Lady Gaga

The video for Bad Romance is all over the local music channel MK, along with Jack Parow's Cooler As Ekke, and though one should always separate the visual from the music as the sights may detract from the sounds and take the place of the imagination when it comes to interpreting the lyrics, this video is probably one of the more arresting and gripping videos I've seen for a dance act.

The high concept is a big production full of erotic symbolism, with lots of pretty explicit eroticism, and plenty of symbols of alienation. There are dance sequences, dream sequences, image vignettes, and plenty of fast paced flow from scene to scene. Red leather, white leather, weird futuristic couture outfits, masks, icy, distant men in suits, and one glimpse of a voluptuous, lace panty-clad ass, which may be the diva's derriere, or at least one likes to think so. Mostly Lady Gaga is hidden behind hair and make-up yet there are also images of her as more or less open, innocent and naïve disco waif.

The video ends with the artist posing elegantly on a bed alongside an equine skeleton. Perhaps it is a homage to The Godfather movie, perhaps it is a visual pun for the phrase "flogging a dead horse." it is possibly one of the more bizarre endings to a music video I've ever seen.

Behind all of this is a disco beat and a catchy tune and it is not difficult to understand why Bad Romance is yet another monster neo-disco hit from the alleged new Madonna.

Some crappy entertainment magazine recently claimed that the Lady is searching for love in al the wrong places and is lonely, lost and desperate. At least, that is what I gleaned from the cover blurb. I did not read the accompanying article as I believed it would be bare of facts and chock a block with half-truths and innuendo, as these articles tend to be. It's not as if I am about to write a love letter to Lady Gaga to advertise my availability.

The only Bad Romance I'm interested in, is the hit tune of the moment.

I believe she has dark hair but the look she sports is blonde and a part early Madonna and part Christina Aguillera when she is blonde. The vocal strength is close to Christina than to Madonna, and the music Is nothing like the very Eighties electro dance tracks Madonna used for her breakthrough hits. Like Aguillera, Lady Gaga relies on her pipes as much as she does on her image to get through to the masses, and I salute her for it. There is nothing like a disco diva with a proper voice singing good, tuneful dance pop songs, though I would imagine that the Lady would want to be regarded as more than mere dancefloor fluff. She has something to say and will say it to a beat you can dance to.

Lady Gaga makes music you have to play loud. And you must want to shake your booty. And maybe you can read the lyrics and marvel at her philosophical insights.