I love this record baby, but I can't see straight anymore
Single song listening party #5! Previous entries can be found under the "listening party" tag.
Lady GaGa - Just Dance
Download here.
It took me a long time to figure out which Lady GaGa song I wanted to talk to you about. I love her whole album with a fierceness I haven't felt in a while. I know a lot of people have knee-jerk negative reactions to pop music, and some people have them to NYC hipsters who want to comment on pop music as an art form by making pop music. The hipness rate of the world is moving so exponentially fast that you can't be ahead of the curve anymore. There is no curve, just a long, straight line of jaded cool kids who tire of things in the first five seconds.
I'm not suggesting a Return to Earnestness (I'm not Dave Eggers, thank god). I love my snark and my ironically post-ironic glee as much as anyone else. But sometimes I like to step out from behind the wall of condescension, pretend like it doesn't matter that I heard about this band a whole week before you, and just listen to things that strike me. This song strikes me.
It's sung by a beautiful girl with a ready-made pop diva persona - if you're wondering what inspired Xtina's sexy 80s look at the VMAs this year, it was Lady Gaga, without a doubt. She doesn't need a album or two to find her image (nor to let her handlers find it for her; she holds complete creative control over her work, down to writing the songs herself). She projects an image of glamor, extreme wealth and all its attendant partying.
And yet, for all her glamorous armor, the song itself displays a surprising amount of vulnerability. Like Holly Golightly for the turn-of-the-21st-century club crowd, she loses her important possessions, gets too drunk to dance, and has to tell herself over and over that it'll be okay. Her no-frills vocal performance and the thumping beat add to the near-tragedy of the song for me, simply by being so upbeat and not at all tragic. I could get all sorts of postmodern on you and talk about how I think she's revealing herself by hiding behind a screen, but still hiding by making us think for a second that she's actually revealing herself.
But I won't get that deep into it. Take another step back and this song is just fucking awesome. It's well-written pop. She's got a great voice. It always makes me want to dance.
Lady GaGa - Just Dance
Download here.
It took me a long time to figure out which Lady GaGa song I wanted to talk to you about. I love her whole album with a fierceness I haven't felt in a while. I know a lot of people have knee-jerk negative reactions to pop music, and some people have them to NYC hipsters who want to comment on pop music as an art form by making pop music. The hipness rate of the world is moving so exponentially fast that you can't be ahead of the curve anymore. There is no curve, just a long, straight line of jaded cool kids who tire of things in the first five seconds.
I'm not suggesting a Return to Earnestness (I'm not Dave Eggers, thank god). I love my snark and my ironically post-ironic glee as much as anyone else. But sometimes I like to step out from behind the wall of condescension, pretend like it doesn't matter that I heard about this band a whole week before you, and just listen to things that strike me. This song strikes me.
It's sung by a beautiful girl with a ready-made pop diva persona - if you're wondering what inspired Xtina's sexy 80s look at the VMAs this year, it was Lady Gaga, without a doubt. She doesn't need a album or two to find her image (nor to let her handlers find it for her; she holds complete creative control over her work, down to writing the songs herself). She projects an image of glamor, extreme wealth and all its attendant partying.
And yet, for all her glamorous armor, the song itself displays a surprising amount of vulnerability. Like Holly Golightly for the turn-of-the-21st-century club crowd, she loses her important possessions, gets too drunk to dance, and has to tell herself over and over that it'll be okay. Her no-frills vocal performance and the thumping beat add to the near-tragedy of the song for me, simply by being so upbeat and not at all tragic. I could get all sorts of postmodern on you and talk about how I think she's revealing herself by hiding behind a screen, but still hiding by making us think for a second that she's actually revealing herself.
But I won't get that deep into it. Take another step back and this song is just fucking awesome. It's well-written pop. She's got a great voice. It always makes me want to dance.
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