Subway Kid, Rejoice Your Truth!

Lady Gaga @ Boardwalk Hall, Atlantic City, NJ 2/19/2011

Dance in the Dark / Glitter and Grease / Just Dance / Beautiful Dirty Rich / The Fame / LoveGame / Boys Boys Boys / Money Honey / Telephone / You and I / So Happy I Could Die / Monster / Teeth / Allejandro / Poker Face / Paparazzi // Bad Romance /// Born This Way

My main takeaway from seeing Lady Gaga in concert is that she’s a fantastic rock star. She’s working in the context of pop convention for the most part, but her vibe and style on stage is pure rock star. I think this is part of what makes her so great, and different from her peers in the current pop landscape. I think this rocker thing will be more obvious when her next album comes out. Before this show, I got to hear a handful of tracks from Born This Way, and those songs were much more overtly rock without losing any of her dance music sensibility. She’s found a way to merge it all, and I’m excited to see how the world responds. (You can read my preview of these new songs at Rolling Stone.)

Lady Gaga “Born This Way”

Yes, this song echoes Madonna’s “Express Yourself,” and yes, a lot of what Lady Gaga does is essentially an updated version of Madonna’s paradigm for pop stardom. If you’re the type of person who thinks either of those points are equivalent to a valid negative criticism of Lady Gaga, I’m here to tell you that you’re an idiot and almost certainly a hypocrite too.

For one thing, it probably doesn’t take much digging into your record collection to find music by rock bands who are working within some easily identifiable tradition, or may directly call back to a specific artist. We, as a culture, have no problem with this, and if anything, we expect and desire familiarity from rock acts. (This is also true of rap and R&B to a large extent.) So why the double standard for pop acts? Is it because pop is more overtly market-driven, we feel compelled to overstate its cynicism and neglect its similarity to everything else in contemporary music?

Second, how can anyone get up in arms about borrowing ideas from Madonna when Madonna is the Queen of the Magpies? Like Madonna and David Bowie before her, Gaga’s genius isn’t profound musical originality so much as it’s about writing high quality pop songs that fit into a larger aesthetic framework that includes high concept fashion, theatrical performance and interaction with the media at large. Gaga is all about how it all fits together in the big picture, the sum of the parts. She makes the most sense in concert because that’s where it all comes together — the music, the singing, the dancing, the fashion, the setpieces, her interaction with the audience. The audience is very crucial to Gaga; her “little monsters” complete her performance with their physical response and by bringing their own creativity into the mix by showing up in costume, et al. This is a key difference between Gaga and Madonna — Madonna has always presented herself as being removed from her fans, Gaga encourages communication and intense identification. She’s very much of her time. Madonna never had to work with social media in her prime, but Gaga has found a way to seamlessly integrate the aesthetics of the Twitter era into the style of pop stardom that the Material Girl pioneered in the 80s.

I love “Born This Way,” but of course I would — “Express Yourself” has always been my favorite Madonna song, and I just love this sort of pop song. We don’t get that many of them, really. Even without the heavy handed self-help message, this would feel thrilling and inspiring. It’s a joyous, exciting, delightfully cheesy song. It really comes alive in concert, ending her show as a communal celebration of personal empowerment and self-acceptance. If you’re the type of person who feels like the world doesn’t need this sort of message, well, I’m glad you feel so great about yourself or that you’re comfortable in your self-loathing. I’m all in favor of it, though, especially since this song gets into specifics that most other songs with similar messages gloss over in the interest of playing it safe.

Buy it from Amazon.

Scissor Sisters @ Boardwalk Hall, Atlantic City, NJ 2/19/2011

Night Work / Laura / Any Which Way / Running Out / I Don’t Feel Like Dancin’ / Filthy/Gorgeous

Scissor Sisters “Night Work”

About halfway through this 22 minute set, Ana Matronic told the audience “If you haven’t heard of us, you’re probably not gay or British.” And yeah, a lot of people in the audience were clearly unfamiliar with the band, but of all the arena shows I’ve seen, this was the best response I’ve ever seen for an opening act. The room was at least two thirds full when they went on at 8 PM sharp, and I saw a lot of dancing on the floor. Gaga’s little monsters are a good, enthusiastic bunch. As far as Scissor Sisters performances go, this was fun but not full power. It sounded like Jake Shears was holding back a little bit, but the back up singers and Ana pulled some extra weight and it came out totally fine. The band routinely plays these kind of venues overseas; it was nice to finally see them play to this kind of room even if it wasn’t their crowd.

Buy it from Amazon.