Saturday 5 December 2009
Lady GagaLady Gaga is indeed the new Madonna - but not because she shares Madge’s fetish for outrageous outfits.
The now-ubiquitous Gaga/Madonna comparisons based on the their shared pop-trash fashion sense don’t go deep enough. Go beyond the boy-toy belts and bottle-blonde ’dos and you see that Gaga - who plays a sold-out Citi Wang Theatre on Tuesday and Wednesday - has the same plan as Madonna: global domination through artistic autonomy.
The biggest pop stars of the ’80s - Madonna, Michael Jackson, Prince and George Michael - had enough ego and acumen to pilot their own careers. And because they were at the wheel, they didn’t let handlers stifle their eccentricities. Singing “Like A Virgin” in a wedding dress, moonwalking with a single, sequined glove, and dressing like a purple pirate while moaning about “Darling Nikki” masturbating with a magazine weren’t gimmicks dreamed up by a team of managers, producers and record execs. They were stunts that came naturally from artists with autonomy.
By the late ’90s, the industry favored manufacturing pop stars over discovering them. Lou Pearlman invented the Backstreet Boys and N’Sync, Disney spawned Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera and Miley Cyrus, and now “American Idol” pumps out pretty faces.
But Gaga is different. Her fabulousness isn’t prefab.
Gaga - born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta - didn’t come up through one of industry’s farm systems. Like Madonna Louise Ciccone, Gaga picked up her style in the streets and clubs of New York City and invented her own image, one that played against the mainstream.
Her music, even more than her fashion sense, makes it clear she’s calling her own shots. You can hear her brash personality on “The Fame,” her year-old debut (re-released last week with an added 8-song EP as “The Fame Monster”). It comes off as one woman’s vision, not a piece of pop product produced by consensus.
In this way, “The Fame” is the opposite of Adam Lambert’s new “For Your Entertainment,” a made-by-committee mess which employs Pink, Rivers Cuomo, Kara DioGuardi - and Gaga - along with 23 additional producers and writers. If Lambert is going to be a star, he needs to go Gaga by dumping his handlers and insisting on artistic autonomy, as he he did at last week’s American Music Awards when he kissed his male keyboardist and stuffed a male dancer’s face in his crotch. To survive, he’s got to let his sizable ego and, if he’s lucky, sizable acumen take control.
Of course, dancing to your own tune is no guarantee of success. Not everyone has what it takes to be the master of his or her own destiny. Madonna did. And Lady Gaga does. And that combination of moxie and talent, more than any amount of theatrics and costume changes - is what truly links the two.