I go ga-ga
One of the joys of Teh Intarwebz is that you can hover on the cusp of current culture, dip in and out like a hummingbird, and still live your own old boring everyday life.
For example: I have taken to watching shows on Hulu.com. Alas, I am also aware that Hulu.com is talking about becoming a subscription-only (that means $$) service come sometime in 2010; having found Hulu, I am about to lose Hulu. Anyway, enough grief; I have found that I can watch Glee and Stargate: Universe on Hulu if I miss those shows the night before, and am happy.
In addition, when brouhahas such as Kanye West’s drunken outburst disrespecting Nice Girl Taylor Swift at the MTV Music Video awards occur, I can scour the web the day after to (a) see what actually happened, and (b) get down with all the nominated music videos.
Which leads me to my headline. Actually, “led me to my headline”–I watched the nominated videos and found…
There’s a new Star (use your joisey accent on that: “Stah!”) in the pop music firmament name of Lady Ga-Ga. Lady Ga-Ga sings catchy pop songs that drip sexual innuendo in music videos that are pop art celebrations of out-and-out (::gasp!:: ::OMG!:: ::catch me while I blush and faint::) lewd sexuality. She wears nude body suits. She feels herself up. She feels up guys. They feel her up. She wears outre makeup. She wears outre clothes. It is a wild Warholian act; it’s also a wild dionysian act.
And damn. I love her.
I am aware that some of my readers absolutely positively thoroughly despise her. (I’m talking to you, PAgent!) I am aware that my cachet as an intellectual pseudo-counter-cultural ex-almost-hippie is tarnished beyond repair by saying it, but there it is.
I think she’s hilarious. I love her over-the-top persona, her over-the-top hair, her over-the-top makeup, and her over-the-top music videos. (I will admit, however, that these are music videos I do not want the dotter seeing. When the dotter arrived home one day humming the tune to “Poker Face” and saying she had to show me a video, I practically plotzed. Who the #@!& was showing this smutty stuff to my seven-year-old daughter?!?! And then she started singing the words, and I realized that she was smitten by a parody video. Whew. Crisis averted!)
Then I discovered some interviews of her. And I loved those–she’s snarky and snotty and playing the interviewers and leaps upon sexism. And I discovered plenty of YouTubery where she’s doing her hit songs in live venues, small clubs or radio stations, one-on-one, just her and her piano. I loved those, too–she sings like a torch singer, then switches off into a staccato singing silliness, then back to the torch singer.
Lady Ga-Ga is a mix of early Madonna, Elton John at his most flamboyant, and…and…oh, damn, give me a name of a torch singer from the forties, please. She is a character and a half, and I go ga-ga over her.
Here’s the parody:
Here’s the original–no embedding, bah.
And here’s a live version:
posted in Music, NaBloPoMo, OmegaDotter, Parenting, Pop Culture | 1 Comment
