HOLY SHIT GUYS, A NEW LADY GAGA SONG/VIDEO*!
(Consider this: truly great art is amazing, regardless of who it’s by. Surely you shouldn’t like anything more or less just because it’s Gaga?)
Some quick thoughts: the song is by far the best she’s ever written - and after only a few listens, it already sounds like one of the best pop songs ever! It opens with just her and a church organ, combining religious elements - check out that gospel choir! - with pop and funk. You could say it combines her deeply personal roots - she attended a Catholic private school - with the now, the euphoric sexual/romantic feelings of pop. The lines “I’m down on my knees, I wanna take you there” seem to suggest that, just maybe, true romantic bliss - as embodied by the orgasm - is a love so profound, so rewarding that it borders on religious transcendence?
The video is even more amazing. For one, she’s back to her natural hair colour! They say blondes have more fun, but brunettes are taken more seriously… Similarly, and even more significantly, she’s only wears one outfit - a single, demure brown dress. Doing the unexpected here was an act of genius - when you’ve spent your whole career intentionally looking weird, what could be even stranger than looking completely normal, and utterly beautiful? It also keeps our focus on the video’s other jaw-dropping elements: she dances in front of burning crosses, displays stigmata and kisses a black saint, amongst other things. Unlike the futuristic backdrop of Bad Romance, or the cartoonish look of Telephone, the slightly lower budget gives it a strangely familiar, timeless feel.
She’s spent most of her career fighting for much of her fanbase’s cause - gay rights - but this video seems to address racial inequality instead. She explains it best in her own words:
“A girl on the street witnesses an assault on a young woman. Afraid to get involved because she might get hurt, she is frozen in fear. A black man walking down the street also sees the incident and decides to help to woman. But just then, the police arrive and arrest him. As they take him away, she looks up and sees one of the gang members who assaulted the girl. He gives her a look that says she’ll be dead if she tells. The girl runs, not knowing where to go, until she sees a church. She goes in and sees a saint in a cage who looks very much like the black man on the street, and says a prayer to help her make the right decision. He seems to be crying, but she is not sure. She lies down on a pew and falls into a dream in which she begins to tumble in space with no one to break her fall. Suddenly she is caught by [an African American woman] who represents earth and emotional strength and who tosses her back up and tells her to do the right thing. Still dreaming, she returns to the saint, and her religions and erotic feelings begin to stir. The saint becomes a man. She picks up a knife and cuts her hands. That’s the guilt in Catholicism that if you do something that feels good you will be punished. As the choir sings, she reaches an orgasmic crescendo of sexual fulfillment intertwined with her love of God. She knows that nothing’s going to happen to her if she does what she believes is right. She wakes up, goes to the jail, tells the police the man is innocent, and he is freed. Then everybody takes a bow as if to say we all play a part in this little scenario.”
So what does it all mean? Well, for one, it likens the black man and his actions - helping the needy, yet being punished for it - to a saint. And when she finally summons the courage to attest to his innocence, it’s almost orgasmically rewarding - maybe she even sleeps with the saint, or hallucinates it in the church?
Both the song and the video are truly incredible works of art - both provocative and meaningful. Even in 21 years’ time, when the “new” (yet somehow completely different) Lady Gaga for the next generation is just starting out, something tells me we’ll still be talking about it.
“A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness”
- John Keats, from Endymion (1818)
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NOTE: This is in no way a criticism of Lady Gaga.
