The Lady Gaga Post

I love Lady Gaga.  I didn’t want to at first.  I was expecting another frothy pop bimbette. But I was wrong. Lady Gaga is a performance artist the likes we haven’t seen since perhaps Madonna in her most creative phase.

She understands her audience to an unparalleled degree - you’re not telling me the refrain “I’ll follow you until you love me, papa” is a lyrical accident in Paparazzi, appealing as it does on a subliminal level to a broad swathe of fans with difficult parental relationships.  The blatant sexuality of Poker Face is in line with the attitudes of these times, as is the ten minute soft core lesbian porn that is the Telephone video.  (Again, a groundbreaking masterpiece of pop art.)



Importantly though, Lady Gaga understands the changed media landscape.  While record labels struggle to understand the new reality and their looming irrelevance, Lady Gaga understands that the modern media world is about monetizing the audience not the content.  Her Twitter stream one day points her followers to a nicely written academic piece dissecting the Telephone video and its imagery, the next it points to the Telephone video on her website.  (Warning NSFW)

Notice the product placement in the video itself, both a commentary on commercialism as well as monetizing the audience through the same product placement.  Notice the ads at the bottom of the web page.  Again, monetize the audience not the content.  The ad seems consistent, well played, not jarringly interruptive.  Notice her leveraging the virality of Twitter and Facebook with simply placed buttons for sharing via each, at the top of the page.

I love Lady Gaga.  I hope this intense creative fire doesn’t burn out too soon.  I hope she doesn’t get too sucked into the big-media bubble and lose her edge.  Most of all I cannot wait to see what she does next to push the envelope, to challenge us, to take her art form firmly into the 21st century at the same time that so many in her industry still wish we were back in the 20th.