Music Review: Lady Gaga

When I first recognized the name Lady Gaga, it was the weekend she was performing at Splash.  “They’re making an awful fuss over a drag queen performance!  Why the fuck should I care?”  Either her song hadn’t blown up or I hadn’t associated it with her name yet.  Yet, she is kind of like a drag queen with her disco-ball sunglasses, her outrageous outfits and her wigs.  When Tighty Whitey told me that he had purchased the album for his mother’s Hanukkah present, I figured it can’t be too bad.  So I gave it a listen (and it was only $7.99 on iTunes!). 

“Just Dance” is an instant hit and a great way to lead off an album.  The intro lets you know something big is about to drop.  And hard.  It’s a RedOne production (he produced all of Kat de Luna’s CD as well as “Zero” by Varsity Fanclub), and his signature horn is all over the track like bumps on Urban Sprawl’s mouth.  He adds just enough auto-tune to Lady Gaga’s voice to keep her on pitch but not so much that it becomes trendy.  From the first line of the first verse, it’s a true story that we can all relate to.  All of us drinkers, anyway.  And the hook really hits home when I think about all the people I know who have been laid off.  One of the most brilliant things about this song is that the bridge takes the listener to a different place, but it doesn’t lose the dancibility of the rest of the song, which is hard to do.  And let’s be honest: the song really doesn’t need Colby.

“LoveGame” features a square, marching beat, yet it’s still in RedOne signature style.  He’s a fan of the auto-tune with her, which could get annoying if she didn’t have this cool Blu Cantrell crazy vibrato thing.

Crash course in auto-tune: it electronically moves the pitch of a voice or sound to the nearest note in a chosen scale, so it’s designed to save a singer who’s a bit flat.  Basically, if you slid up a bunch of notes, it would be recorded as individual notes in an ascending scale.  You can make the mix “dry” (i.e., suble) or wet (over-done).  You can also add varying degrees of vibrato to make it sound more natural (no vibrato is referred to as “the infamous Cher effect" in the Pro-Tools instruction manual).  T-Pain (well, everyone now) does an extremely “wet” mix.  The problem with that is that you have to be very close to the intended pitch, or the program will change your pitch to the wrong note.

Back to Lady Gaga.  She does the crazy vibrato thing (i.e., making her voice waver a bit when she holds out a note… pretty much every singer does it), and the auto-tune picks it up and makes it very exact half-step notes rather than the natural smooth progression that we’re used to hearing from a human voice.  When done correctly, it's a very cool effect.

Unfortunately, Lady Gaga and/or RedOne added that “let’s play a LoveGame” vamp in the latter half of the song.  Another superfluous element in an otherwise great dance song. 

“Paparazzi” feels like a Britney or Gwen Stefani b-side.  In fact, her voice sounds a bit like Gwen.  Eerily so on the bridge of the song.

“Poker Face”, her second single (which I had heard maybe twice, but I don’t listen to the radio much), has a hook that’s really cute, but the verses fell kind of flat for me on the first listen.  I could take singing all 8^th notes.  I could take a one-note melody (see Ciara).  I couldn’t take both at the same time (she does change notes a bit).  But the song grew on me after the 3^rd time.  It’s a gimmick that eventually starts to work and becomes pretty catchy.  It’s no “Just Dance”, but definitely fun to dance to.

Bubble Gum meets Van Halen’s “Jump” meets reggae on her third single, “Eh, Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say)”.  The song is basically a blunt dear-John letter: “Met someone better.  Sorry.”  The producer decides to use her natural voice (i.e., I didn’t notice any filters or auto-tune), which compliments the real/rawness of the lyrics well.  It’ll provide a nice contrast to her outer-space, electronic image.

“Beautiful Dirty Rich” has a cool rock-type feel to it.  What struck me most was what I thought I heard Lady Gaga saying at the beginning: “Beautiful.  Daddy, daddy.  Rich, rich. Daddy, daddy.”  Turns out she’s saying “dirty” with an accent.  I like the lyrical ambiguity (See Pussycat Dolls, “I wanna have boobies!”).

The guitar riff in “The Fame” sounds like Rick James.  Once again, she gets raw and real with the lyrics, saying (paraphrased), “I’m shallow.  I own it.”  Definitely a fun song to jump around and swing your hair to.

“Money Honey” starts off sounding like another I-love-the-material-life song, but she twists it into a being-with-you-is-so-much-better song.  This definitely has club-banger potential.  RedOne’s signature horn says hi.

Remember how I said she doesn’t use enough auto-tune to be trendy?  Well, there’s auto-tune to spare in “Starstruck”.  I’m checking the liner notes for T-Pain.  What makes this song more interesting than “LoveGame” is that it has a syncopated beat during the verse, switching to a square beat on the hook.  However, the hook is sonically disappointing, playing more like a post-chorus vamp than an actual hook (other than that, it could have been a single). Flo Rida is his usual charming self on this track, proving that he’s not dead yet.

Once again, Lady Gaga channels Gwen Stefani in her style, but we love the updated skating-rink-type synth in “Boys Boys Boys”.

“Paper Gangster” starts out with a great rap-ballad-ish piano riff, but it’s a bit disappointing from there.  It’s almost like someone pulled two words out of a hat and told her to write a song.  And did she just say she had a crush on Fabolous?!  It’s a good effort considering the exercise, and it’s a cool variation on RedOne’s style.  But it doesn’t grab me.  It reminds me of what happens when I try to write a melody based off an instrumental rather than the other way around.

“Brown Eyes” is another acoustic-ish song.  She takes on a melancholy classic rock sound where it’s more about the emotion of the song than the exact melody (read: pitch).  She reminds me of Ashlee Simpson here.  Not exactly my cup of tea, but she does it well.

“I Like It Rough”.  Really, Lady Gaga?  It’s a cool concept, but the song itself falls short of its aspirations.  I think she would have benefited from a little more metal and a little less glitter.  Or keep the track/melody and change the words.  This is a girl who has a friend who likes it rough.  It’s the same disappointment I suffered at the hands of Britney’s “Lace and Leather”, but this song is not as sexy.

Lady Gaga?  Gwen called… you know what she wants.  The intro to “Summer Boys” reminds me of “Shut Up and Let Me Go”.  One very unique element in this song is that the rhythm guitar is panned to one side (i.e., all the sound comes in on one side and not the other), which is rare(ly noticeable) in pop music.  Overall, it’s a fun, cute song.

“Disco Heaven” has a very cool disco bass intro, but the song itself doesn’t dance like disco.  Maybe it’s a “Disco(-influenced) Heaven”.  Or “Disco (slowed down, died, and went to) Heaven”.

Laday Gaga resurrects Love Angel Music Baby the way that Miss Stefani couldn’t with The Sweet Escape.  Even her look says Gwen.  At first, I was very critical of each song, but the album grew on me as I listened to it more.  Now I really like it.  She shares primary credits with RedOne on just about every song, so she’s definitely no dummy. 

Suggested Tracks:

Just Dance

LoveGame

Poker Face

Money Honey

Maybe:

Paparazzi

Eh, Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say)

Beautiful, Dirty, Rich

Fame

Starstruck

Boys Boys Boys

Brown Eyes

Summer Boy