I have been kicking these ideas around for a while, and then this appeared. Beaten to the punch, and in a far better way, I have now been given permission to put my ideas out there. So, here it is for whatever it might be worth.
My biggest impression of the very first MTV Music Awards was a very drunk/stoned Ron Wood, giving an award with Rod Stewart, dropping what is now called "the f-blomb". Yet, Madonna writhing on stage as she lip-synched "Like a Virgin" is also pretty clear in my memory. What struck me most was her willingness to put herself out there. It was all about the visuals: the wedding dress, the juxtaposition of wantonness and the lyrical insistence on virginity. In the quarter century since then, Madonna has released mediocre music that have become huge hits because of her dedication to a visual display that was far more powerful than the music itself.
The paeans to Madonna's debt to and use of Music Television are legion. Even more than Michael Jackson (whose monster hit Thriller was certainly aided by the video music channel, yet I think it probably would have done quite well anyway), Madonna was the first, and probably greatest and longest-lived performer for whom the imagery became something greater than the music.
With the ascension of Lady Gaga, we are witnessing, I think, a weird convergence of a sort, of multiple cultural, economic, and technological trends that are blaring from speakers and headphones and laptops. While I certainly agree that Gagaism is as much about the supremacy of Web 2.0, her songs, unlike those of Madonna's, stand up on their own. Her style, in many ways linked to Madonna simply because it seems like outrageousness for its own sake, in fact tells us far more about her attitude to her understanding of herself as a performer than one might think. Finally, that her CD is breaking big even as the economic model of the music industry is tanking reminds me of another time the music industry fought back against a current that seemed bent on its destruction. Let's take these in reverse order.
In 1979, Disco was queen. It was everywhere - on pop radio, in movies and soundtracks, influencing the nightlife of the rich and famous - and seemed ascendant. Since the first half of the decade had been dominated by white rock bands, heavily influenced by the blues, the danceable, r&b-tinged Disco seemed the antithesis of everything rock stood for. In the midst of this unstoppable musical and cultural phenomenon* the Knack dropped a little song, "My Sharona", that took over radio, the music charts, and helped spur on a kind of rock-revanchism that gave birth, in just a few years, to a rule of mediocrities - Loverboy, REO Speedwagon, Journey - that managed to keep the forces of darkness, personified by disco, at bay. In many ways, the relentless marketing of Lady Gaga, and her economic and sales success seems like much the same phenomenon. The industry, which for decades has floundered under a business model no longer relevant, seems to be attempting to reclaim some kind of cultural capital with Gaga's success.
Her public appearances seem so scripted they must be. Her appearances guarantee a pack of photographers. She often appears in masks, hooded (as in the above veil), or with makeup that alters her facial features. While there seems to be little doubt these are carefully calculated incidents, I find her willingness to keep her face hidden interesting. It almost smacks of a kind of statement. It looks like she is telling the photographers that she is in control of her image, to the point of refusing to reveal her face. Others will make of her what they will, but who she is is up to her.
If you consider her music in and of itself, it actually betrays a depth, and an interest in music for its own sake, that just isn't there in Madonna's output. Her biggest hits - "Like A Virgin", "Like A Prayer", "Vogue" - all seem to have been recorded in service of an image. Gaga's songs, on the other hand, are far more clever, far more musical, than Madonna's. That Gaga was a songwriter before releasing her own material shouldn't surprise after actually listening to her singles. While it seems obvious to the point of cliche that Gaga is piggybacking on Madonna, just as she piggybacked on Marilyn Monroe, I think the difference between her and her older musical colleague is Gaga is far more musical. She certainly owes her rise to Web 2.0. Yet, I think that her phenomenal success owes as much not only to a native intelligence in using the new media to her advantage (like Madonna); it also displays better musical instincts. Finally, her success and her musical and songwriting abilities have, for one brief, shining moment, allowed her record label to set aside their worries. I do not think, like the aftermath of the Knack's success, that the record companies will be making a comeback. Her success will breed all sorts of imitators; thankfully, precisely because of Web 2.0, we won't have to deal with them for very long.
In sum, then, Lady Gaga represents both continuity and change. I do not see this as vindicating a McLuhanesque understanding; rather, we merely have an example of a smart, talented song-writer and performer who uses the new media to her advantage, even as she sets boundaries with her image and style.
*Unlike a lot of commentators who write about punk, the simple fact is it had little impact in the US, except perhaps among some musicians who understood it. It was a British phenomenon. The same year the Sex Pistols released Never Mind the Bollocks saw the release of Saturday Night Fever and came the same year as Peter Frampton's live album raised a struggling British blues-based guitarist to super-stardom.
