Video of the Day: Tony Bennett and Lady Gaga ‘The Lady is a Tramp’

Video of the Day: Lady Gaga SNL 5/21

From the 5/21 performance on Saturday Night Live.

Lady Gaga’s ‘Born This Way’: A Track-by-Track Breakdown

By Jody Rosen May 18, 2011 1:30 PM ET, from rollingstone.com

Last night, Lady Gaga‘s Born This Way (out Monday) leaked online. The contents of the disc haven’t been a total mystery – Gaga’s released four singles from the album, her third, since February, and has performed other songs from it in concert – but she still managed to pack in some surprises. Here, Rolling Stone senior critic Jody Rosen goes through the album song by song.

“Marry the Night” – It begins big, with Gaga belting “I’m gonna marry the night/I won’t give up on my life” over tolling, church-like synths. And it just gets bigger. And bigger. And bigger still. The chorus arrives in an eruption of drums and power chords; there’s a pummeling funk-rock breakdown; and the touchstones are Eighties arena pop and hair metal: Pat Benatar, Bonnie Tyler, Bon Jovi.

“Born This Way” – Yeah, yeah: it’s an “Express Yourself” bite. And yes: you’ve heard the song 700 hundred times in the last month. But Gaga’s big hit sounds different in the context of the album that shares its name: like an experiment in the audacious plus-sizing of Eighties dance-pop.

“Government Hooker” – The requisite “kinky” song – though what exactly Gaga is saying here isn’t  clear: “I’ll be your hooker/Government hooker,” “I could be Mom/Unless you want to be Dad.” But the techno-pop production, by DJ White Shadow, is gripping: a shape-shifting assemblage of buzzes, beeps and clattering beats. Choice couplet: “Put your hands on me/John F. Kennedy.”

“Judas” – “Wear an ear condom” next time, Gaga sings in a track with one of the catchiest choruses on an album devoted to catchy choruses above all. Gagaologists will spend years pouring over the runes of that rapped bridge. (“But in the cultural sense/I just speak in future tense,” etc.) The rest of us will be busy dancing to Red One’s walloping production. (Watch the video below.)
 

“Americano” – The campiest song Gaga’s recorded yet, which is saying something. A disco-fied showtune with a pronounced “Latin”-flavor, complete with flamenco guitars and castanets.  Possibly about a star-crossed lesbian romance. Definitely set in East Los Angeles. Completely hilarious.

“Hair” – Gaga is not the first songwriter to link self-esteem and liberation to free-flowing coiffure. (Remember that rock musical called, um, Hair? Remember “Whip My Hair”?) But she’s definitely the most committed. “I am my hair!” she cries. Red One supplies the gale force hair-tousling synths.

“Scheiße” – Gaga speaks a little German and intones some inspirational platitudes alongside some generic Eurodisco thump and a wisp of a chorus.

“Bloody Mary” – A sluggish tempo, goofy “goth” atmospherics and a lyric that sounds like bad high school poetry: “We are not just art for Michaelangelo to carve/He can’t rewrite the agro of my furied heart.”

“Bad Kids” – In which Gaga reminiscences about her misspent youth and croons an ode to juvenile delinquents, set to forgettable Eighties synth-pop.

“Highway Unicorn (Road to Love)” –  Gaga does her best Springsteen. Or is it Meatloaf? “Get your hot rods ready to rumble/‘Cause we’re gonna fall in love tonight/Get your hot rods ready to rumble/’Cause we’re gonna drink until we die.” Sublime schlock, with the biggest, thuddingest drum sound you’ve heard this century.

“Heavy Metal Lover” – More smutty talk, set against a wall of fuzzy synthesizer sound. “I want your whiskey mouth/All over my blond south,” Gaga commands.

“Electric Chapel” – It earns its title with some heavy guitar riffing and a squealing metal solo towards the end. The lyric holds out hope for monogamous romance: “Together we’ll find a way/To make pure love work in a dirty way.”

“You and I” – Gaga’s signature power ballad – a fan favorite since she first played it live in 2009 – gets the treatment it merits. Produced by “Mutt” Lange, guitar solo by Queen’s Brian May, with a torrid, sturm und drang vocal turn by Gaga. It’s a confession. (Gaga watchers speculate it’s about her on-again off-again boyfriend Luc Carl.) It’s also the greatest Def Leppard song Lady Gaga has ever written.

“The Edge of Glory” – Those hooks! That chorus! That Clarence Clemons sax solo! Born This Way goes out in a blaze of shlock-pop glory. (Listen below.)

