The world vs lady gaga

So lately, there's been a lot of jousting and discussion of the infamous Lady G. She was named one of Time Mag's most influential people (on the cover along side Bill Clinton), and just by sheer nature of being famous, has pissed off a lot of people lately. I mean, if people can get ridiculously famous just by covering her, the floodgates of anger will open from the indie scene. On one hand, the girl has crazy awesome style. She wears crazy clothes (or things that we wouldn't normally think of as clothing) and challenges our perceptions of style, design, and aesthetic. At the same point, her songs mostly suck. I got the fame monster from the library, just for kicks, and pretty much everything but "bad romance," "telephone" and maybe one other song suck. "Speechless" is pretty epic, in the worst way. It's like a country music style ballad, but worse, because it's basically being done by a drag queen. (woman dressed like a man impersonating a woman). So, I can understand this comment by Joanna Newsom, whose February album is most excellent. Just take a gander at this recent Joanna Newsom ragefest: http://pitchfork.com/news/38738-newsom-takes-on-gaga-madonna/ What I like about it is that she's quite articulate, and it's rather entertaining. Here are some of my favorite lines:

"Lady Gaga is Arty Spice"

"Her approach to image is really interesting, but you listen to the music and you just hear glow sticks. Smart outlets for musical journalism give her all this credit, like she's the new Madonna...I'm like, fair enough: she is the new Madonna, but Madonna's a dumb-ass!"

(I love that last bit, because it's true, most everything Madonna's done in the last 12 years is really suspect. And the chick has weird muscles, like Janet Jackson.) Here's the more eloquent comment later:

"My problem isn't actually with Lady Gaga. But there's not much in her music to distinguish it from other glossy, formulaic pop. She just happens to wear slightly weirder outfits than Britney Spears..."

Love it.

And on a small note, M.I.A. also thinks she sucks, with these winning lines:

"People say we're similar, that we both mix all these thing in the pot and spit them out differently, but she spits it out exactly the same. None of her music's reflective of how weird she wants to be or thinks she is. She models herself on Grace Jones and Madonna, but the music sounds like 20-Year-Old Ibiza disco, you know? She's not progressive, but she's a good mimic. She sounds more like me than I fucking do!"

Still love it.