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Your grandmother knows her (and thinks she's a man in drag), your therapist knows her (and thinks she suffers Multiple Personality Disorder), your beautician knows her (and died her hair yellow)... But is "knowing" her really the appropriate term? We decided to go and take the Gaga quizz.

What is Lady Gaga?

a) a recording artist
b) a chameleon
c) a puppet
d) none of the above, all of the above?

 

a) So the Lady sings, and dances, and plays the piano and does so pretty decently, much better than many a manufactured pop starlet. But somewhat her being a legitimate artist raises doubt (a quite a few eyebrows), and many go on calling her a phenomenon as opposed to a "serious" musician. Phenomenon she is for sure, perhaps to the point where the music (or whatever people might want to call the noises she makes) becomes secondary?

Pictures might speak louder than words but the fact her videos are so much more popular than her stand-alone songs is telling. Billions of hits is something even footage of Angelina and Jennifer wrestling in baby oil wouldn't get. Does anyone even hear the music when watching a PMS-ing bionic woman come out of the water or a piano-playing Witch of the West hanging feet above the ground?

 

b) If we lived in wonderland she would be the ultimate one-woman band: mad as a hatter, scary as the Queen of Hearts with something of Alice's innocence. Schizophrenia does not quite explain it for there is a madwoman in each and every one of those incarnations, albeit a very controlled and sane madwoman.Is that constant reinvention a sign of the times when our attention-spans can barely stand the test of the 140 characters?

Unpleasant as it might be to the cynical eye this "fashion roadkill meets fashion genius" is a pleasant alternative to the early noughties aka age of the gyrating crotches and various Xtinas. There is a new blonde on the block and her asexualness somewhat feels really empowering.

 

c) Behind many a recording artist there is a cruel demanding father or a tyrant/manager (and we all know that always ends so well...), but the Gaga seems motivated by something of her own. To an extent at least; some might very well see her as a very pretty, rather demented doll, with such people as stylist Nicola Fomichetti as puppeteers.

 

d) She is many things, but above all she is predictable. And so the Kermit costume, the armadillo shoe and taxi-yellow phone-shaped hair might be as related to one another as cow and chicken but they strike the same note of OTT and costume. That might explain why the "stolen" photographs of young Gaga in high school feel somewhat as revealing and forbidden as that sex tape did for Paris Hilton. It's everything you could never picture her as, everything she might want (you) to forget she was?

In a few years' time (three or four being the average number of years it takes for the young and famous to crash and burn nowadays) we'll be treated to the MTV documentary who told the story of the ordinary girl with the extraordinary future (yawn), and how dreams of bigger things led to a tragic case of Blonde Ambition.  In the meantime we shall carry on hitting the mute button and feigning indifference.

 

Aurelie Bellavigna

 

Credits: MTV

TAGS: lady gaga music high school photos nicola formichetti alice in wonderland mad hatter mtv