Yeah, I know. Relevant is, well, relative, and therefore hard to quantify. But you know what I mean.
My wife and I have this argument going because I really can’t stand Lady Gaga, and I made the off-hand remark “She’ll be forgotten 12 months from now, and we will be better off for the forgetting” and she (the wife that is) disagreed with me. She is no Lady Gaga fan by any stretch, but she does think LG has a little more staying power than I do.
So, flash-in-the-pan freak? Or does she have some real chops and she will be around for a while?
You might not be a fan but you should actually listen to her music before declaring that she’ll be forgotten a year from now. There are only two kinds of music in the world; good music and bad music and her music is good. I expect that by this time next year she’ll have another huge hit out.
True. And what she is doing with her style/fashion statements, live show production, etc. - all raise her game up a big step. She is the Madonna of her generation in her ability to draw attention to herself with an underlying foundation of decent music…so, IMHO, yeah, she’ll endure.
Actually, my question is different: Given the obvious effort that goes into her outfits and the sheer number of them (she seems to come out with wholly new looks 3 - 4x per month) - what is her “dress pipeline” like? At any given moment, she must have a dozen sewing projects going in - how does all that happen? How big is her stable of go-to designers? is anyone behind the scenes helping her think through raw meat, kermit puppets, plastic bubbles and other out-there materials or looks? It seems like it would be a full time job or that there would be a team of people behind her…
She is more Glam Metal than Madonna. Madonna had the chops to evolve her look and her sound to blaze new trails in pop music. Gaga is a flash in the pan with some singing chops. The wierd looks are cool for being new, but you do not see her being copied in the fashion of the youth culture like Madonna was. She will put out some hit songs the wierdness will get old and she will fade into obscurity in a few years. If you take away the wired outfits the music does not really stand out on its own.
She may be a gimmick artist, but she’s really, really good at being a gimmick artist. You might not like what she does, but you have to give her credit for doing it well.
Yes, she’s too big now to fade out in 12 months. Probably we’ll be hearing about that Bieber fellow too. If she gets hit by a car tomorrow, there’s still enough fans that will reminisce about her for years to come. I doubt she’ll have the staying power of Madonna…more likely, her career will be like Cher’s.
Mmmm, AS someone else asks, what makes you think I haven’t listened to her music? Now, I’ll grant you, I haven’t done a deep dive into her musical catalog. But I have heard all of the stuff that’s gotten airplay. Lots of freaking airplay. Not my cup of tea.
Which brings me to the your second point I disagree with. “Two kinds of music, good and bad” to paraphrase. I soooooo disagree with this. You say her music is good. I say it’s not. See, it’s not so black and white, is it?
Reminds me a quote I heard years ago. I think it was one of the Gabor sisters. (aside-God, am I really quoting a Gabor sister? :smack: ) Okay, back to the quote, it was something like this:
(Gabor) "I really can’t stand people with bad taste.
(Reporter) How can you tell if they have bad taste?
(Gabor) Oh, that’s easy. If I like something, it’s in good taste. If I don’t, then it’s in bad taste. Would could be simpler?
You say her music isn’t good. Her massive sales say otherwise. When it comes to matters of taste consensus really is reality. It isn’t up to you whether she’ll be around for another year- it’s up to all those people who think her music is good.
And no, I’m not a Lady Gaga fan any more than I’m an Elton John fan but I’m still capable of saying that John puts out good music. Like Hesh from The Sopranos said, “A hit is a hit”. Just because you don’t like the music doesn’t mean it isn’t good.
No, it means the music’s popular, not good. There are plenty of fairly objective standards you can use to prove Dan Brown or that crazy bitch who wrote the Twilight books are not good writers, yet by your standards they’e better than Pynchon or DeLillo.
Isn’t the music that’s popular, by definition, relevant. . .?
Twilight might not be Shakespeare, but people will still be talking about it in 12 months (what with the two movies left), so. . . that’s relevant, too.
