To offer that one is unfamiliar with
the phenomenon of Lady Gaga would be as good as admitting to having been a
hermit for the entire duration of the past few years, although given the
numerous riffs on religion in Gaga's output altogether, even a hermit would
most likely find it difficult to be unaffected these days. Personally, I can't
profess to recall being a particularly big fan of Gaga ¾ when she first made an appearance
around the Christmas of a yesteryear, she seemed little more than a further
paste from the platinum variety that used to be the feeble-minded (as well as
feeble) rage at the time. Inseparable from any of the knock-offs brought to you
by Clones 'R' Us, the one thing she could inspire at that stage was
indifference at best. What I can recall, however, is the precise moment when I
realized that paying attention would probably be a good idea ¾ it was around the time when Mike
Patton of Faith No More (and so much more, of course) mixed "Poker
Face" into his live sets as part of their "Chinese Arithmetic."
The chorus that initially failed to catch on in Gaga's original rendition had
suddenly stuck to my mind with Patton's, a twisted take that was both an homage
and a bizarrely effective vocal emulation of a DJ's turntables all at once.
Needless to say, "Poker Face" hasn't left me (as it certainly hasn't
the rest of the world, for that matter) ever since that turn.
What,
then, can be said of her newest child, Born This Way, an album that
heralds the end of a prolonged wait following Lady Gaga's stratospheric rise to
not only world domination but to artistic credibility to boot? With attention
spans in reverse proportion to skepticism and the power of judgment merely a
mouse click away these days, it goes without mention that audiences have every
convenience available to be unforgiving in advance. Seeing as the less than
conventional "Edge of Glory" was to be my own foretaste of the album,
I cannot really deny that my approach to Born This Way has been a bit of
a biased one, too, and clearly not in a way that would give Lady Gaga much of
an edge in the process.
It
should be necessary to point out, though, that it amounts to a precious little
nothing whether one is willing to give her an edge or not (nor whether it
should be to dance along to or to dissect that one sought out her album for)
because as soon as Born This Way has lift-off, there remains little
doubt that Lady Gaga has the upper hand all the same. Ever since that opening
track accelerates from a wistful pop requiem into a triumphant, pulsating
anthem of self-confidence, what fast becomes clear is that Lady Gaga is likely
to inspire all number of things but indifference is definitely not one of them
anymore. What's more, the incessantly restless texture of the instrumental side
of things, leaning more towards David Guetta than Nine Inch Nails (though
comparisons can be drawn to both), seems to allude to something else as well.
Namely that if Born This Way were some kind of an animal, the creature we'd
be looking at is without a doubt a chameleon ¾ never more evident than when
"Marry The Night" clocks in at three and a half minutes and one might
be forgiven for thinking the song is drawing to its inevitable close, except
that it's there that it turns into a whole different beast instead, one that
sounds nothing like the tune it started out being. So different, in fact, is
this change of mind right before the end that it would easily make up a whole
new song (and not a bad one at that) if it were a separate entity. Seeing as it
isn't, it amounts to an uplifting finale of almost hallowed proportions, and a
perfect introduction to the album as a whole. It is almost as if Lady Gaga had
a proverbial ear to our hearts, as if she knew exactly how much we crave for
invention, if only in small doses. Respect.
Speaking
of proverbial and otherwise, the carpet pulled from underneath our feet within
the first song is rather telling of the album as a whole. Not since Marilyn
Manson and The Golden Age Of Grotesque has an artist accused of being
shocking (whatever that means in anyone's book) attacked the concept of
re-invention with such unabated glee as does the dare Lady here. Born This
Way is never content with the simplest solutions, opting instead to fidget
with everything at hand until it has nailed a certain something that is
familiar in essence but not in execution. It is not so much a hyperactive child
that tears and tugs at everything in sight without purpose but a rather clever
one that seems to have figured out the basics of how things work and is now
busy wondering just how many different combinations can this knowledge yield.
