Gaga Sphere

By Alexis Guerra

When most people hear the name Lady Gaga, they tend to go toward a place of pop, top 40 countdowns and gratuitous fashion for fashion’s sake. Before I saw her kick-off her new tour, the Fame Monster, in Montreal last week, I expected to be utterly annoyed by her mere presence in the room. I anticipated seeing a pop star who was like the dozens of other marketed cookie-cutter starlet wanna-be’s that had come before her, toting their feel-good dance music and frothy lyrics to numb today’s society. No, I was truly not in the mind frame to understand that I would be seeing a gifted artist perform. I was in for a surprising awakening.

Lady Gaga is a force to be reckoned with. She is the future of music. She is the new voice of a generation. You can say you hate her, loathe her, dislike her, but the truth is she’s got more to offer than your typical top pop 40 hits and in all frankness, even Madonna seems to be shaking ever so slightly in the her boots now that the new messiah of music has arrived. Once you can get past the fluffy froth that radio stations are trying to force down your throat and peel back the layers of her sound, it’s a whole other ball game.

I’ve heard people talk ish about Lady Gaga. She’s pretentious. What’s with the clothes? All her songs sound the same… it’s so in your face! I know this because I used to be one of them. What is often overlooked, however, is the fact Gaga herself (whose real name is Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta) has spent a lot of time on the outside looking in. In a recent interview she stated that her whole aesthetic appeal, from the elaborate costumes to the scenery and her method of performance art is not only a way to uninhibit herself, but to create a safe place where her fans could do the same. Growing up she explained that she was the monster, the freak, the outsider, the kid who wanted to be popular but at the same time not enough to change who she really was…and let’s be honest here, haven’t the better half of us felt that way before too? Yet, instead of playing the bitter martyr and going the route most misunderstood musicians do, she decided to take her love of music and classical training in piano, and twist it into her own funky stylistic soundtrack, infusing fashion and vocals to create a new genre of sound. The result was chart-topping gold. In another interview she would go on to say that her first musical inspiration came when she heard her father playing Pink Floyd’s “Money”, which resulted in her first song written on the piano which she titled, “Dollar Bills”, when she was under the age of ten.

So, once I began to look through the dance groove beats and really focus on the nitty gritty of what this chick stood for, I realized I had hypocritically prejudged a performer who not only had more talent in her pinky finger than all the Britney’s, Miley’s and Justin Timberlake’s combined, she also had depth. She speaks from a place that so many of us know but either stifle or simply do not know how to release. A performer who is far grittier and darker than what is often portrayed on the radio, her live performance was a visual awakening and not as squeaky-clean as one might imagine.

The concert started off with the gritty musical stylings of New York City’s own Semi-Precious Weapons who opened off the tour with their glorious f-bombs and sassy vocals of Justin Tranter, who’s antics only proved to energize the crowded arena (which seats up to 21,273) full of screaming Gaga fans at the sold out concert. They rocked out a 45 minute set and then the stage was cleared to make way for the Lady of the evening herself. It was a bit of a wait, with the show running fashionably late and the main event starting at 10 PM, almost two hours later than the opening act, but with the technical contraptions used for the show I don’t blame the final checks before the first live run of the performance (and there was always the glorious beer and liquor for those of us who were over 18 to dull the pain).

When she did arrive, Montreal showed their approval with raucous, ear-splitting applause and a great show ensued. She opened with new songs from her album Fame Monster, a two- disc collaboration of her first hit album, ‘The Fame’ with a second CD of newly written songs recorded while on the road of her first tour. She chose the title The Fame Monster because her latest songs are compiled from her experiences on the road and the growing influences that her many fans (aka “monsters” as she calls them) have had on her life. If there is one thing that can be said about Gaga, it is that she is extremely thankful for and loyal to her adoring fans. Unlike most pop icons who wriggle through their playlist of concert songs, only to throw in a scattered “I love you, (insert city, town, country here)” here and there, Gaga gets down and personal with her audience. Every song is a power-house number, equipped with out-there costume changes, tricky choreography and stunning amplified vocals by the songstress. She gives her spectators 110% of herself and even when she stumbled on the slippery stage not once but a few times, she knew the formula to pulling it off before a crowded arena by shouting out “I’m like a drunken supermodel and I love it!” to which the crowd cheered boisterously in approval.

Normally not a fan of new songs that I don’t have the chance to listen to and get to know beforehand, 90% of her new material is now playing back to back on my Ipod playlist. Whatever Gaga is doing, it’s working. Her latest album hits “Alejandro”, “Dance in the Dark” (her opening number) and songs like “Monster” (which she wrote to describe her fans) are all songs that will take her to the next level of rock stardom. The lyrics and dance moves would prove to be anything less than PG with her references to sex in songs like the shadowy “Teeth” (not to mention her colorful way of call the male member a “vertical stick”) are by no means teeny-bopper-ish…

Don’t want no money (want your money)
That shit’s is ugly
Just want your sex (want your sex)
Take a bite of my bad girl meat (bad girl meat)
Take a bite of me
Show me your teeth

Aside from her titillating usage of vernacular, Gaga proved she was not shy with her fashion choices either. Her show-stopping costumes were chaotic and all over the place in a good way, ranging from a super sexy cross between the gold bikini Princess Leia wore in Star Wars and a femininely-constructed Gladiator suit, to the complexly structured “sphere” costume she has made famous from numerous concert performances like on SNL. There were impressive onstage costume changes and risqué leotards that left little to the imagination so I hate to disappoint, but for those of you vying to prove that Gaga is a hermaphrodite, it’s a no-go unless she is hiding it extremely well! What I found the most fascinating about her clothing choices was that despite how avant-garde they were or how toweringly tall her heels became, she performed as well as if she had been doing it since the womb. As a fellow female, I applaud.

Throughout the rest of the concert she followed closely by with the fan favorites, even playing a cabaret version of her Kanye West, Common and Kid Cudi classic “I Poke Her Face”, when to all of our great amazement, Kid Cudi himself bounced out onto the stage to sing a duet version with Lady Gaga. Another highlight of the concert was when she announced that her father was there watching her show and how much it meant to her. She then opened up about how she had written a song from her album called “Speechless” for him when she found out he had cancer and had refused treatment. She solemnly took her place at the piano and with over twenty thousand pairs of eyes watching, launched into a performance of the song that was so genuine and emotionally wrenching, it was hard to believe she was able to compose herself afterwards. It was just another layer of the artist we know as Lady Gaga showing us her true colors. She closed the show with two rousing encores featuring her latest chart-toppers, “Paparazzi” and the recent hit “Bad Romance” to which the crowd was literally out of control for. When the lights came up and the curtains closed we were more than just fans, we were monsters, and it was sad to see such a fleeting tiem come to an end.

What evidently dawned on me during the concert was that this girl before me had some savage mass appeal. I saw goth rockers seated around me, prima donnas, punk-ska skater types and then the people like me, who weren’t sure what they were getting into. Yet, there we were, wigging out to the same musical talent and loving every minute of it. So the question stands, does Gaga create a space where her fans can be just who they want to be when they want to be? Undoubtedly.

In the famous words of the Lady herself, “Everything’s gonna be okay…just dance.”