To read the original article:

http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/lady-gagas-born-this-way-a-track-by-track-breakdown-20110518

Lady Gaga: Born This Way

By Tim Jonz…..from guardian.co.uk

There’s an unnerving moment that occurs when hearing Lady Gaga‘s second album, Born This Way, for the first time. It comes as soon as the plodding keyboard chords ring out on opening track Marry the Night and you wonder if the stage is set for this to be the first of several self-indulgent ballads. It will be a fear familiar to anyone who tuned into Radio 1′s Big Weekend expecting a rapid-fire run through her storming pop hits and was met inexplicably with several minutes of jazz trumpet. Among the madness, the Madonna-comparisons and the meat dresses has Lady Gaga lost track of what made her little monsters fall in love with her in the first place.

If so, it would certainly fit the most recent narrative – Lady Gaga’s rise to the top of the pop tree has landed on a particularly wobbly branch during this album’s promotional campaign. First fans grumbled that the title track bore remarkable similarity to Madonna’s Express Yourself. Then disapproving voices in the gay community complained that Gaga had hijacked their sexuality as a marketing tool. So intense was the chatter around Born This Way, in fact, there was even a backlash over the artwork.

 Such fears on the musical front, however, do not last long – Marry the Night’s softer stylings are soon sent packing by what Gaga had always promised would be “sledgehammering dance beats”. It’s a pattern that holds throughout Born This Way. No matter how a song begins – pizzicato strings, operatic vocals, 80s rawk guitar – it’s soon engulfed in buzzsaw synths and robo-precise rhythms. This is shameless, club-orientated pop that aims for instant impact.

 Gaga has made much of the various themes on offer – religion (Judas, Bloody Mary), freedom (Road to Love), identity (Hair, Born This Way) – and these messages are hammered home rather than hinted at. Nobody expected Born This Way, hyped by Elton John as a “new gay anthem”, to reference post-queer theory texts, but it’s safe to say that subtlety isn’t one of its strong points. Elsewhere, Hair uses follicles as a metaphor for freedom – not exactly a brave new concept for anyone who’s seen the 60s musical Hair (or caught the sermon from Danny in Withnail & I for that matter).

 Trite lyrics abound (“I just want to be free, I just want to be me”) but these weaknesses can also be strengths, and there’s something admirable about the way the aforementioned trio of tracks address confused teenagers in search of their identity. Bad Kids, in particular, is a Vince Clarke-esque stormer listing a series of flaws (“I’m a jerk”, “I’m a bitch”, “I’m a selfish punk”) that places Gaga, like Pink, as a mainstream pop star addressing outsider America. That said, when the music drops out midway, Gaga could have come back with a slightly more hard-hitting line than “I’m a twit”.

 Born This Way boasts a pop vision flexible enough to be both serious (Americano embraces Latino sounds to tackle Arizona’s immigration laws) and surreal (Road to Love is Journey’s Don’t Stop Believin’ only, er, about unicorns) yet it almost always hits its target. Scheiße might be influenced by the decadent Berlin techno scene but, crucially, it has a ridiculously catchy chorus. Indeed, anyone disappointed with the singles from Born This Way, none of which lived up to Bad Romance or Poker Face, can take comfort in the fact that they are by no means the standout tracks here.

 So relentless is the pace, in fact, that towards the end of this mammoth album (14 songs, plus bonus tracks), when those sledgehammer beats bash you one too many times, you do start to wish for a nice little piano ballad as a breather. That finally comes with the penultimate Yoü and I, which aims for a Hey Jude style singalong but – owing to its determination to have someone playing kitchen sink in the background – ends up as bloated as Oasis’ All Around the World.

 The occasional drift towards indulgence is not a total surprise. With release dates given away as “gifts” on Twitter, gigs that start out in embryonic eggs and the release of the album as a stream with an arguably bizarre choice of newspaper group, Born This Way is by far the most hyped album of 2011. Clearly one to play this down, Gaga told fans last year: “I promise to give you the greatest album of the decade.” This is not that album, even by the standards of a pop star who thrives on stretching the imagination.

 Gaga has surrendered her artier leanings in the quest for a pure pop record, the consequences of which are that it occasionally strays too far into cheese territory. The saxophones on Edge of Glory, for instance, are apparently a homage to Bruce Springsteen but would be equally at home on Take That’s Million Love Songs. Marry the Night, meanwhile, doesn’t quite shake off the feeling that its chorus had a previous incarnation as Dr Alban’s It’s My Life. But then this, perhaps, has always been the thrilling paradox of Lady Gaga – that she can be the most exciting, confounding and mind-bogglingly creative artist on planet pop while still sounding like an early-90s Tampax advert.

