and don't understand what all the hype is about. I couldn't completely dismiss any one of those sentiments. But let me ask you this: the last time you heard one of her songs the whole way through...was your foot tapping? That's what all the hype is about. That's why she can go anywhere she wants with this.
One of my favourite radio quotes of all time was from Lady Gaga when asked about "the tiny penis issue". She said "I'm not offended. My vagina is offended."
The irony here is that I remember fully there was huge commotion that people thought she had a V-slip during one of her concerts, and I was reading it everywhere. Then about a month later people were claiming she had a penis. I'm sorry, but the mass media is quite frankly retarded. How you can apparently see her vagina and miss seeing a penis and then claim she has a penis is beyond my comprehension. I'm sorry, but I believe it's ever more evidence that P-Zombies exist and simply go along with what's expected..
Then I read a nearly obsessive review of her on a social networking site. Then I noticed her showing up on last.fm profiles and other music websites. Then I started seeing her name in every other blog I came across. Then I saw her all over the front pages of mainstream news sites.
Now I'm reading about her on a TECHNOLOGY/STARTUP news aggregator, of all places.
I still haven't taken the time to listen to her music, but I'm already impressed. I'm sure I just wasn't paying attention, but Lady Gaga went from occupying absolutely zero braincycles in December to becoming a name that I have heard literally every other day from every other outlet for the past four weeks. I've been crossing more hype about her than for the iPad.
Like TFA, I couldn't hazard to say whether or not she's just "another fleeting pop novelty," but she's obviously doing something right.
She's certainly a prodigy, but the question is whether she'll burn out or not.
Edited to add: "fnord" .