“Perfect Illusion” – The Downfall of Lady Gaga

When Lady Gaga first broke, I heard decent but not unique Pop. Then the The Fame Monster and Born This Way came and suddenly, she was some sort of icon for outcasts. Her fanbase was called ‘monsters’. The myth was, Pop was a genre with zero originality and weirdness dominated by conformists. Lady Gaga brought a revolution and made Pop accessible for the nerds, goth kids, ugly people and so forth. If you were ever bullied in school or didn’t fit in, Lady Gaga was here to elevate you.

I never bought that. Sure, her music videos featured a lot of weird outfits. They were also always sexual outfits. Lady Gaga confirmed nicely to the ‘sexy woman’ imagery. No matter how weird an outfit was, it always provided people something sexy to jerk off to. She didn’t look weird or dress weird. Her music was even worse. It was as generic as Pop can get. Lady Gaga has a nice, smooth voice with no real personality. She sang about sex, but so did everyone else. All her teasing and tough girl posturing are hardly any different than what Rihanna or Katy Perry did.

Lady Gaga isn’t just unconvincing because beneath lyrics of ‘be yourself’, she’s as conformist as you can get. Her image is misguided. She took desirable traits – strength, beauty, dancing – and wrote songs about them. What defines outcasts are undesirable traits – vulnerability, weirdness, perversion, anger, intellectualism. ‘Vulnerability’ is a key trait. Vulnerability is undesirable for evolutionary reasons. A vulnerable individuals is a burden on the pack, and we learn to hide our pain and weaknesses so we won’t get cast out of the tribe.

Artists who did sang for outcasts, or at least had such a fanbase were proud of this. Compare her to Marilyn Manson who also predicted his fame in Antichrist Superstar. His stomping anthem, “The Beautiful People”, is hateful, angry and a cry of distress. He sang from a position of weakness, of being ugly and undesired. His whole image is about that. His look is, on purpose, disfigured and often androgynous. While Gaga sang about the virtue of sex, Manson mocked us with “User Friendly” and “Slutgarden”. Manson also had a raspy, slightly mechanical voice so that every song he sang would sound odd. The newbie that is Melanie is another great example. Song like “Cry Baby”, “Dollhouse” and “Pity Party” take all these undesirable qualities and bring them to the surface. When Martinez makes strength anthems, she takes pride in admitting how vulnerable she is. Lady Gaga never does it. She’s everything we expect from a Pop star – in love with guys, perhaps girls, having a lot of sex and dancing at parties.

Imagine if the excellent “Government Hooker” was performed by Manson or Tove Lo, artists with a better sense of darkness than she. Songs like that hinted that perhaps there was a weirdo there waiting to come out. There is aggression flowing through that song, chopped vocals and a sense of dread that the sex isn’t all positive.

The new song is ironically titled “Pefect Illusion”. It describes Gaga perfectly. All my suspicions about her were confirmed. She got tired of posturing like a party girl, pretending that drinking and sex is new. So now she imitates Sia. Sia was already a pale imitation of Lady Gaga, singing with ultra seriousness, showing off her voice without a hint of emotion (“Chandeliar” isn’t about alcoholism but about Sia’s ‘awesome’ voice).

Lady Gaga looks back on the disco songs of heartbreak and triumph. She takes the sound and themes with none of the fun. The song barely has a melody or a chorus. The hook is a repetition of “It wasn’t love/it was a perfect illusion” and behind it only a banging drum. If this sounds minimalist, it’s not on purpose. You’re supposed to dance to that dull drum. Gaga sings with technical finesse, pointing out that she’s, in fact, not that hurt at all. Heartbreak may have been tough, but she can still try to impress the judges at American Idol.

Truth is, even if she brought actual pain to the song it wouldn’t be anything original. A little after Gaga came Lana Del Rey, who was sexier, more vulnerable and more dangerous. She was also a party girl, but she stared straight at the dark side of it too. If “Perfect Illusion” was the comedown from her image, she’ll just be running against Lana. That’s a race she can’t win, since Lana has a concept she develops and plays with. Lady Gaga has anthems of strengths and seriousness, like any other Pop star.

In the past, Lady Gaga at least tries to be weird. It was easy to see through, but there was effort. “Bad Romance” had scat singing. “Government Hooker” has already been mentioned and it’s quite excellent. She took influence from Latin music on “Americano” and other songs – “LoveGame” and “G.U.Y.” were unbashedly about sex. It wasn’t subversive, but it wanted to be and if you’re unfamiliar with Pop music it is attention grabbing. “Perfect Illusion” is a regression to “Just Dance”, a song so unimaginative that it becomes memorable because of that. Remember, that song had the lyrics of “Just dance, gonna be okay, dodododododo”. I love songs about dancing, but they need to be passionate about dancing.