To read the original article:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2011/may/18/lady-gaga-born-this-way-review

How Does Lady Gaga’s HBO Special Stack Up Against The Live Show?

May 8th, 2011 by Jocelyn Vena at MTV Newsroom
From MTV.com

It’s hard to capture the electricity of a Lady Gaga show. The audience itself is a wealth of energy. Fans are cheering, dressed up in costumes, buzzing about what Gaga will say, how she will say it and wondering if she will play any new songs.

For her two shows at Madison Square Garden earlier this year, Gaga didn’t have many surprises. She kept to the script, only playing the Born This Way tracks she had already played in her previous stops on the Monster Ball tour. These shows served as the concerts used in her HBO special “Lady Gaga Presents the Monster Ball Tour: At Madison Square Garden.”

Those nights were pretty magical, regardless. I had seen Gaga once before at Lollapalooza the previous summer, but it was hot and there were mosquitoes and I generally hate the outdoors, so the experience was less than pleasant. But that HBO MSG show had a certain cosmic energy. Gaga turned it up to 1,000 (not that she usually doesn’t). She knew the cameras were rolling. She knew these shows meant something.

So how does the special stack up against the real thing? Well, nothing can compare to the real thing, but the special does a pretty great job of taking a bit of the fairy dust that is a Lady Gaga show and sprinkling it on film. The tears, the speeches, the over-the-top stage spectacle — it’s all there. It’s all perfectly boiled down during the two hours.

There’s nothing like being at a Lady Gaga show, but if you haven’t been to the Monster Ball, I definitely suggest you watch the special. The outfits are fun, the performances are great and Gaga is at her best. And I suggest, after you watch it and you’ve magically become a Little Monster, you buy a ticket to the next show in your town. Then you’ll really get why she’s such a big deal.

Lady Gaga’s HBO Special

Along with unreleased Born This Way track, Gaga gives Little Monsters an inside look at the Monster Ball.

By Jocelyn Vena (@jocelyn1212) from MTV.com

Lady Gaga’s first-ever HBO special is nearly 120 minutes of Gaga onstage and giving fans unprecedented behind-the-scenes access. A mixture of concert footage in color and backstage shots in black-and-white, HBO’s “Lady Gaga Presents the Monster Ball Tour: At Madison Square Garden” is a love letter to her hometown, fans and her roots and also puts viewers in the front row at one of her shows.

The special opens with Gaga greeting her friends on the Lower East Side in Manhattan and buying a coffee at a local deli decked out in a biker jacket, bodysuit and heels. She struts through the neighborhood and into an SUV. She pulls up to Madison Square Garden. From the car, she greets her fans. “You know how many times I came to this arena? And now they’re opening up these gates for us,” she marvels to her team.

Now viewers are backstage as she puts on makeup andconfesses, “I start to think about all the people that have tried to stop me, and I get this super-intense fury. … I just sometimes feel like a loser still.”

The biggest reveal in the special is watching Gaga backstage singing a few lines of her still-unreleased Born This Way track “Marry the Night.” It happens fast, but Little Monsters are sure to eat up footage of her singing the track to herself.

“I’m gonna marry the night/ I won’t give up on my life/ I’m a warrior queen/ Live passionately tonight,” she sings to herself, waiting for her show to begin. This moment marries her pre-show life with her stage life. And just like that, fans are now at the Monster Ball at Madison Square Garden. The concert footage was shot earlier this year during two nights at MSG.

The Monster Ball itself has been edited with a constant stream of Gaga-isms about her fans, adversity and individuality, along with quick frenzied backstage shots, song changes (old and new) and, of course, costume changes (many of which are documented in those backstage moments). It gives anyone who hasn’t been there in person a good idea of what the show is all about.

The set list includes: “Just Dance,” “You and I,” ”Born This Way,” “Alejandro” and many other Gaga favorites that are highlighted by Gaga’s ferocious presence and over-the-top staging. After the concert wraps, fans are once again backstage as Gaga, her team and her family celebrate the show. In a particularly touching moment, she hugs her dad. Gaga is seen leaving MSG in a feathered jacket as the special ends. During the credits, fans are treated to one last treat: Gaga practices “BTW” with her backup singers a cappella.

What did you think of Gaga’s HBO special? Share your reviews in the comments!

