Lady Gaga: The monster within

Musicians-turned-celebrities are adored as much for their music as their personal lives. What is Britney Spears without the marriages and meltdowns, and Taylor Swift without her well-documented coffee dates with Jake Gyllenhaal? In this caffeinated and flash-photographed landscape, comes forth Lady Gaga, the mutating pop star bombarding us with a dizzying array of images and sounds, never giving us a chance to get bored — or wonder who she really is.

Despite all her trumpeting of 'Being Yourself', we never really know if the lady is ever herself — she is the ultimate performer, a strong-throated dance music virtuoso with a thousand avatars. For audiences with a 10-second attention span, Lady Gaga is the musical equivalent of flipping television channels. From a dress made entirely of meat, to marketing her songs through the Facebook game, Farmville; to gay-friendly lyrics that expound the importance of 'being yourself' — Lady Gaga has her finger on the pulse of social media and sensibilities, which is what makes her the music industry's new and eminently successful business model.

And now, in her latest step towards world domination, Lady Gaga is coming to India. Her team is tapping Desi Hits — a New York-based media company — to help build her brand, specifically in India but also among the large South Asian diaspora. Through Desi Hits, Gaga is hoping to make a mark in the Bollywood-dominated landscape, starting with Salim-Sulaiman remixes of her new songs ‘Born This Way’ and ‘Judas’. “If an international artist wants to penetrate ‘mass’ pop culture, navigating Bollywood is essential,” said Acharia-Bath, owner of Desi Hits in an interview with The Wall Street Journal.

Lady Gaga’s understanding of the Indian market is just one of the points which make her a hugely successful star, though she has just released two albums: Gaga understands what the public needs — a spectacle with an easily digestable ‘social’ message. Her new album Born This Way tackles this headfirst: her slightly preachy lyrics are aimed primarily at the LGBT crowds, but can be easily adapted for anyone feeling hard-done-by.

“What Lady Gaga has done is very traditionally pop music,” says Jay Sablok, a music-writer in Bangalore. “Transgression has always been an important aspect of pop music. It doesn’t matter very much what the issue is, because the act of rebelling itself is most important.”

In ‘Born This Way’ alone, she calls out to gays, Christians, the “broke”, every ethnicity from “Lebanese” to “Chola (Latino) or Orient made”, to the “bullied, outcast and teased”.

“But what’s great about Gaga is that she’s made transgression incredibly easy,” says Sablok.

“All you have to do is be who you already are.” Others, like Kritika Sharma, a publicist working in Chennai, are furious defenders. “Every single musician is manufactured, and we’re consumers. Lady Gaga is the lesser evil: she sells equality, respect and female rights.”

The second part of Lady Gaga’s success has been her creation of a bizarre and surreal persona. Whatever you think of her music, it’s impossible to be bored by her antics — critics, fans and sceptics alike watched agog as she wore a dress made entirely of meat to an awards ceremony and was transported to the Grammy Awards in a giant egg carried by four men (she claimed to have been incubating inside for three days). Some fans, like Delhiite Jasleen Gill, who started off as “a super-fan of the music”, are now tired of “her desperate gimmicks”.

The last, and perhaps least, important aspect of Lady Gaga’s success is the music itself. Her music mixes her sexually aggressive, feel-good lyrics with synth-pop beats. Her success began with ‘Poker Face’; a song about gambling and sexual games. Her debut album was followed by ‘Born This Way’, which, while lacking the spontaneity of her first, made up for it by going whole-hog on her message of equality and acceptance. “It was the best dance album I’ve heard in years!” exclaims Taru Goyal, a DJ in Mumbai. “For that alone, I forgave Gaga all her posturing.”

The fact that her music and persona are derived from fellow pop-idols Christina Aguilera and Debbie Harry is undeniable, but to J.C Monteriro, Indo-Canadian music producer and DJ, people who accuse her of unoriginality are missing the point. “Gaga lines her inspirations up in wholly new and original ways, which give us a new way of looking at the same social landscape. She is a parody of consumerism, so-called ‘originality’, and every other concept you throw at her.”

This provocatively dressed, musically gifted performer appeals to our most populist sentiments: acceptance of social differences, sexual liberation soothed with catchy beats, and a spectacle we can both be fascinated by and live vicariously through. And we love every minute of it.