If Gaga hasn't waded through the studio throughout the album like a child
herself, she can certainly make the listener feel like a child, because there
are practically no restrictions here. There is but curiosity and fascination,
both amply rewarded. Consider the example of "Scheisse," for instance
¾ a song
that, taken apart, would leave so much unanswered, among other things the question
as to why or how it should work at all. Driven by a trance beat from the worst
excesses of the nineties, it would automatically signal the beginning of a very
bad song were it anyone else's piece. Yet this has been layered with so much in
just the right measure that it actually seems to make sense that nothing else
but an evil trance beat could have worked. There is, of course, another of the
album's winning choruses lined up as well, once again sneaking in from out of
nowhere and, once in bloom, revealing itself to be unlike anything that one
could have seen coming. Never wanting to settle on a straightforward repetition
of a single motif, carving up words as she sings along, teasing them out and
toying with them to see if things can be expressed in a manner different from
what they already have been agreed upon, Lady Gaga has pretty much decided to
have fun with all the tools available to a musician. Nevermind that the album's
title track bears more than a passing resemblance to "Express Yourself"
nor that the dominant synth line in "Government Hooker" has been
lifted from "Rudebox." If you can spot the influences, it is because Born
This Way is a perfect example of how you can be derivative and still expand
on it in copious amounts. The fact remains that no two songs on the album sound
the same, and hardly any of them sound like filler. How often can one say that
about anything that passes for an album these days?
Another
thing about the album that cannot be ignored is the big, bold throbbing heart
it wears upon its sleeve. Whether or not it is a heart that truly echoes Gaga's
own, it is nevertheless a heart of rare beauty, one that is capable of not
merely sympathizing with all the lonely souls in this world but has the courage
to own up to it as well. Consider the song "Bad Kids," for instance,
one of the best examples over a long time of coming to terms with the gist of
what really makes up the misunderstood ("I'm a bad kid like my mom and
dad made me") before offering an empowering consolation, mixed with a
valuable piece of advice: "Don't be insecure if your heart is pure /
You're still good to me if you're a bad kid, baby." But there are, of
course, traces of evidence found in abundance here to reflect Gaga's ability to
recognize and render into lyrical dimension that age old thought which lurks
within each heart the world all over ¾ that all of us are looking for true love to give our
existences a meaning. Oddest of all is the realization that how Gaga pulls this
off is not through some cash-grabbing catering to expectations on the most
popular of themes throughout pop history as could justifiably be suspected. Be
it sewn up into a touching verse such as "Love is just a history that
they may prove / And when you're gone, I'll tell them my religion's you"
in "Bloody Mary" or the determination to recapture and better a
relationship once lost in "You And I," she comes across as being at
her sincerest each time and that is truly a beautiful thing to behold. For
someone who plays a field that is all about pretending in the first place, it
is most rare indeed.
If
different types of albums had their particular brand names, this one might well
be of the Reviewer's Delight variety, for Born This Way is a creation
one can analyze at length, not just scoff over or complain about and then fill
out the rest of the time and space continuum by whining how much better music
used to be God knows when. Here is an album that could have entire treatises
written about it, for it is difficult to want to stop writing about the
manifold parts of its sum, and that is perhaps its only drawback when it comes
to writing a review on its merits. Suffice to say that it is an album best kept
away from sunlight, seeing as many of its moving parts have been designed with
(and, no doubt, within) the confines of the nocturnal realm in mind. It is an
album to be let loose in the depths of night and at full volume, for despite
its flaws, of which there aren't that many to speak of, this is a massive
album. What is truly admirable is that it succeeds not because of its
overwhelming tonnage, but despite of it. In an overly simplified landscape of
late, Born This Way stands out like a voluptuous baroque ensemble amidst
the inane and the identical, a daring mirror bringing light among mere concrete
blocks conceived through cold, cash-horny calculations rather than any free
flight of inspiration. Whether it'll be an "album of the decade," as
Gaga herself has promised prior to the release of Born This Way is a
notion far too soon to take for gospel, seeing as said album just so happens to
arrive into a decade that has barely had time enough to begin. Held up against
the pop scene of the faded last one, however, there is good ground to consider
this if not the ultimate contender then hopefully a trendsetter, showing that
pop music doesn't necessarily have to be catering to idiots and that there are
still ways of singing it without the cheap aid of autotunage. And it is rather
a curious notion, to realise that one might no longer think of Madonna as a mere
artist alone but as an aristocratic title of pop royalty that, once an era has
seen itself to an end, gets passed on to a successor, because Born This Way,
it seems, has effectively established a brand new Madonna for a world
where the previous one has long since ceased to be relevant for anything other
than her long-standing legacy. Some might disagree (and some might not quite
care at all) but it's about time, too.
