Bad Girl Meat

Lady GaGa “Teeth”

You may have noticed that vampires and werewolves are very popular these days. This is not lost on Lady GaGa, whose apparent mission in life seems to be synthesizing themes from hyper-mainstream culture into hilariously campy works of bizarre, grotesque beauty. “Teeth” bypasses the flimsy metaphors and gets straight to the subtext: It’s a song about wanting to be submissive to a powerful, threatening man while maintaining a pose of toughness and agency. Unlike Twilight, this isn’t a fantasy of being a chaste good girl swept up by a very well-behaved bad boy. This is another version of GaGa’s notion of “Bad Romance” — she’s fucked up, and she wants the drama of someone even more fucked up or it’s just not exciting. This is about a desire for something primal and totally uncivilized, and these supernatural conceits just get in the way of the point, which is that a great many people want to escape the polite, neurotic aspects of themselves and indulge in something that feels wild and pure. GaGa’s song is ultimately just another fantasy, but it’s sharp and self-aware, and has the benefit of coming in the form of a skewed pop tune that manages to make the steady pounding of a tambourine sound exquisitely sleazy.

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