19

Apr

‘Judas’ – Lady Gaga

I’ll never say that Lady Gaga is not talented. Never. I won’t claim that she can’t write a song. She can. In fact, I’d say that she is one of the best pop artist to debut in the past 15 years.

That being said, ‘Judas’ underperforms as a single.

If you don’t want to read a fairly negative review of the song then stop here. This isn’t me complaining about the song in a childish way either. I’m just disappointed.

Before people jump down my throat and call me an idiot I ask that you actually read this. Don’t skim it.

It will be a hit. Continue reading →

13 years ago Short URL 2 Comments

Lady Gaga

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12

Sep

VMA Weekend Wrap-Up

Tonight was Lady Gaga’s night winning 8 awards, including ‘Bad Romance’. I am so thankful that the video that deserved all the awards won the most. I did pretty decent with predicting the winners tonight. I predicting 5 of the winners correctly. I best performance of the night goes to Usher, who was able to bring both awesome vocals and dancing. Florence + The Machine did an amazing job, staying true to her artistry. Taylor Swift was by far the worst of the night, and Kanye get the last laugh earning both the respect and love from the entire arena who was cheering his name at the end of the performance. The biggest disappointment was that fact that Lady Gaga did not perform. After last years performance she should of been the first person added on the bill. Overall the show was pretty decent, with all of the awards going to the deserving winners.

What did you think of the show? After all of the post that I have done today I’m done for the night!

14 years ago Short URL 4 Comments

Florence + The Machine/Kanye West/Lady Gaga/Usher/VMA

12

Sep

VMA: ‘Bad Romance’- Lady Gaga

Rating: A+

I wanted to save the best for last because I think that ‘Bad Romance’ deserves to win all the awards it is up for tonight. ‘Bad Romance’ was the first single off of Lady Gaga’s ‘The Fame Monster’. The video was released last November, which was still hot off of her legendary VMA performance. Many people saw how crazy Lady Gaga is during her ‘Paparazzi’ performance, so there was speculation to how she could channel that in music video form successfully. The video proved that Lady Gaga is an artistic genius. There is no denying the fact that she is off-color, but ‘Bad Romance’ was the perfect music video in every sense.

Unlike ‘Telephone’ Lady Gaga decided to reflect the song in the video. I thought it was creative to focus the video on the black market, consider that the song is talking about a toxic love relationship. Gaga is always fearless and she took a very risky topic and created a work of art from it. Considering what the black market entails I thought that the video could have been much worse than it was. Not saying that it is pure as snow, but looking at the things Gaga has done it could have been a lot more sexual.

I also liked that she incorporated the title of her EP in the video. She looks like a monster in many of the shots, especially when her spine is sticking out of her back in the cage. Even her body movements and the dancing reflects the theme of monsters. Gaga herself ends up being a monster at the end of the video, killing the man who purchased her. She ends the video lying on a scorched bed, covered in ashes next to the skeleton of the man she killed. All of this for a pop song.

The video focuses a lot on her dancing, which her previous videos have not. With the lighting, scenery, and theme, Gaga removes herself from the mold of a female pop star to a rising legend. Even though she is dancing for the majority of her video, it is still unlike anything that has come out in recent years. Gaga failed with ‘Telephone’ because she tried to hard to be artistic and different. ‘Bad Romance’ appeared to come naturally for her. The video is still epic even though there is no dialogue, and it still portrays a story.

There is not one moment of the video that she loses her audience. Gaga is a natural performer, and her on screen antics have the ability to break the wall that exists between herself and her audience. ‘Bad Romance’ set a new standard for current pop music videos. It may have not had hype leading up to it’s premiere, but after its debut fans and critics went crazy. She was able to achieve the unexpected, and impress everyone who watched it.

Lady Gaga had a good year at the VMA’s last year and with 13 nominations she is obviously a new favorite. With ‘Bad Romance’ being perfect in every way I will be stunned if she walks away with no awards. I am not saying that the video is groundbreaking, but I do believe that it stand out among the other videos from this year. She deserves to be tonight’s big winner.

What do you think? Did you like ‘Bad Romance’ also?

14 years ago Short URL Comments

Lady Gaga/VMA

11

Sep

VMA: ‘Telephone’ Lady Gaga feat. Beyonce

Rating: C-

There no questioning Lady Gaga’s current standing as one of the top artist in the world right now. Gearing up for the release of her third album, Lady Gaga is still enjoying the success of her second album/EP ‘The Fame Monster’. Due to the music videos that she has released over the past two year she is widely known as a visionary and risk taker in her videos. Her historic 13 nominations for this years VMA’s properly acknowledge her colossal work in music video form. She has two videos that are up for video of the year, ‘Telephone’ and ‘Bad Romance’.

