“Applause,” by contrast, is empty self-referentialism, both in its visual aesthetic and its lyrics: “I live for the applause.” But we’ve always known that — Gaga’s entire career has revolved around being that girl in drama class who stands up on stage and demands that everyone look at her.
It shouldn't be a surprise, but it is a shame. I found "Bad Romance" and "Telephone" to be extremely interesting pop songs. The horror-sex aesthetic of that era fascinated me. I hoped that the modern-relationship dystopia in those songs would be further explored, but it seems, as the quote above illustrates, that Gaga's primary artistic goal is more, more, more attention.
Pop music is a window into the changing nature of romantic relationships from the earliest days of the sexual revolution. I find the mid-seventies to mid-eighties to be the most confused and thus more fun to examine. On the one hand, there are plenty of hot-one-night-stand songs while on the other, sex-as-doom songs.
Gaga's two biggest hits are really about relationships that are defined by unprincipled and unconstrained women. "Bad Romance" is about just that, a passionate, ugly and ultimately hateful sexual relationship, built on lust and aggression. "Telephone" is about the disposability of men; the incessant calls of her paramour are interrupting her good times at the club.
I think that Gaga would be better served by staying a nightmare sex object. It's already successful, no one else is doing it (or can) and it fits right into our current stage of the sexual revolution. Being an art world prophet probably strokes her ego and can be a source of inspiration--think of all the otherwise worthless art majors flocking around her to offer their best ideas, if they can get close enough. But she doesn't seem smart enough to make her grad-student frames compelling. Especially if she punctuates it with feuds with Perez Hilton and confessions of eating disorders.
What she's trying to do, I think, is parallel Madonna's essential secret of success. The visual and performance parallels are obvious, but what really made Madonna the icon she is now is that she routinely collaborated with cutting-edge music producers. Gaga seems to be trying to do the same thing with visual and conceptual artists but I think that she's neglecting her core product. If nobody wants to dance or sing along to her music, why should we watch her?
The quote gets to the most likely future for Gaga: that woman who's always doing something weird and becoming increasingly desperate.
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