Part 1: Lady Gagaâ??s rise to stardom, her rare artistry, and the prelude to the Monster Era.
The mainstream media will always point out her outrageous or shocking haute couture. They will mention the shoes, the hair, and might cite â??Bad Romanceâ? as her greatest accomplishment. Some who have come to love her music are still skeptical of what they see as celebrity antics. Our parents might see a confusing performance on TV while sipping their morning coffees; and while some who donâ??t know her may assume that sheâ??s the product of a typical rags-to-riches lucky break whoâ??s now spritzing prepackaged values around at each show and interview, those who have watched each and every one of her moves will know that thatâ??s all wrong, and that we can all learn a thing or two from the true artist who is Lady Gaga.
I downloaded â??Just Dance,â? her first single, in November of 2008. It had dropped that spring. I was a junior in high school that fall, but I donâ??t remember becoming a fan until the next summer when I was at Brownâ??s summer school. The entire album, The Fame, had been released by then. The same summer as Michael Jacksonâ??s death, her music soaked the air at parties, clubs, and in the cars of anyone listening to the radio. I loved Gagaâ??s work just as Iâ??d always loved dance music. But this time it was mainstream, and it was big. I watched an interview she had recently done and I remember telling my roommate that she was absolutely crazy. She was a petite and shy girl, just 23 at the time, who said really strange things. Her parents were proud of her, but I didnâ??t see how they could be. I thought what most people thought about her, but I was intrigued enough to keep paying attention.
Had I not let my love of her music turn into an all-encompassing infatuation, I may have never learned the truth about her. The truth that she grew up wealthy, went to private school, the best in New York, with Paris Hilton, and had a loving and stable family that supported her musical talent. Her talent is real; she played piano from a young age and attended NYUâ??s Tisch School of the Arts before dropping out in her first year. She worked hard, performing in clubs and bars to make a name for herself. At first her father was horrified when he saw her singing and dancing in clubs bikini-clad, but later he used his connections to promote her passion. She was signed and then dropped. She says â??Just Danceâ? saved her life â?? it was her first song to make it after she signed with Interscope. The right people took her seriously and she skyrocketed to the very top. â??Just Danceâ? reached 6-time platinum status in the United States and Canada and charted high around the world, too. You donâ??t need to understand her to admire her music, but just like the record executives who listened to what she had to say, the fans that took the time were pleasantly surprised. After all, as a pop singer the bar was low. But she was the only one who wore 12-inch heels.
An artist from birth, she first started to express herself, as all artists must, through fashion. She cites her hometown of New York as the inspiration for her choice to dress in an outrà way. Since the way you look is the first thing people see and use to judge you, it can define you from the outside.
Lyrically, she wrote what she knew. And at the time, that included boys, sex, drugs, alcohol, and clubs â?? the rungs of the ladder to the top. Lucky for her, thatâ??s what sells and that helped â??Just Danceâ? make it big. Produced by Red One, it had fresh dance undertones that caught more attention than the usual pop productions. â??Poker Face,â? â??Love Game,â? and â??Paparazziâ? saw huge success as singles later on.
But underneath the glitz and glam that would soon be shed, Gaga was serious. There was never any lip-syncing, and in her interviews she was introspective and too grown-up for any interviewer that was sent her way. Like those who still write her off because of her style, it was hard for many to see how incredible this woman would be because the words she was singing had been sung before. But what was different was her attitude. She didnâ??t want the fame, the money (she later went broke), or the attention. She had been put on Earth to write and perform music, and thatâ??s what she was doing.
In todayâ??s popular music, such lack of an agenda is unheard of â?? just compare her to the other big names in pop and it clear. She was the only one to do it for the art, but you had to dig a little deeper to find that out. From the surface you wouldnâ??t know her artistry if you simply judged her without inspecting her and taking her in. But Gaga wasnâ??t trying to let critics see her easily â?? life is too short to please everyone.
Artists care about their fans, not only because they provide them with the financial support to carry on, but also because fans are emotionally invested in the art and care about it just as much as the artists do. That is a crucial symbiosis for artists. The artist, at heart, only wants fans that are worthy of them. For Gaga, those who were worthy saw through the clothing and looked a little deeper than the music. Thus, the first â??Little Monstersâ? were born. For the ones that stuck with her, the reward would come soon. While her mass appeal brought in enough dough, her real sustenance was her fans, those who loved her for who she was. But while those who were loyal kept the art alive, millions of others forged the fame that began to eat her. Months after The Fame had made her a star, the bruised and mangled Gaga picked up the pen again, and 19 months after â??Just Danceâ? dropped, The Fame Monster was born.
Travis Hallett â??14 (travishallett@college) is excited to have timed his Gaga series so well; look for further installations in the next weeks as the Indy counts down to Gagaâ??s arrival at Sanders Theatre on February 29.