Lady Gaga and the Pop Industry

I don't like pop music. Or pop stars. Or pop rhythms. Or pop fans. Or pop the drink, for that matter.

Pop music is over-produced. The melodies are cheesy, written solely to be catchy. The lyrics are shallow. The singing sounds completely impersonal; the sheer amount of processing applied to the sound guarantees it. And don't even get me started on the presentation of women in pop music. The majority of pop stars are women, to be sure, but like the rest of the music, they are merely a product, something to be listened to, looked at, and thrown away in the next craze. If you will, the voice in the song doesn't sound like the woman in the video. She's a sex object, and the voice is the sound engineer's voice. And the sugary sweetness of it only makes it more horribly ironic.

And yet I often find myself listening to, and enjoying - well, let's just say (for the sake of my ego) individual pop singers. Madonna, Cher, P!nk, and others. I guess I'm just a big faker!

Really, though, there is a distinction to be made. Which brings me to Lady Gaga.

Lady Gaga is the latest, and potentially weirdest, in the grand tradition of what I'm going to call 'crazy pop stars'. It started (I think) with Madonna, and includes P!nk and some others I can't think of at the moment.

Yes, they're highly produced. Yes, they're highly sexual. Yes, their songs are silly and simplistic (Just Dance? That's a great idea!). It's still music for mass consumption.

But they're, well, strange. Madonna might be sexual, but she's so in-your-face it actually makes you think critically about it, hence the Sex book. P!nk's a baby butch who isn't one, and occasionally lapses into amazing cleverness (in the case of So What) And strange means different, means you pay attention, means they aren't just sex objects anymore. It means they're in control.

VS.

?
Or rather, vs. their producers...
But can you tell from the pictures?

Gaga might just be the weirdest of the bunch to date. Hypnotic robotic dancing, infinite costume changes (up to and including plastic bubbles), incredibly jerky camera movements in her videos, endless songs about being rich and famous (entire first album), and the occasional obscene lyric (usually, one should note, about her doing something to someone else).

It also doesn't hurt that she's her own songwriter. But judge for yourself:

Aguilera - Genie In A Bottle

Gaga - Poker Face

(Embedding was disabled, sorry! Also, I'm not trying to single out Aguilera - she's just a typical example)

So what's the difference? Is there a difference? I think it's this: With Lady Gaga and other 'crazy pop stars', there's less focus on the woman herself, and more a focus on what she's doing. And that makes all the difference.

But perhaps I'm just being arbitrary: what do you think?