The highly anticipated new album was set out to be rougher than its predecessor, rawer and with a rock edge to it. That is definately the case, but au fond not much has changed. Lady Gaga herself is still about as subtle as a freight train, Haus of Gaga remains little more than a desperately sustained mirage and she finally confirms - implicitly - that the message is in fact more important than the music.
One question many were interested in finding the answer to was if Lady Gaga would finally be able to walk the walk with this follow-up to The Fame, her commercial break-through from 2008. What about those heckling Gaga for making artistic claims she can hardly live up to? Well, there’s still no argument there. Of course in part Gaga did this to herself, in raising the bar to such high levels she was unable to attain them – for that her music always lacked true originality and at least one extra dimension. What is worse is that it seems that she’s not even trying to live up to any musical expectations. The problem with Born this Way musically is twofold. First of all there is no denying that Gaga’s musical vision consists in ravaging the pop archives, while at the same time copying and pasting the best bits from anything she can lay her hands on under the guise of divine inspiration. That in itself isn’t even the real issue though (although a little acknowledgement wouldn’t hurt either). The underlying tragedy, however, is the questionable frame of reference from which Born This Way was compiled, an occasionally clever, but rarely original mix of Madonna’s best years, nineties eurodance and some of the most generic dance beats available today. And granted, the US was largely spared from the horrors of eurotrash, but making up for that now can hardly be considered avant-garde.
One artist is never far away on Born This Way and that’s Madonna, the queen herself whose throne Gaga so eagerly preys. Pushing boundaries since the early eighties – and pretty much coasting since the late nineties, Madonna has defined mainstream pop music and left few taboos left to break. That creates substantial difficulties for Gaga, who has experienced similar issues with previous releases, showcasing an inability to create music that is as groundbreaking as her personality – or at least carry the same shock value. Either way, Born This Way is quite heavily indebted to that wretched woman who did it all first. Not always quite as in the face as ‘Born This Way’, which essentially borrows an entire melody line. But more often than not a picture springs to mind including enigmatic black and white imagery, androgynous dancers, vogueing and – referencing the post-2000 Madonna – soft-core porn with a club-dance soundtrack. One the one hand it’s fairly disappointing to see her copy Madge – the proverbial grandmother monster – so gratuitously, as if innovation in the pop scene reached its end point with the release of Like a Prayer back in 1989. On the other hand it’s sad to see her add so little of her own interpretation to musical ideas many of which are older than her.
Not that Born This Way is a bad record. Part of its strength stems from the fact that like no other Lady Gaga knows how to create pop anthems. She did so with ‘Poker Face’, repeated the trick with ‘Bad Romance’ and ‘Born This Way’ completed the hat trick – not a particularly good song, but a resilient son-of-a-bitch. Lyrically it almost sounded as if she had gone a little bit soft, but the song’s forceful, almost aggressive club beat, made almost everyone forget that in essence ‘Born This Way’ was a fairly mediocre B-version of its predecessor. Same goes for ‘Judas’, which is about as literal as you can go in emulating your own work, without ameliorating. Songs like ‘Government Hooker’ – a pretty decent piece of electro pop - and ‘Bad Kids’ prove though, that in the end Lady Gaga knows how to make a pop record, perhaps better than anyone. It’s when she exaggerates the least, that she creates truly enjoyable tracks. The other half of the album contains tracks like ‘Black Jesus – Amen Fashion’ – a pretty straight-up Madonna-reference complete with the very retro line ‘Jesus is the new black’ (Hello, 1988? You want your provocative-for-the-time reference to Catholicism back?). Or ‘Scheisse’, with its delightfully distasteful eurodance sound and German lyrics, a track that is both vulgar and irresistible, which is pretty amazing to pull off. And in the end it does prove that Born This Way ís a pretty okay record, despite what criticisms I may have. What it is not, however, is an interesting record. Club anthems – no matter how strong – have a limited scope in the long run and some of the more eccentric choices on the album risk going out of style soon – to the extent they haven’t already. ‘Americano’ is a prime example, leaving you somewhat in doubt as to whether you’re listening to a pop singer or a drag queen on a theme night.
So to sum up, Born This Way is a far cry from the milestone it was set out to be. After two years of the benefit of the doubt Lady Gaga finally followed suit in the way that she removed all doubt as to what she is about as an artist. And that is not Gaga, reinventer of pop, bringer of a new kind of pop music. Anno 2011 producing easily digestible dance tracks with a hint of eccentricity seems about as far as Gaga wishes to diverge from the norm. Maximum inclusion is the goal, a goal for which anything that could even remotely put of anyone is cleverly avoided, resulting in disappointingly ordinary songs. And then it dawned on me: What Gaga is really about transcends the musical level. She represents a concept, a lifestyle, a vision of a better society in which racial, sexual and ideological differences no longer exist. Just a shame she so blatantly neglected the musical side of her story.
But then again, that was probably never her real intent. Make no mistake, Gaga and everything surrounding her has little to do with art, not even loosely. And in these times of cross-media culture that is just as much a part of the total concept. Not the most essential component tough, and it’s a shame that Gaga seems satisfied with uniting as many people as possible under the flag of tolerance, when she could be doing that while also rethinking the sound of pop music. But who knows, maybe she’ll surprise us someday in coming up with something genuinely innovative –Madonna managed pulled Ray of Light out of her sleeve in 1998, before finally succumbing to complete and utter irrelevance. So who knows? Meanwhile Born This Way is a let-down, establishing Gaga once and for all as a pop singer – and a crafty one at that – but far from a pop visionary. And while there is no shame in that, if your plan is to overtake the world then ‘no worse than the others with an occasional stroke of above-average’ just doesn’t cut it.
Tracklist
1. Marry The Night
2. Born This Way
3. Government Hooker
4. Judas
5. Americano
6. Hair
7. Scheisse
8. Bloody Mary
9. Black Jesus - Amen Fashion
10. Bad Kids
11. Fashion of His Love
12. Highway Unicorn
13. Heavy Metal Lover
14. Electric Chapel
15. The Queen
16. Yoü and I
17. The Edge Of Glory
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