To her defense, it’s better than her competition. If Lady Gaga tries to amaze me with her voice, she does a decent enough job. There is vulnerability in that song that’s startling and more naked than Sia. She doesn’t hide the weak lyrics. Hearing her bellow out “I can still feel blow” sounds like she’s dying to be over it. Although her singing is triumphant, there’s something very noisy about it too. Some said the song is about a recent break-up, which wouldn’t surprise me. It’s generic, derivative and nothing original but Gaga occasionally sound like she’s trying to heal herself with singing. Maybe that’s why it’s so original. It’s a vehicle for Lady Gaga to vent. At least she beats the horrifying Sia in her own game.

One Punch Man

Many bad shows are a case of good ideas poorly executed. It’s rare for a show to miss its target in the premise, but One Punch Man does. For a while, the series assumes that powerful characters are a problem in fiction.

They’re not. Anyone who’s concerned with how intelligent or strong or agile a character is should stop talking about fiction. These aren’t role-playing characters. They don’t have charcter stats and skill trees. If a character has a trait, it’s supposed to be meaningful to his personality.

A character isn’t defined by how strong he is but by simply being strong. It’s not hard to write intelligent characters. Just have someone solve mathematical problems and put the answer in the character’s brain. It doesn’t matter that Max Cohen is a walking calculator. What’s interesting is how his genius affects his worldview and isolate him.

In the first episodes, the series piledrives into the ground the idea that overpowered characters are silly. I don’t think anyone thought otherwise, so we get something like Kill La Kill only with less charisma. Everyone looks like Arnold Schwarznegger. Everyone screams and every conflict is solved with one punch. Mr. Krabs also makes a cameo appearance in the first episode, but he’s transformed into another bodybuilding loudmouth.

There’s only so much you can do with a character who solves everything with one punch. Thankfully, Saitama is not as bland as his skill. He’s a great protagonist with a personality that’s connected to his super-strength. It’s almost psychological how bored he is of all the macho bullshit, but he’s also vain and wants the attention. The anime remains satirical and exaggerated but the protagonist has a realistic psychology.

It’s Saitama’s desire for stardom and everyone’s megalomania that shapes the main arc. At this point the anime abandons making fun of obvious targets and starts creating actual absurd situations. The villains are rarely interesting. Their purpose is to always get knocked out by one punch. Rather, it’s stardom that’s being satirized.

How ironic it is to discuss the Bandwagon Fallacy in a review of a popular anime? Popularity doesn’t prove quality. Just because you don’t have a diploma from an Intelligence Institution doesn’t mean you’re stupid. Yet we take these things very seriously. People are often more curious about whether my writing is popular instead of how good it is.

Diplomas or popularity don’t prove you’re talented. They only prove someone thinks are you are. Popularity is even worse than diplomas, though. Diplomas are given by people of authority who take their topics seriously. People can be easily swayed.

The most popular people on earth aren’t the hard workers or the life savers. The most popular people are those with the highest social value. They are the charismatic, the beautiful, the entertaining. Taylor Swift is more well-known than a person who saves a baby from a fire. That’s because Taylor is charismatic, beautiful and writes catchy songs. Just because you save a person from a fire doesn’t mean you’re a desirable social presence. It gets even worse with peolpe who Famous Because They’re Famous.

The series is wise enough not to pull that strawmen. There are these silly celebrities, but here the popularity of most heroes are justified. They’re both charismatic and talented, but they’re never as talented as Saitama.

That’s because, unlike them, he never worked on being popular. He became the strongest hero because he only put effort into being strong rather than being popular. That’s the cost of talent. Sometimes you focus so much on it that you forget to make people notice you.

There’s a major rise in quality once the series finds its satirical target. While it presents it well, pointing absurdities without resorting to strawmen it can never attain a sense of madness it aims for.

In the first episodes, it thinks it will get by having everyone scream and some stupid ideas like a muscular crab and a kabuto macho dude. I used different words but this is the same idea. It tones down later but the series never gives up on this.

There are some interesting visual ideas, but almost everything is given the macho look. It fits with themes, but after the 10th dude who looks like sirloin steak it becomes boring. When Tornado appears and we get a cute girl it’s a shock.

Just as they are all macho dudes, their personalities are all macho. Besides Saitama’s everyman personality and Genos, who acts like he walked into the wrong anime, characters blur into each other. It makes for a consistent world. At least the anime tried to find variety in macho bullshit rather than pretend their kaleidoscopic. Still, it makes for a world that’s always less exciting than how the characters perceive it.

