I’m foolish, suppose, for letting it get to me. One Peter Wood had a piece in Wednesday’s Chronicle of Higher Education titled “Lily Bart vs. Lady Gaga.” The title should have been warning enough. For if you were innocently to ask, “Who’s Lily Bart?”, you would thereby have proven Wood’s point for him before he’d [...]
Yesterday, I pleaded for two more days to finish talking about Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” video—but I’m going to finish up here today instead. The second visual plot within the first section of the “Bad Romance” video concerns what I call “Sailor Moon Gaga,” who is wrest from her bathtub by Russian supermodel kidnappers (while [...]
Lady Gaga’s got nothing very new going on right now: a new, eagerly awaited album in the can, of course, but for now, a temporary lull in her frentetic output. And during that lull, I was asked by a student group on campus to address the question: “What, if anything, is new about Lady Gaga’s presentation of [...]
I spent the 4th of July post singing the praises of Rolling Stone magazine, and suggesting that their investigative reporting, arguably the only remaining vital component of the magazine, has served mightily over the pas decade in the service of American liberty. I still believe that, but today I wanted to wonder with you about [...]
A couple of field notes from the last week or so in this Summer of Gaga. First the serious: The Westboro Baptist Church of Topeka, Kansas, is now holding anti-Lady Gaga rallies outside her concerts. The “church” (as a Christian myself, how I hate to use that word here!) rose to infamy when it chose to [...]
An embarrassingly “lite” post for today—and what’s more, I’m going to try to make you, Dear Reader, do the work. It’s in the form of one of those analogy tests. Look at these two examples and, having sussed out the pattern, suggest other examples of your own? Talking Heads, “Radio Head” (from True Stories) = Radiohead [...]
Somebody—U. Kentucky musicologist Kevin Holm-Hudson, I believe—posted a link on Facebook yesterday to a story in The Onion, with this intro: “Yet another strange musical twist in Dylan’s long storied career. Wonder what Greil Marcus would say about this? .” Hours and hours later, there are still no comments to Kevin’s post, and I think [...]
I’m sorry today’s video choice is so utterly predictable: and not just because Gaga’s got me just where she wants me, as regular readers of fcrp well know. Every new Lady Gaga video is something of an internet sensation, at least for now. When I first watched “Alejandro” on YouTube Tuesday it had been viewed [...]
Today’s not our video Friday, kids—Mystery Science Auditorium—but this video is hosted at the Pitchfork.com site for this week only, so I thought I’d put it out here today, to give you a chance to have a look at it. Besides, I’m not really going to try to dig into the video itself (truth be [...]
So yesterday’s post was, in a sense, about guilty non-pleasures: those bands or artists in whom we’re supposed to delight, but just can’t. The “guilty” part is just optional, of course: I do feel guilty for not liking Wilco and Fugazi more than I do, but not a bit guilty about loathing Metallica and the [...]