The Story of This Viral Video Will Blow Your Mind! (Please Tell Your Friends!)<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\nI watched this clip before I read Peter’s story. But he got it right.<\/p>\n
There’s an element of fakery involved.<\/p>\n
Once upon a time we shared the unknown with ownership, let me tell you about something cool!<\/p>\n
Now we’re on the lookout for manipulation. Everything’s fake.<\/p>\n
And even though Gaga started out real, the manipulation trumped the truth.<\/p>\n
Enough with the outfits.<\/p>\n
If you can’t have a hit single, don’t try to record one.<\/p>\n
The Beatles were smart enough to take left turns. “Sgt. Pepper” had no singles.<\/p>\n
But Gaga tried to play the same way and lost. Because the game had changed.<\/p>\n
Those hits on Top Forty? They’re written by committee. They’re no different from Teslas. Highly-refined items that only occasionally self-destruct. To believe a Katy Perry single is gonna fail is akin to thinking your toilet isn’t gonna flush. All the risk has been removed. It’s formula.<\/p>\n
And Gaga wasn’t formula.<\/p>\n
But she tried the same formula once again. Over the top outfits with over the top marketing but without a formula hit single.<\/p>\n
Actually, “Born This Way” was formula. That’s when we started to believe she couldn’t live up to the hype, when she ripped off Madonna and didn’t seem to realize it.<\/p>\n
So what we enjoy now most is the Gaga movie. Wherein she reacts to the haters. Where she tries to live up to the expectations but cannot.<\/p>\n
It’s like putting a drug addict in the operating room. This ain’t gonna turn out good.<\/p>\n
Then again, she said she was a drug addict. There was so much self-revelation it trumped the music.<\/p>\n
Just like R. Kelly trumped Gaga herself on SNL.<\/p>\n
SNL made her music seem small. Whereas in 2010 she was larger than life.<\/p>\n
We were more interested in watching her in skits than listening to her music.<\/p>\n
Gaga became a celebrity. That’s all she’s got left.<\/p>\n
And we all know it’s about music.<\/p>\n
But that seems to be the goal today. Let me use my music as a vehicle to celebrityhood. Because everybody knows celebrities get free stuff, everyone knows their name and they’re usually rich.<\/p>\n
This is what Adele avoided. Sure, she had great music, but she left it at that. And a lot of personality, hers was one of the best live shows I’ve seen this century.<\/p>\n
And then Gaga was trumped by Lorde. Who called the whole thing b.s.<\/p>\n
Lorde made it because of the music. But she’s sustaining because of the lyrics.<\/p>\n
Yes, “Royals” pokes holes in the empty MTV culture that still pervades the music business. Where it’s about gaining monetary trophies, living the life of a hedge funder without putting on sweatpants and going to work.<\/p>\n
Yes, they’re no longer rock stars, they’re money stars. A rock star used to have no limits, today’s stars are tools of the system, and poorer than the bankers and techies.<\/p>\n
And the rest of us are truly poor. All we’ve got is our ability to watch the shenanigans and discuss them.<\/p>\n
Which is why we tweeted, before we burned out on that.<\/p>\n
Which is why we spread viral videos, before we realized they were fake.<\/p>\n
Which is why we’re talking about how Gaga is self-immolating… Not because we care that much, but because we’ve got nothing else to talk about!<\/p>\n
<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It’s a sport unto itself! Why am I writing about Stefani Germanotta? Because you’re interested. In a world with very little commonality, we gravitate to that which others are talking about, rallying around. And the issue of whether Lady Gaga’s album is a stiff is something we can all weigh in on. Whereas whether your […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7937","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music-business"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p96vPs-241","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7937","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7937"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7937\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7939,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7937\/revisions\/7939"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7937"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7937"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lefsetz.com\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7937"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}