Opinion Born this Way

For Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta,a young Britney Spears obsessed girl,who went to the Convent of Sacred Heart,an all girls Roman Catholic School in Manhatten,the kind of attention and ‘Madonna status’ she has garnered with the moniker Lady Gaga in the pop world,has already made her the Gen-Next diva. And well,pop music has definitely not had such wild company in a long time. No points for guessing,she is still receiving a hungry welcome by the audience worldwide.

Her first debut single Just Dance in 2008,with her eccentric fashion and her enticing music,screamed the arrival of something that America had not witnessed before. She excited people in a nation,who are either far too busy or somewhat disenthralled to be excited. And lets face it. If America gets excited,the world at least makes an effort to feel that excitement. The soaring electronics and cropped marching beats with an R&B feel in her debut single saw a scantily dressed blonde with a powder-white face make the world not just groove to the music,but look at her and be awed by what they saw.

She was not your average frolic floozy,entertaining a drunk audience. Her voice is quite delicious,if that makes any sense. It has got body,texture,with the hook that is bang on. But to add to it,in my opinion,it is not brilliant either. What works in Gaga’s favour is that she is her own commentator and decoder. Her own professor and her own scholar. All the wardrobe monstrosities that the little monsters (as Gaga calls hers fans) have witnessed — the colossal-concept videos,those wild hairdos and clothes,alternately sexy and absurd gestures,sort of cling to her music,and tell us to consider and look at the songs differently. She has created an experience out of her music,which is actually what performers are supposed to do. More than Lady Antebellum stealing the show at the Grammys this year,it was Gaga hatching from an egg that people remember.

The ‘shocks’ may not have gone down too well with the Catholic league,who call her portrayal of Mary Magdalene in the single Judas as “talentless and irreverent” She has gone on to defy everything that is normal and the barrage of accusations and questions. If she is attracted to Judas and Jesus in this one,then in Alejendro she gets raped in a fetishised nun’s outfit and swallows the rosary. She wears outfits made of meat and puts up wild performances with blood oozing from them on the stage,her role enactments have got her much flak from a lot of people. Not that she has been really bothered by it,but she has managed to create ripples.

Its is not for the heck of it that she is a gay icon. The whole idea of foregrounding a ‘freak show’ center-stage and not hiding it,has made her the demi-goddess of gay people across the world. Defying the whole idea of normalcy and calling different as normal is what makes them go gaga over Gaga.

The 24-year-old has been around only for the past three years,but look what she has done to music. It seems that she has been singing Poker Face and Bad Romance for ages and the jukebox rotations of the same have worked in the favour of the thought. Be it the up-tempo Papparazi or the darker themed Poker Face that revolves around her own bisexuality,all of it just works for the simple reason of her wild presence. Her presence is always expected to create something unusual,or outlandish — she ended up meeting The Queen in a red latex dress — she not only lives upto that reputation,she works really hard to make sure that we believe it.

You can either completely love her,or detest her. There is no middle-path there. It is hard to believe that there is sincerity in the work we see. But somewhere in that madness,there is some level of honesty and genuinity. I think we get scared of what she shows us. Not the madness. The candor in it. Externalisation of her struggles. The different kind of honesty in it. We crave for different. She is giving us different. So why fret?