Chances are, you've heard of Lady GaGa already. Pegged as one of this year's “ones to watch”, she has been lauded by Perez Hilton, supported New Kids on the Block on tour and written a song for the Pussycat Dolls. All this while stomping on the old guard - gleeful bloggers have accused Christina Aguilera of borrowing GaGa's image for her recent comeback.
In a way the hype is justified - Lady GaGa's debut does mark a genuine new chapter for pop. Gone is the Disney fluff of the Jonas Brothers and their ilk and in its place is The Fame. It's the soundtrack for a generation brought up on a diet of reality shows like The Hills, bestsellers written by Jordan and Bratz dolls. The album inhabits that mindset in which being famous for fame's sake is a realistic career aspiration.
GaGa herself is quite the creation. From her videos and promo shots it's clear that the former Stefani Germanotta has pinched rock iconography from David Bowie to Kylie Minogue to create “Lady GaGa”, a peroxide dynamo with a no-nonsense attitude and a love of the dancefloor and all things shiny.
But, as becomes clear from the second track Lovegame (“Let's have some fun/ This beat is sick/ I want to take a ride on your disco stick”), something is off. And as much as it seems like shooting fish in a barrel to criticise GaGa's pop for being manufactured, her shtick is just too calculated.
The songs on The Fame fizz about with their europop choruses, autotuned vocals and ditzy, hedonistic lyrics, but they don't feel joyous at all. Instead the likes of Eh, Eh and Boys Boys Boys are clunky and laboured (“We like boys in cars/ Buy us drinks in bars”). Even the trio of songs that provides the core of the album's celebrity theme (Paparazzi, Beautiful Dirty Rich and the title track) don't ruminate on the addictive inanity of fame, choosing instead to observe passively. The whole exercise seems shallow.
There are a couple of fine moments - the love-as-card-game cheek of Poker Face, the bluesy, Elton John-styled Brown Eyes but these suffocate under the weight of the rest of the album's cynical artifice.
Lady GaGa is perhaps, then, not the pop star we want but maybe the one we deserve. Now that's scary