Her lips suck forth my soul: see where it flies.
Come, Helen, give me my soul again."
The Tragical History of Doctor Faustus [V.2.191-199]
The glitz and glamor of every visual aspect of Lady GaGa is deliberately over the top, and for that very reason so very attention grabbing and stunning. But physical imagery does not a good album make.
So you get rid of that, and what do you have? Incredibly catchy pop songs with hooks that dig into you for days. But we've all known catchy pop songs that deliver nothing save empty sing-alongs.
So what happens when you get rid of that too?
You get one of the most well written and thought out albums of recent history.
She has said the album is about how anyone can be famous. Alas, that statement sells the album short. Really, it is a modern pop Faustian tale of selling ones soul and spiritual well being for untold amounts of fame and material well being. Frequently the lyrics cite the need to decide between whether to have love or fame -- specifically in the songs "Lovegame", "Beautiful Dirty Rich", and "Paparazzi", "Paparazzi" even going so far as to make it explicitly clear in the music video (really short movie) this point of not being able to have both (her "lover" sells her out to the papparazi who are hiding in the bushes around their house and he proceeds to push her over the edge of the deck to a nasty injury because she wouldn't cooperate and pose for the pictures while in their disingenuous love tangle).
Faust aside, the songs stand on their own and use very expressive and imaginative metaphors and verbal imagery. At first glance "Just Dance" is about dancing when you're drunk, but it suggests a much deeper struggle to hold onto that one fleeting moment of glory, even when it's since become impossible. "Poker Face" uses the imagery of gambling and bluffing to convey a standoff between two people who are possibly trying to proposition eachother but don't want to give anything away. "Lovegame" complicates this theme by adding a tinge of desparation.
Additionally, the album seems to take a sort of emblematic approach to this (our, GaGa included) generation, demanding entitlement to certain perks and privelages, not necessarily ready to deal with the responsibilities that go along with it. The rise and fall of American Youth never sounded so sweet.
And that's the other thing; musically, this album is very sound. Synths are nothing new, but they never seem over done. Alot of the songs use unorthodox structures, yet none of them really seem that odd or off, thus being subversively progressive and avant garde. Regrettably there is autotune on some of the songs, but it's confined to B-tracks that will likely not be released as singles, and seems to be done solely as an experiment. She doesn't really need it anyway, as several of the songs show off her vocal chops. In other words, where there is autotuning, it is deliberately to make that robot sound, not just some dude screaming into a mike and then changing it around afterwards to sound goofy.
All things said -- this is a fundamentally solid album by a talented songwriter with the hooks and imagery to take it really far. Here's hoping for a successful follow up.
A
-- Knuttel
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