Lady Gaga

I’ve been invaded. I live without cable and have, for the most part, avoided pop culture for years. As soon as I realized what culture could be like outside the American mainstream multi-billion dollar corporate industry, I was hooked. However, recently something has been seeping through the cracks of the wall I’ve put up.

The color's radiating through her fashion are exciting. Her clothes are like art; she's a performance artist. She has a beautiful voice, but it's the visuals that make her stand out for me. She follows the recipe for pop culture; catchy dance beats and sexual images. She's got a music background outside of pop corporate culture and uses it to win over the world through mass media. Whoever is working with her to get this done is doing a great job. I think one of the names that I read of was RedOne, a famous pop producer of many other musicians. Lady Gaga unlike many other pop artists, is really instrumental in writing her songs, creating her fashion and performance art. She feels like a contemporary Madonna.

Last year, I heard the name Lady Gaga and googled her name to find out she’s one of the latest pop stars and didn't look much further. I forgot about it for a while and then a close friend asked if my self-made 2009 holiday card (a photo of a display window of a clothing store in Williamsburg, BK during the holiday season) was a photo of Lady Gaga. I couldn’t imagine why she would say that and I noticed that my husband downloaded the song Pokerface. I few weeks later I decided to google her again and I found the video for Bad Romance, my introduction to Lady Gaga.

I was shocked. I wanted to watch it again and again. Maybe I don't watch enough tv. The theatrical composition, the costume/fashion, her body... I figured I must like it and watched it again. I thought, “Lucky her; what a recipe for success.” I googled again, found that she’s actually 5’1” (which is my height) and thought, “Of course she wears shoes that give her more than a few inches!” They probably altered the whole video with After Effects or something. I guess music videos are altered all of the time, but I'm not used to watching them and I'm just really into her fashion. I watched it again staring at the fashion, analyzing the special effects, and thinking about how sexual she has to look to be successful.