Video of the Day: Lady Gaga ‘Judas’

Lady Gaga – Born This Way

On the heels of the leak of latest single “Judas,” Lady Gaga revealed the cover image for her forthcoming album Born This Way in a series of tweets yesterday and today.As you probably expect, the image, shown here, is one clearly intended to make you think and, maybe, wonder a bit: It depicts Gaga as something of a metal minotaur, part human and part…motorcycle? Yup, part motorcycle.It’s a striking collage, and maybe not one that was very expected. But then again, what is the one thing you can expect with Gaga? Exactly: the unexpected. A follow-up tweet this morning revealed the cover for the deluxe edition of her album, too, which is basically just a close-up on Gaga’s face from the minotaur photo. It seems to project the idea of: Rarrr!

Lady Gaga – Born This Way, posted with vodpod

Lady Gaga at 25: Her 25 Craziest Moments

 

Posted Sun Mar 27, 2011 3:42pm PDT by Chris Willman in Stop The Presses!

Lady Gaga has had so many individual pop culture “moments,” you could almost start to imagine she’s older than Madonna. But in fact, the lady turns a mere 25 on March 28. Has any artist in pop history provided such an extreme ratio of provocative moments per career-month?

You can go back almost two years and find commentators assuring everyone that Lady Gaga’s shock tactics would soon tire the public, but there’s no sign of that yet, as her “little monsters” and little haters alike can’t stop relishing every new surprise. In honor of her quarter-century on earth—and her mere two and a half years in the public spotlight—we provide you with this handy guide to Lady Gaga’s 25 most gonzo moments.

1. The meat dress. With apologies to Morrissey: Meat is couture. At the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards, Gaga had what appeared to be raw meat fashioned into a dress, boots, hat, and even accessories (“I never thought I’d be asking Cher to hold my meat purse”). The outfit was a devastatingly topical statement about… what, again? Oh, gays in the military. Of course! “It is a devastation to me that I know my fans who are gay… feel like they have governmental oppression on them,” she said. “That’s actually why I wrote the meat tonight.” For once, PETA and John McCain were on the same side. 

2. The meat bikini. The VMAs weren’t the first instance of Gaga dressing up in meat. Earlier, she’d put on a meat bikini for the cover of Vogue Hommes Japan magazine. For Lady Gaga fans, there could be no greater shock than seeing her wear the same outfit twice. 

3. The egg. The yolk was on us when Gaga arrived at this year’s Grammys being carried aloft in a transparent egg, suggesting some sort of unholy cross between David Blaine and Spinal Tap. The idea was that she would be “Born This Way” later in the evening (rendering the entire two previous years of her career prenatal, apparently).

4. The shoulder horns. When she sang “Born This Way” after emerging from said egg, it was with flesh-colored, bony-looking appendages on her shoulders—just the kind of evolutionary mutation that the long-dormant shoulder pad industry has been waiting for.

5. The blood spurting. At the 2009 VMAs, her performance of “Paparazzi” concluded with blood dripping from her abdomen, which she then proceeded to rub on her face before collapsing in a heap and then rising—lifelessly dripping—above the stage. This was her social commentary on gays in the mili—… oh, sorry, the predatory media. (The climax of Black Swan could only aspire to this level of guignol.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6pQ78ta7I4I&feature=player_embedded

6. The machine gun bra. Make love and war? Those of a certain age remember the “bullet bra,” but Gaga brought out the heavy artillery when she posed for the cover of Rolling Stone last June—popularizing the “I dreamt I liberated Poland in my Maidenform bra” look. 

7. The rosary beads. Okay, there are other examples of Gaga adopting the same look more than once, since she wears a machine gun bra in the video for “Alejandro.” But that was the least of that video’s provocations. The foremost: Catholic-baiting scenes in which, adorned in nunnish garb, she got mouthy with a set of rosary beads and sported a red cross on her bikini bottom. It was like “Like a Prayer”… squared. Among the offended: Katy Perry!

8. Simulated dog poisoning. There is an old show-business saying that goes, “The public will forgive you for anything except killing a puppy.” (Or maybe there isn’t, but it’s, you know, understood.) But Gaga proved the fallacy of this non-existent maxim by offing a dog with rat poison in her “Telephone” video. Let’s hope that wasn’t the corpse she was wearing at last year’s VMAs.

9. The get-up at her sister’s graduation. When her li’l sis graduated from high school last June, Gaga came out to support the cause in a bodysuit that was part lacy, part flesh-colored… topped by a black veil and hat that looked like a cross between a beekeeper’s protective headgear and funeral garb.

10. Dressing as a dude. In another photo shoot for Vogue Hommes Japan, Gaga transformed herself into a guy, rather convincingly. Granted, cross-dressing may be the least shocking thing she’s done in the past two years.

11. Nearly naked crowdsurfing. At Lollapalooza, Gaga came out and played drums during a set by friends Semi-Precious Weapons, then leaped into the audience to crowd-surf, while apparently wearing nothing but a fishnet bodystocking. Or, as it’s otherwise known, getting in touch with a different demographic.

