"Aladdin Sane called"

[unixronin]

From this April:

Listen to the best songs by her cited influences—Bowie, Queen, Grace Jones—and you’ll hear, beneath the virally unforgettable melodies, a percolating intelligence that isn’t just a musical sophistication but is equally a cultural literacy. Listen to [Lady] Gaga and you’ll hear the sound of IQ points molting.

...And at that point, Dery hasn't even really gotten going yet.  He gets downright acerbic later in the column.

Now that's gonna leave a mark.

Comments

[robhansen]

Lady Gaga seems to me to be a talentless hack. I heard a really quite good cover of Poker Face, done entirely with piano, Stylaphone and improvised percussion. It was such a good cover that I thought, “you know, maybe there’s one Lady Gaga song that won’t make me want to flee the room.”

Yeah. That turned out to be a forlorn hope.

People so willingly conflate spectacle with art. They’re not the same things, not the same things at all. I can think of no other explanation for Lady Gaga’s popularity.