Dear Lady GaGa: I was wrong about you. Not about “Poker Face” (which is still a pile of wretchedly moldy Peaches) or your continuously annoying art-school-confidential persona (which seems more defensive each time you put it on) or your buddy-buddyness with Technicolor-haired Internet scourge Perez Hilton (ugh)—I’m pretty confident that those are all annoying. But we must talk about about your fast-rising single“Paparazzi,” about which I was pretty lukewarm on first listen. Because somehow over the weekend I fell in love with its dripping, gaudy fantasticness, and I wanted to thank you.
If the copy of “Paparazzi” that I bought Saturday morning had been packaged in cassette-single form, I probably would have been forced to go back to Record World to pick up a new one by now. The more cynical among us might think that the addictive nature of this song is little more than a sad result of the whole Illuminati thing that you allegedly have going on, but I say “fie” on them. As a package of glossy, high-concept pop, the song is perfectly packaged: the hip-shaking beat; the whip-crack sound effects on the chorus; the imperfections in your voice, which only serve to highlight your narrator’s position as the supplicant toward her object of desire. (Note that when I say “package,” I am just talking about the craft of the song, and not its overblown video or your used-tampon outfits.) And then there are the lyrics, which turn the slightly crazy form of unrequited romantic love into its own form of celebrity worship—kind of an amazing analogy for this still-fame-saturated moment.
I’m your biggest fan
I’ll follow you until you love me
Papa-paparazzi
Baby there’s no other superstar
You know that I’ll be your
Papa-paparazzi
Promise I’ll be kind
But I won’t stop until that boy is mine
Baby you’ll be famous
Chase you down until you love me
Papa-paparazzi
Deep? Not by any stretch of the imagination. But as another pop-music sage once noted, the line between “stupid” and “clever” is a very fine one, and with “Paparazzi,” you’ve vaulted over it and gone right into the territory of “brilliant.” And given all the crap I’ve thrown your way since you first came on the American scene, I feel like not mentioning this fact would be sort of unfair.
Earlier: Lady GaGa Has Another Wank
“Paparazzi” is probably the song that made me come to appreciate the whole Gaga enterprise too; it just happened a year or so earlier. In any event welcome to the brainwashed fold. You’ll get your assignment sheet of blogs whose comments you’ll need to spam with pro-Gaga Astroturf tomorrow morning.
You’re so right about “Paparazzi,” it’s absolutely brilliant. Desperate, dark, frothy and glittery all at once.
…howevah, you’re so very (very) wrong about “Poker Face.”
Hooray! Welcome to cult.
And, lest you worry there were no Illuminaghty messages in this song; a good Catholic girl sitting on the lap of her current Pope (the former Joseph Ratzinger) might well playfully refer to him as “Papa Ratzi”. Crazy stuff.
“Paparazzi”‘s awesome, but the song that converted me finally was “Summerboy”, coupled with the daily assault of the crazy “Poker Face” video on AMTV. Rich at FourFour thinks she was lipsynching at the VMAs, but I don’t think so [her voice sounded to up-and-down to be pre-recorded]. What say you?
This song converted me, too. Simply fantastic.
Sorry, but she leaves me cold, mainly due to over exposure I think. Plus when it gets to the “Papa-paparazzi” part, my brain insert “po-po-po-po-po-po-po-po-ker face”.
And don’t forget, the video is the best of the year. The look on her face at the 2:30 mark (in the full version of the video which you posted) is better than all of “Single Ladies.”
By far the best single she’s put out. I enjoy it and am unashamed.
Couldn’t disagree more. The verse totally bites ‘Like a Virgin’ and this video is another embarrassing attempt at being ‘deep’ and ‘artistic’. When you take a step back and think about it for a second, you realize how silly she looks. This is not a pop star who has the conviction to actually pull off a weird but bold pop-art statement (eg: Madonna, Prince, MJ).
@willhackney: What’s your point? No one said pop music wasn’t silly.
@willhackney:
The Madonna aspect of what she does also puts me off, I’m not a fan of Madonna. I kinda see Lady Gaga is a hyper-speed version of Madonna. Which is very deep, the more I think about it.
@k-rex I guess it just seems like all of the crazy stuff Gaga does is completely random, almost thoughtless. I don’t think there’s a method to the madness. For proof of how vacant she is, check here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Pk5lxLyMEk
@willhackney: Lady Gaga is inconsistent, messy, often annoying, overambitious and not very subtle. But she’s super young (23!)! If I was 23 and on MTV, I’d probably vomit blood, too. She’s got talent: let’s give her time. She’ll get it straightened out. We’ve just got to get through the growing pains.
Maura: ONE OF US ONE OF US ONE OF US.
I would recommend this blog to my friends. Always one of the best!