I have two thoughts on the Lady Gaga “Hello, Baby” post. The first is that I agree, she has a lot more going on than the average pop star. She writes her own stuff, and she has real pipes. Here’s a classic example of how a manufactured pop star gets schooled when they have to go up against somebody with actual talent.
Check out Jewel's class and poise while Jessica Simpson tries painfully hard to look cool.
I think it’s kind of sad that actual talent seems to have less and less to do with who actually makes it in the music biz. There were always people to write and produce behind the scenes, but now with Autotune and other software, the folks don’t have to be able to really sing at all, either. When we’re listening to pop music, we’ll never know what’s really behind it. LG’s live acoustic stuff proves she’s the real deal.
But – I also think that she is famous in a kind of Elvis Presley way. I’m talking about that fact that he became famous by introducing black music to white America – he didn’t invent it, he just introduced something new to people who hadn’t seen it. In LG’s early days, she got dropped from her record label and went back to playing clubs in the East Village. If you watch her, you can totally see the drag club style coming through – the torch singer vocals, the outrageous fashions, the theatricality, the characters, all of it. She didn’t invent this mix, not even close. Sure, she’s talented – so was Elvis. But she got famous by pulling a piece of East Village drag culture into the mainstream.
No comments:
Post a Comment