The visual concept of Lady GaGa’s music video to her number one single Bad Romance shows her being auctioned off to the highest bidder, each of the people bidding are representations for record labels. Therefore, she is being auctioned off to the record company that wants to sign her onto their label, it is visualised by GaGa undressing in front of these people and appearing to be sold as a sex slave. This idea is extended when GaGa charms one of the men into “buying” her, and then proceeds to have sex with the highest bidder.

So, the whole video can be interpreted as a metaphor for the music industry and how they manipulate their artists. The video itself shows each step GaGa has to go through to become a famous star. This includes business deals, manipulation and the idea of dark forces. So whilst the song Bad Romance is initially about the simple idea of loving someone for who they and everything about them good and bad, it is also about the “bad romance” and relationship artists have with the music industry. Continue reading →

The life of Lady Gaga was simple before she rose to fame. She was born on March 28, 1986 to Cynthia and Joseph Germanotta. Her birth name was Stefania Gabrielle Germanotta. Today she is popularly known as Lady Gaga, her stage name which she kept after being inspired by the Queen song “Radio Ga Ga”. She is a pop singer and songwriter of America and was born in Yonkers, New York.

She was fond of music from her very childhood. At the tender age of 4, she was an expert in playing the piano. When she was 13 years old, she wrote her first piano ballad and did her first performance in a night club of New York when she was 14 years of age. She got the opportunity to get admitted to New York University’s Tisch School of Arts at an early age of 17 which was a good first achievement for her. There she continued to work on music and songwriting. In order to get creative and original inspiration, Lady Gaga later dropped out from school. After that she took up 3 jobs, which also included a stint as a gogo dancer in order to meet her financial needs. Def Jam Records signed this lady in the year 2005 but soon dropped her after a few months. This forced her to perform in different clubs on New York City’s Lower East Side on her own. There she met different rock bands and collaborated with them to start on experiments amid fashion. Continue reading →

If there was ever a more anticipated concert series coming in the last five or so years, this would definitely be it. Lady Gaga is set to embark on a nationwide tour starting this month that will include many of the well known artists that you have come to enjoy listening to this past year or two. All of the antics that you hear about when it comes to Gaga doing her thing on stage are absolutely true and it would definitely be a shame to miss out on seeing them in person.

People seem to flock to Gaga’s shows out of curiosity based on everything that they have read about or watched on the internet, but the greatest thing about her shows is the fact that she is actually one of the more talented singers and performers out there today. Her voice is absolutely amazing and the songs that she sings are about as catchy as anything that you could ever listen to. Plus, with all of the sexual and revealing things that she does on stage while she is singing, even if you do not like the music you get to see some pretty entertaining stuff.

There have been those unfortunate times when she has crossed the line a little bit during her concerts, but isn’t that just part of the fun while you are there? I would think that people would go just for the opportunity to see something controversial and epic like Gaga stripping or something crazy like that. Her onstage antics are definitely worth the price of admission, but the fact that you also get to hear some amazing music and see some real life talent right there in front of your face is something that you cannot really put a price tag on. Lady Gaga is extremely popular for good and bad reasons, but nobody is ever going to question her extreme talent level. Continue reading →

The pop world cause celebre, Lady Gaga, is perhaps one of the most successful artists of our generation. Having sold over fifteen million albums worldwide – coupled with around 369 awards and nominations to her name – the upper-middle-class girl from Manhattan has had tremendous start to what is sure to be a long and prosperous music career. As a result to Gaga’s international renown, many feminist critics have become interested in Stefani Germanotta (Gaga’s birth name) as a powerful woman within contemporary popular culture. After reviewing the plethora of articles, blogs and journals that concentrate upon Gaga as a feminist icon, there is seemingly no overall consensus amongst those writing upon the subject. The music sensation herself claimed that she is a “representative of sexually strong women who speak their minds.”

However, within an earlier interview, Gaga proclaimed that “I’m not a feminist – I hail men. I love men.” These two contradictory statements typify Gaga’s enigmatic, postmodern celebrity persona. Under such conditions, labelling Lady Gaga a feminist icon is invariably going to be problematic.

But according to the Guardian writer and columnist, Kira Cochren, Lady Gaga does qualify as a positive role model for young women. This is because throughout her prolific career, Gaga has debunked the idea of ‘gender essentialism’. This philosophy maintains that men and women are fundamentally divergent – biologically, psychologically and sociologically. However, for many third wave feminists (i.e. Judith Butler), gender is nothing more than a social construct whereby males and females are socialised to conventionally think in masculine or feminine ways. Under these circumstances, gender-based behaviour is not biologically determined, but invariably “performative.” Through Lady Gaga’s manifestly androgynous stage personality, her existence within the mainstream furthers the notion that femininity does not have to be intrinsic to a female’s identity. For Cochren, constantly within interviews, performances and public outings, Lady Gaga blurs the essentialist distinctions between men and women, through elaborate transsexual costumes and patent references to bisexuality. Continue reading →

She is the most followed celebrity on Twitter. With 7.8 million fans on Twitter, Lady Gaga has done it and proved that she is not only the queen of the charts but also of the micro-blogging site that many other celebrities have joined into lately. When it comes to tweeting nobody does it better than Gaga. The pop sensation has edged past Britney Spears, Justin Bieber and Barack Obama.

But what is the reason behind the enormous popularity of this energetic singer? Sure, her vocal talents have won her a lot of admirers but that cannot be the only reason for her Twitter fame. There is Miley Cyrus, Demi Lovato, Taylor Swift and many others who are highly popular with the young generation. So her popularity on Twitter cannot be ascribed to her singing career only. The fact that she is also hugely popular on Facebook, with a staggering 27 million followers, just confirms the fact. Continue reading →