November 24, 2009

Interscope

 

Let’s face it: Lady GaGa, love her, hate her or just plain weirded out by her, is bound to be around for quite awhile. Clearly an avid observer of pop icons that came before her, GaGa understands that mystery and intrigue are half the battle, and whether she’s changing costume seventeen times in a song or refusing to acknowledge or deny the rumors that she’s a hermaphrodite, she’s fully committed to the iconic image she’s been cultivating. It also helps to have the gay community eating out of your hand.

 

We live in a different time than when Michael and Madonna first made their impact, but catchy pop jingles recorded by otherworldly oddballs will always have their place, regardless of classic caliber, and GaGa’s been paying close attention. She’s a savvy student of exposure, and writes or co-writes most of her material, allowing for direct engagement with her field of cultural focus rather than generic love/breakup tracks compiled by the teams of songwriters most of her rivals rely upon.

 

With production from Teddy Riley, Rodney Jerkins, Ron Fair and Fernando Garibay, The Fame Monster is an intentionally vintage-sounding club pop collection of supplements to last year’s smash debut The Fame. Opting out of the reissue idea to let the songs on The Fame Monster stand on their own was a good idea; anyone remotely interested in The Fame either has it by now or is too sick of the hits (of which there are many) to pick it up at this point. Eight tracks are seriously pushing it in terms of what defines an album, but these songs stand together in style and scope and thus transcend B-side relegation.

 

Her dance-pop isn’t revolutionary or even innovative, but Lady GaGa’s fully aware of that. Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta is a passionately intuitive and relentlessly creative young lady who realizes that her strength as an artist lies just as much in showmanship as it does in skill. A thousand ridiculous costumes, fake blood, pianos engulfed in flames and sexual mystery fill in the gaps of captivation that her music tends to leave, facilitating the GaGa character and providing proper mojo stilts when the content doesn’t conjure the magic.

 

That’s not to say the girl’s without spark, however. "Paparazzi" and "Poker Face" alone are already immortal, and there are moments on The Fame Monster that have some real promise. Most of those moments are found in "Bad Romance" and "La Isla Bonita" cousin "Alejandro," both of which transcends the rest of the album’s obsession with ’80s melancholy synth-pop atmospherics, but still… they’re moments.

 

"Dance In the Dark" has nothing at all to do with Bruce Springsteen, thankfully (?), but rather finds Gaga addressing the complexities of fame and general female self-issues. As with "So Happy I Could Die," it’s full of cheap hook gimmicks with uninspired payoffs, but payoffs nonetheless, at least enough to satiate the eager. Beyonce shows up on "Telephone," which is not to be confused with the pair’s original, stronger collaboration, "Video Phone". Points docked for atrocious lyrics on that one.

 

Speechless has an amateurish, theatrical nature rooted in ’70s piano-drama pop that doesn’t quite ring with conviction, despite premature critical claims that the song will be her post-"Poker Face" musical touchstone. Semi-title track "Monster," a danceable throwaway, finds Germanotta meeting a boy in a club and falling hard, with the lyrical highlight: "We French kissed on a subway train / He tore my clothes right off / He ate my heart and then he ate my brain." Again, there’s an uninspired celebration of throwback, retro ’80s synth beats that beg for more time in the cooker. Every ounce of promise is matched with overt, boiling cheese sauce.

 

Lady GaGa doesn’t need ten hits on an album to make her mark as a real artist, but she’s going to have to try harder than this to maintain her star trajectory, even if The Fame Monster is only intended as a stopgap between The Fame and her next full-length album.