One Punch Man isn’t amazing and quickly stops acting like the Most Hyped Show of the Season. That’s a good thing. It’s when it realizes its limitations (the world is monochrome and tame, overpowered characters aren’t worth satirizing) and its strengths (satirizing celebrity culture, finding variety in macho bullshit) it becomes a worthwhile show that has enough personality to appeal to those outside the genre.

3.5 one punches out of 5

Melanie Martinez – Cry Baby

Melanie is late to the game. There has been a wave of Pop singers who sound like a response to the abundance of empowerment anthems. You know this style has been bled dry when Sia tries to write a vulnerable song about alcoholism and ends up ripping off “Titanium”.

Lana Del Rey was about the darker side of hedonism and hot bad guys. Tove Lo sang about the loneliness that finds even the sexiest women. Although they made great albums, Martinez feels like the true beating this genre needs. Tove Lo and Lana still sang like beautiful people. Melanie is the voice of the outcast.

Thematically, the album has more in common with Marilyn Manson and Nine Inch Nails. Its structure is similar to the famous album by these two. The songs don’t tell a story as much as they show a psychological journey of a character, who starts off as Cry Baby and ends up as Mad Hatter.

This is not the trouble of a beautiful girl who just needs to choose a different environment. Melanie’s protagonist is an outcast who finds rejection wherever she goes. On “Dollhouse”, she finds no warmth in a family that’s fine only on the surface. On “Carousel” and “Soap”, she’s rejected romantically. The former deserves special mention. It’s one of the few songs where the hopelessness of love is considered.

The rejection climaxes in “Pity Party” and “Tag, You’re It”. In the former, Cry Baby realizes she has nobody. On the latter, someone finally notices her and it’s a sexual predator. Eventually, she uses the same innocence and tenderness she had in the title track for rebellion. Poisoned “Milk and Cookies” get rid of the asshole. The ending is optimistic – she rejects society and its superficiality on “Mrs. Potato Head” and finds joy in “Mad Hatter”.

Superficiality is a big deal here, and in Pop music. How we look, in fact, is a plague that still infects women. Female musicians will still get praised more for their looks than men, as if it has any bearings on the quality. On Little Mix’s “Black Magic” music video, a change of clothes suddenly makes the guy interested.

Melanie is obsessed with how we use fancy covers to hide things. Almost every song here involves bad things having a nice cover, from the dollhouse that hides a dysfunctional family to the poisoned milk and cookies. That’s where Melanie’s childish aesthetic comes into play.

The whole album uses childish aesthetic to express dark themes. The music is the same. The melodies have a nursery rhyme-like quality. Nothing is actually aggressive or loud. “Worth It” is more abrasive musically, but then comes the chorus of “Milk and Cookies”.

While this aesthetic is often brilliant and Melanie sounds like a visionary, it also highlights how inexperienced she is. There’s a reason The Downward Spiral wasn’t Reznor’s first album. Melanie swings between being obvious and delivering just the right line. On “Dollhouse”, you get lines like “Pose with your brother, won’t you be a good sister?”. It’s brilliant in the way it creepily hints at sexual harassment. Then she bluntly states her Dad is having an affair.

She doesn’t stray from the concept, and that’s good. Only two songs feel slightly out-of-place. “Training Wheels” is a love song that’s great on its own but lacks the darkness that will connect it to the rest. “Pacify Her” is the sort of thing I’d expect from Lana Del Rey and Tove Lo. For a brief moment Cry Baby is an attractive girl that can steal others’ boyfriends?

“Mrs. Potato Head” has been already highlighted by many as the best song on the album. It should’ve spread like wildfire through Tumblr and become a meme. It’s an even better anti-beauty anthem than that Manson track. It has no subtly, it doesn’t need any. Someone need to sing “No one will love you if you’re unattractive”. It’s not about plastic surgery, but about our worship of beauty. We wouldn’t need plastic surgeries if we wouldn’t worship beauty like this. It’s also one of the softest songs on the album, and that only makes it cut deeper.

There will be weirder Pop albums, but Cry Baby is the one we need now the most. Its musical backdrop is unique, but not very attention grabbing. It exists to go along with Melanie’s ideas, but she doesn’t expand on them. The most attention-grabbing thing musically is the bass drop in “Soap”, which uses bubbling sounds. The album doesn’t need an overblown sound. Its smallness fits with the childish atmosphere.

The rough edges prevent it from being a classic, but it’s still a brilliant Pop album. It doesn’t even come close to being a “singles with filler” album. The singles are actually some of the weaker tracks. Melanie manages to create a persona of her own and not just create a collection of great songs, but a sequencing that works. It’s also another step forward from the bland empowerment we’ve been plagued with. I wonder what will replace Melanie’s brand of depressed Pop.

4 dollhouses out of 5