Last night I went to a Lady Gaga-themed 30th birthday party for a friend. Attendees were encouraged to dress like Gaga or in Gaga-inspired outfits. Some people took their direction from Gaga videos and replicated the bubble outfit or the Diet Coke rollers. Other people simply wrapped themselves in electrical tape or something sparkly because nothing which is aware and celebrates its oddness is really un-Gaga. I myself took the four aces and a joker from a deck of cards and stuck them to my forehead with double-stick tape.
It all relates to a simple truth. Like or dislike her music (I personally like it), it would be pretty difficult to deny Gaga's influence as a cultural force. In the last two years she has released 8 new singles and 7 of them have been top 10 hits with the most recent being the Isla Bonita-esque "Alejandro." What distinguishes Gaga as a cultural force is that each video is a envelope-pushing production and the new video is no exception.
In her early videos, she celebrated rockstar-like Midwest partying, L.A. decadence and, like a good New Yorker, New York. Then came the dual turning points of "Paparazzi" and "Bad Romance" where the now-famous Gaga began making insider points/mocking the celebrity culture which now enveloped her. By the time "Telephone" and its unabashed product placements arrived Gaga was both ensconced in the business-side of things while winking at us from the art-for-arts-sake side. How "Alejandro" distiguishes itself from Gaga's earlier videos is the type of iconography it choses to ape.
It's disappointing to me Gaga's first foray from what she'd done well with into new turf didn't take her anywhere interesting. Gone are American influences as Gaga draws from an even deeper pool. Unfortunately the influences she draws are the tired and worn-out trifecta of Fascism, Catholicism and Victorianism. If she's feeling restricted from producing her art (and quite unworthily so) the play isn't to recycle cliche. Even if it reads as unintentional homage to Madonna, it's a rare misstep from Gaga and hopefully one she doesn't soon duplicate.
So why didn't it work? I'd offer this as a simple possibility. We Americans have our cultural feet placed deep one-each into two cultural pools: that of Europe and that of Africa. Gaga represents an excellent balance between those two cultural pools. It's not a stretch to call her music techno or to call it R&B. Some may look down their rock critic noses at dance pop here in the Anglosphere but dance music is what makes the rest of the world move. You could play "Alejandro" in an international setting and not seem over-reaching or out-of-place in either Stockholm or Malawi. Gaga's American melting pot is what distinguished her from other also-rans. I put forth the video doesn't work because it tilts to formalism while forgetting about that world-moving sensation of dancing.
The truth is Gaga is one of only two American popular artists who have actual credibility within all but the shrewdly discriminating of our culture. If her career follows the arc of Justin Timberlake's (an artist who has his own internationally-infused songs), she'll be just fine.
