Lady Gaga has risen to the peak of the pop star world in just two years. Managing to generate staying power and interest within the highly dispensable genre, she’s somehow found a way to charge two hundred dollars for her sold-out arena shows despite having only one and a half albums to her name. The wet dream of gossip columnists, and flamboyant champion of the flamboyantly gay, what the hell is it about her heavily synthesized music that’s turned her into such a juggernaut?
It’s part inspiration, part liberal borrowing, and part her being a good pianist; Gaga’s one-off performances of her songs on talk shows and radio programs (check Youtube) are far more interesting to listen to than the songs as they appear on her albums. Fame Monster is a much more polished and pleasing product that its predecessor. Straight away, the first three tracks are criminally catchy, sappily romantic dance songs, one of which was strikingly familiar on the very first listen…
I was fortunate enough to spend my entire childhood listening to the records of ABBA, easily one of the best pop groups that ever was. And the second track of Fame Monster, Alejandro, is a composite song of several of ABBA’s singles and melodies, and feels much like electronic re-creation of ABBA’s style, and if ABBA hadn’t fallen by the wayside a decade ago, I’m sure some kind of stink would have been raised over this, but alas.
Speechless is both refreshing, and a sore thumb juxtaposed to the rest of the album. A piano/rock ballad doesn’t fit very well on a sexualized dance album, nor does the use of acoustic piano and drums, and electric guitars with weeping riffs. And it’s after Speechless that the album kind of falls apart. Dance in the Dark and Telephone feel like a rehashed return to the styles of the first three tracks, in a not-so-good sloppy seconds kind of way. So Happy I Could Die almost gets it right, but oddly emphasized masturbation references and an out of place hook of ‘Aay’s’ and ‘Yay-hah’s’ interrupt the slow and mellow groove of the song. Lastly, Teeth is a strange country-gospel-blues song that manages to have a full brass section playing above the synthesizer bass that Gaga seems unable to leave home without.
Fame Monster is half great and half unsuccessful experiment. Fortunately, the good and bad parts are already neatly organized from the start to save you the trouble. It’s kind of sad though, because nothing on any of these songs is as good as this bare-bones variation of Paparazzi: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3R3KqrJAI4 She doesn’t need all these programmed beats and overdubbed vocals to play great music, and her album works are definitely performing below her potential. Hopefully her future work will show some of the musical complexity that she’s really capable of.
