By Anna Meany
I find the worldwide obsession about Lady Gaga to be sickening. Halloween costumes, Facebook statuses and parties all focus on Lady Gaga. But what is Lady Gaga? Lady Gaga is merely a puppet of the music industry. As Limewire became the new iTunes, music sales sunk like the Titanic. What’s better than forcing people to pay thousands in merchandise, ticket sales and memorabilia? The simplest, yet costliest, solution is to create a robot weird enough to shock the planet.
Step one: Create catchy, meaningless pop music and market it as influential and deep. Both albums – “The Fame” and “The Fame Monster” – contain ambiguous, foot-tapping hits that even your mom hums. Gaga takes to her microphone to explain tragic meanings behind lyrics such as “I want your psycho, your vertical stick.” She said, “The song is about a love between best friends.” Perhaps my favorite explanation is that of her hit, “Telephone.” Lady Gaga said the telephone she sings of is a person, constantly telling her to try harder. It’s her faux profundity that keeps her fans hooked. Excuse me, their wallets are hooked. Gaga’s little monsters – what she has chosen to call her minions – are paying upwards of $150 to see her at the KFC Yum! Center in Louisville this March.
Step two: Speak so oddly that no one understands and everyone mistakes your peculiarity as spirituality. In her September interview with Vanity Fair, she discussed her tendency to kill her boyfriends in her music videos. “Someone recently texted me, ‘Why do you keep killing all your boyfriends in your videos? Are you gonna kill me?’ I’m like…I don’t know why, I don’t really know.” Her fans, as well as the media, seem to proclaim her absurdity to be inspiring, for some odd reason. Please show me a television program that calls her a nutcase.
Step three: Wear gaudy outfits and heavy amounts of makeup. Declaring bankruptcy to afford her wardrobe is changing the world? Think again, Gaga. To complete her persona, she dons meats, strategically-placed bubbles, stuffed animals and million-dollar so-called couture outfits. Her makeup consists of pearls being glued to her face and lightning bolts across her eyes. I meet people who chant, “I love her!” But I can’t take someone seriously if they legitimately believe that a woman covered in raw meat is attractive, iconic or inspiring. Perhaps the most ridiculous thing that I’ve read about Gaga is that she refused to remove a pair of Alexander McQueen high heels on an airplane. Due to the altitude and the uncomfortable nature of the shoes, her legs started swelling and showed early signs of deadly, deep-vein thrombosis. While recording “Friday Night with Jonathan Ross,” she bragged, “I would rather die than have my fans not see me in a pair of high heels.” Gaga proves that her days are spent worrying about her persona. Would her little monsters be that upset if she tried to save her own life?
To the blind, she is a trailblazer with controversial and innovative views on love and music. The truth about Gaga is that she has gained followers through successful marketing ploys and bizarre behavior. When will the rest of the world be sick of Gaga?