12. The bubble dress. Gaga wasn’t even yet known for her outlandish outfits when she made the fresh-out-of-the-bubble-bath look part of her first headlining tour in 2009. The original dress now resides in a museum in London, where, presumably, visitors are carefully searched for pins.

13. The Kermit-the-frog dress. She went on a German talk show covered in nothing but Kermit dolls. Hey… at least it wasn’t raw frogs.

14. Biting the head off a Santa doll. In a likely nod to the Ozzy vs. bat legend, Gaga used her teeth to sever Santa from the rest of his body, which she then stomped on, at a London arena show. “I hate the holidays,” she explained, probably in jest. “I’m alone and miserable, you [expletive] stuffed little toy!”

15. Gaga goes Gershwin. At a New York jazz club show at the Oak Room, Gaga surprised the audience by showing up to sing “Someone to Watch Over Me”… and well. (See video, below.) Shocking!

16. The Michael Bolton connection. Perhaps making the ultimate statement about tolerance, Lady Gaga teamed up with the none-too-hep crooner to write a song called “Murder My Heart.” 

17. The celibacy announcement. No one saw this coming… but no, you didn’t miss the abstinence ring amid all that fashion. Her sexlessness is “because I don’t have the time to get to know anybody.” Earlier, she’d announced she’s bisexual—so she’s turning down the entire human race, not just half.

18. Lobbying the GOP. Wearing a suit and tie, Gaga spoke at a Maine rally in support of repealing the military’s “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy, hoping to influence the state’s Republican senators, Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins. Because GOP politicians know that nothing gets out the Tea Party vote like announcing that Lady Gaga has changed your mind. 

19. Flammable pianos. Gaga has been known to perform at a flaming piano, the best known of these appearances being at the 2009 American Music Awards. Jerry Lee Lewis’ corrupting influence on the nation has continued well into the 21st century.

20. Incurring the wrath of Seinfeld. “I changed my mind, I hate her!” Jerry declared after learning that she’d been moved to his private box at a Mets game after giving photographers the finger earlier in the game. “You give people the finger and you get upgraded?” said the aggrieved comic. 

21. Incurring the wrath of the Yankees’ management. Gaga’s uneasy relationship with major league baseball continued when she went to the Yankees’ clubhouse and, according to the New York Post, drank whiskey and grabbed her chest while wearing a half-unbuttoned Yankees jersey. The team’s general manager explained that her main offense wasn’t her attire or attitude but her insistence on visiting the team right after a loss.

22. Dancing rights for the handicapped? Gaga stirred a discussion on “the politics of disability” when, in the “Paparazzi” video, she performed a dance routine in a wheelchair, crutches, and neck brace (following a scene in which her boyfriend throws her off a balcony).

23. Corrupting Beyonce. Jay-Z’s better half had shed her once wholesome image a while ago, but not quite to the extent that she did costarring with Gaga in the “Telephone” video, which included mass murder, an unprintable Kill Bill homage, and a theme that the Daily Beast referred to as “lez-ploitation.”

24. Type 0 perfume. Gaga reportedly put drops of her own blood in the mix for her upcoming perfume—possibly in homage to the members of KISS supposedly once putting their own blood in the ink being used for a comic book. “The perfume smells like an expensive hooker!” she promises. 

25. Gaga goes country! Just days ago, she released a country remix of her latest single, “Born This Way.” It sounds a bit more like balladic Southern rock than country, but it’s the perverse crossover thought that counts. 

Lady Gaga’s Born This Way: New Single

It’s one of the most tweeted, blogged and hyped pop singles in recent memory. The title was announced more than six months ago, with the lyrics leaked piecemeal by the lady herself. Elton John has claimed it’s “the new gay anthem”, Justin Bieber and James Blunt tried to predict what it would sound like, while others have criticised the racial terminology in the lyrics. It was due to premiere on US radio at 6am EST, but has since been shoved online by Perez Hilton.

So what does it sound like? Well, a lot like Madonna’s Express Yourself, so much so that those two words are currently trending on Twitter. There’s also some spoken-word bits a la the Material Girl (as no one calls her any more), but it doesn’t sound copycat, more a knowing nod and a cute wink.

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Born This Way is a thumping, almost disco anthem that stomps along until the chorus crashes in with the weight of a discarded meat dress. Lyrically, it’s all love yourself whoever you are and “don’t be a drag, just be a queen”. Within the ridiculously camp musical context, the lyrics sound a lot less heavy-handed than it would suggest. One suspects it will probably shift a few copies.