The hype for this music video in early 2010 was intense to say the least. For weeks Lady Gaga teased her fans promising that the video would be a masterpiece. In my opinion both the song and the video are overrated; I would take the song over the video any day though. The one thing that I appreciate about the song though is its ability to mesh the sounds and styles of both artist. When two artists collaborate their purpose should be to bring the best out of each other using their own strengths. Technically speaking the song is a good collaboration, but the same can not be said about the video.

I think that Lady Gaga tried too hard to send a message with this one. The whole concept of American consumerism killing society  and individualism is creative and well thought out, but it has nothing to do with the song. I can’t believe the video was nominated because it does not reflect the lyrical content of theme of the song in the slightest and that is the purpose of a music video, putting visuals to the song. Lady Gaga mentioned that the song is about the fear of commitment and by no means does this video address that. The idea of creating a mini-movie out of the video would have worked much better if the song wasn’t cut up so many times. Right as your are getting into the song it gets cut off for a section of dialogue that is overly pretentious and unnecessary. If the audience had more time to enjoy the song than perhaps we would have ignored the fact that it has nothing to do with the song.

The worst part is Beyonce, who seems to have lost her own identity. She brings nothing of her own to the video becoming a carbon copy of Lady Gaga. Her verse in the song is filled with attitude and that is missing from her performance. Instead she just gives the camera crazy eyes and jumps around. This was not what I was expecting from her since she usually has so much personality on camera.

The video is not a complete wreck though, there are some scenes that look great, especially when the song is playing.  Lady Gaga is a natural performer, so she always nails the performance aspect. I can also appreciate the fact that Lady Gaga is trying to revive the age of music videos. This video is just not doing it for me. I will be disappointed if it wins anything tomorrow because it should not. As you will see in my next post ‘Bad Romance’ is stronger in every sense and should be the victor tomorrow.

Head on over to youtube or mtv to see the video. Do you agree? Let me know in the comments!

14 years ago Short URL Comments

Beyonce/Lady Gaga/VMA

11

May

‘Alejandro’ Lady Gaga


Rating: B

A lot of people have asked me to write about Lady Gaga, so I decided to review her newly released single ‘Alejandro’. Lady Gaga’s rise to fame has been pretty impressive. She is setting herself to be one of the most influence artist in Pop music since Madonna. She has sold 10 million albums worldwide since she released her debut album ‘The Fame’ in late 2008. She has a 2 number 1’s on the Billboard Top 100 and amazingly her first 6 singles have all been number 1 on the Pop Charts. She is literally taking over the charts and breaking records one single at a time. Lady Gaga mainly works with producer Red One on almost all her songs, and this duo clearly is successful since they have worked on 4 of the 6 pop number 1 singles. After the successful single ‘Telephone’ (which was produced by Darkchild) Lady Gaga decided to release a song with a different feel than her other singles. ‘Alejandro’ is a latin influenced song- complete with a over the top introduction and a faint spanish accent throughout the song. I will say that I do not think this is the strongest single she has released, but by no means is it bad. I appreciate the fact that she is releasing a song with a different sound than what we have heard. My one complaint with the song is the beat. Red One has crafted major dance beats like ‘Bad Romance’ and in comparison this falls short. It is not a bad beat, but I do not exactly find it intriguing. Gaga is the main appeal on the song with her story telling lyrics and vocals. Gaga writes all of her music, which is todays age is unheard of. I would argue that she is one of the best pop writers in the industry right now. She can write a hook that will be stuck in your head for days. That being said, the chorus and the ‘Ale-Alejandro’ are so catchy that it almost ensures the song as a hit on the radio. Gaga also add a huge amount of personality into the song with her fake accent making the song a good listen. After only being released a few weeks ago the song has already climbed into the Top 20 of the Billboard Hot 100 and after last weeks performance on American Idol I am sure the song will reach the top 10 this week due to a increase in digital sales. Also note that the video has yet to come out and since people have been making such a big deal out of her videos we should expect to see another huge rise in sales after the video is released. I can actually see the song hitting number 1 in the upcoming weeks. There is no true competition on the charts right now and with the amount of sales and radio activity occurring it is very possible that we may see Gaga’s third number 1. Either way a number 1 on the pop charts is almost a guarantee, and if this does happen Lady Gaga will have the most number 1’s out of any artist in history on the pop charts. It will be interesting to see how all this turns out, but with album number 3 supposedly coming out at the end of the year I am sure we will be seeing more records broken by Gaga in the future.

14 years ago Short URL Comments

Lady Gaga/Song Review

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