There seems to be (as always) a lot of talk about Lady Gaga, so I'll throw my hat in the ring ...
I am one of the people that counted down to the release of the "Telephone" music video. This is not because I am obsessed with Lady Gaga herself -- in fact, I believe that she is the star I have felt most ambivalently about in my recent memory.
Where I've ended up on her is this: she is (I'm hoping) following in the path of the Beatles, and starting out with pop music so she can move to something more ... satisfying. I did not believe this until I heard "Bad Romance" -- before that, she just confused me. With her fashion (ala Bowie), oh-so-Tisch theatricality, and disturbingly sincere "little monsters" thing, she clearly has something more going on than the average pop star.
She went to Julliard early, attended NYU for awhile ... she actually knows her shit. So where I've ended up on LG is not blown out of the water at present, but optimistic about the future. In any case, on to the music videos ...
I was so interested in "Telephone" because of "Bad Romance" (from here on out I'm referring to the videos, not the songs). The "Bad Romance" video is absolutely amazing. It has absolutely nothing to do with the song. Whatsoever. And just confuses the hell out of most people, before they press "play" for the forty second time. Confusing, but catchy. I was ready to write it off as a Tisch thing before my friend sent me the link to a blog that had posted a ridiculously long academic analysis of LG and her art ... her music, and -- most relevantly, her videos. Themes, satire, etc, to be found in them (no worries, I'm including the link at the end). Maybe this is what I was talking about before with over-analyziation, but I'd never heard of this happening with Britney.
Essentially, the same deal has happened with "Telephone". It's an amazing video; it has nothing to do with the song; it's being analyzed the hell out of (additional link at the end). I just think it's interesting how several things are happening here ...
The music video is become no longer A) subservient to B) equal to, the song, but something separate from it entirely. The article on "Telephone" (posted hours after it came out) talks about how it speaks to LG's communication that the pop world is a prison -- she seems to be getting out through her fashion, videos, etc. She says something utterly different in her songs (conform: "I wanna take a ride on your disco stick" -- how many times have we heard some iteraiton of that?) than she does in her fashion (be David Bowie! androgny's cool ... aka be different), "little monsters" bit (every interview I've seen she references the outsider), and videos (giving you something utterly different than what you expected ... a dance companion to the songs [although, "Bad Romance" and "Telephone" seem to be the only ones that really fit that bill so far, with "Paparazzi" able to be argued either way]). Talk about contradiction in star text.
Links (sorry I don't know how to embed):
"Bad Romance" video - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qrO4YZeyl0I
"Bad Romance" etc. article - http://www.slantmagazine.com/house/2009/12/%E2%80%9Cpop-ate-my-heart%E2%80%9D-lady-gaga-her-videos-and-her-fame-monster/
"Telephone" video - http://www.ladygaga.com/telephone/
"Telephone" article - http://onlywordstoplaywith.blogspot.com/2010/03/lady-gagas-telephone-observations-and.html
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