Mark Ellis innocently sits down to watch some TV with his teenage daughter, and he ends up digging the latest pop sensation.
So I’m watching Bill O’Reilly and he keeps talking about somebody called Lady Gaga. I’m clueless. Bill runs a snippet of the girl in action, and still, I’m nonplussed. Her outfits are garishly off the charts, and the beat sounds like the kind of danceable techno-pop I was never, even in the age of Madonna, all that interested in.
The last time I purchased new music, I was age 48, in 2000, a cassette tape of a metal band called Disturbed. You do the math.
These days, I would be hard-pressed to name one act on the Billboard Top 20. For me, the MTV Music Awards features a cavalcade of unknowns.
Lately I’ve ordered from Amazon the Lonesome Dove soundtrack (awesome), 22 of the Greatest Polkas featuring Myron Floren (I can prove this), and Steve Lawrence and Eydie Gorme Sing More Greatest Hits (check out “Side By Side,” I got chills).
I rocked hard for a long time. Musically speaking, I’ve really mellowed out. You might say, overhearing me crank the volume on Perry Como’s “Impossible,” to the point of somnambulance.
So one day I find my 18-year-old daughter absorbed in a television program which is airing a stream of music that brings me into the family room from my office. On the screen gyrating furiously is, yes, Lady Gaga.
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It’s a two hour block of nothing but Lady Gaga videos. I sit down, taking the opportunity to perhaps share something my daughter is interested in, but also to take the full measure of what all the hoopla is about.
First up is a ditty called “Paparazzi.” I should mention that I loathe and despise the paparazzi. I’ve heard it said that celebrities need to worry when the paparazzi stops coming around, but I don’t buy it. I blame them for the death of Princess Diana.
In Gaga’s take, she’s apparently fallen from a great height, and opens the tune sporting a wheelchair and crutches. She’s the metaphoric paparazzi here, stalking her lover. It’s the kind of accident that’s hard to look away from.
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One of the first records I bought after reaching middle age was Abba’s Greatest Hits. In Gaga’s “Alejandro,” we are treated to an amped-up version of “Fernando.” I’m not sure which one of the happening dudes in this song is the star, but watching the Lady’s surging tribute, you’ve got to envy him. Don’t miss a single knee-bend.
We’ve all been challenged by intimacy, but few have presented love-gone-wrong as histrionically as Gaga does in “Bad Romance.” Plunging out of an arresting Arabian “rah-rah” intro and featuring the diva’s heat-seeking panther crawl, this ode to ill-advised entanglement recalls the days when no amount of suffering and misery could staunch the hemorrhaging of Eros.
An hour had passed, and I was still on the couch, watching the Gaga block with my daughter. I think she was amused, and might even have thought it was strange that I had watched for so long. Usually I’m asking her to please turn her music down.
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But Lady Gaga proved to be a fascinating study in the power of pop music to reinvent itself, find sustenance in derivation, and blossom into something new and transcendent for each new generation. When “Poker Face” came on, it was clear to me why the so-called millennials have christened her an icon.
She rises, dripping from storm-tossed waters, flanked by two mastiffs. The dogs remain implacable, but it is clear they have noticed her.
She humps on a chaise lounge, gambles with destiny, breaks the hearts of all sexual orientations. Even for an old metalhead, this one kicks ass.
The chorus is a triumph, over dance, hook, optics, superstardom.
I’m embarrassingly won over. Lady, you’re terrific.
Bill O’Reilly, you’re on the money again. You should definitely try and get her on the show.
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“Pepper” is better than anything gaga has or will ever do.
Some people fall in love with life, and drink it like a fountain,
Flowing like a avalanche coming down the mountain.
That’s writing.
Mark, it’s been a long time since we had fun talking over politics, culture, and celebrating your birthday by attending an Ozzy concert… I would love to do so again… well maybe not the Ozzy concert.
I had the same resistance that most of you have had. Gaga is over the top, loud, and crazy, and not at all like the kind of music I’m used to listening to. I still don’t take her in large quantities, but she is smart and intelligent and very talented. Reminds me of getting hooked on “Prince” years ago when my daughter (who is now 38, so you get the time frame) was a teenage devotee. That’s one of the good reasons to have kids and grand kids to open our eyes to a world we would miss without them.… Read more »
I’ll take Madonna but you really write music well.
The only relevant question is; you were watching Bill O’Reilly?
Well I never thought I would agree with Bill “O’Really” at least he has musical taste. Grow up, Mark!
The article is very interesting for a 60 year old. It sounds like you were probably a guitar player in your youth and always wondered what would have happened if you had recorded that one song that got away. Keep writing and picking. You have piqued my interest so I will check out the lady.
I’m with ya, Mark. Most of the people I read about in People Magazine, I never heard of. Even at that, I only read People while at the dentist and the copy there is probably 2 years old anyway. Have we really gotten that old?
She’s the darling of her gen, I’m thinking. Time will tell if she can endure. In the meantime, have you seen her in her “meat suit?” That should get your middle-aged, carnivorous heart thumping. 😉 And by the way, she’s about everywhere BUT on O’Reilly’s show
Wow Mark, you’ve done it again, won me over to something/someone I never thought I would watch. In fact when Rolling Stone arrived in our mail box with Lady GaGa on the cover, I said to myself, well, I probably won’t even open this issue, and I didn’t. Now I just might go back and find that issue, most likely dog eared from Roger’s reading it. He likes her.
Kathryn