Lady Gaga: Torn This Way
Lady Gaga is not really the word of mouth on Grateful Grapefruit. But it is almost inevitable to not write about (my least favorite word when talking about pop culture) the “hype” around Born This Way – an album that made a name and split the audiences before it’s actual release. It goes without saying, that Lady Gaga is one of the greatest agent provocateurs of recent pop culture. Yet sometimes she obviously looses it and produces an album like Born This Way which features a couple of good songs but doesn’t live up to the quality of her last record, The Fame Monster, and only gives Gaga’s critics more reasons to spit on her. For me personally, the best tracks that can inspire me in a way are Scheiße, Americano (somewhat cheesy yet OK) and Government Hooker. The other songs are rather filling that makes the whole album loosing its flow and vibe. There’s just too much of everything. And that’s why critics are Torn This Way:
In the NME, Dan Martin describes the albumas “a relentless torrent of heavy-metal-rave-pop”; he’s impressed by the empowerment anthem Hair – “quite the gayest thing you will ever hear for a long time” – and describes The Edge of Glory as “the most ecstatic pop serenade this woman has ever come up with”.
The Guardian’s Tim Jonze is similarly positive. He’s bemused that Lady Gaga “can be the most exciting, confounding and mind-bogglingly creative artist on planet pop while still sounding like an early-90s Tampax advert” – but he admires the way the record’s “pop vision” embraces both politics (Americano considers Arizona’s immigration laws, underpinned by Latin beats) and “shameless, club-orientated pop”.
Harry Clayton-Wright, writing for Gay Times, is less convinced. Born This Way, the title track and self-confessed “gay anthem”, is “a song to wear your hot pants, sequinned boob tube and strut around to in your mum’s high heels”, while Government Hooker “will have you writhing sexily in your seat”. But the compliments stop there. “Greatest album of this decade?” he sneers. “By God no, there’s only two tracks we really liked.”
I’ve saved the best for last. And I think it summarizes all of the above:
If Lady Gaga is such a professional and obviously on an never ending quest to entertain us why does her music have to be so bad?
Will Hodgkinson asks the obvious question in The Times.
“Born This Way is the album equivalent of a finely cooked meal with a load of tomato ketchup splurged all over it. It’s full of nice ideas, but they are inevitably subsumed under the all-powering but bland ingredient of Nineties Euro dance. Something original and interesting will start up but, before you know it, a familiar thud-thud beat bludgeons it into non-existence… ”
“The title track of Born This Way is the big anthem. With lines such as “don’t be a drag, just be a queen” it’s so squarely aimed at Lady Gaga’s gay audience that you suspect she would have roped in John Inman to trill “I’m free” somewhere around the second verse.”
What do you think?
images: via
