I figure I should start out with something a bit lighter on my first day and what on Earth could be more intellectually lightweight than pop music.
Unless you haven been living inside a black hole or were intelligent enough to realise that all radio is unbelievably shite and replaced your car radio with something useful, like an aquarium, then you must be aware that Lady Gaga and The Black Eyed Peas are the most lucrative pop acts today. While one pushes the envelope of pop music and fashion, the other produces the musical equivalent of pouring hemlock into our ear and then bouncing around in ridiculous costumes until the confusion becomes intolerable and we all lie down and let death slowly take us.
The saddest aspect of The Peas fall from grace is that it didn't have to be this way. The potential the group showed with
Elephunk (I am basing my argument of their current incarnation: Will.i.am, alp.de.ap, Taboo and Fergie for simplicities sake) could have carried them further to pop music greatness. "Where is the Love", "Hey Mama" and "Let's get Retarded" (or "Started" depending on how terminal your case of political correctness), were all great party songs! They had energy, they weren't overly sappy or emotional, they stuck in your head for days and you didn't mind all that much. Then came
Monkey Business and it seemed the group had taken the title a bit too poo-flingingly seriously. Suddenly we were cursed with the audio assault of inane "Don't Phunk with my Heart" and the infuriating "My Humps". As if to complete the insult by smearing sewage into the wound, the videos they presented with these two tracks were so universally offensive, I was afraid my dog was going to see it, go temporarily insane and chew off my face in its rage.
Often at this point the phrase "sell out" is bandied about like some kind of terminal illness, but I don't agree with the hipster haters, I don't mind it when a band "sells out". Selling out is a good thing, the band gets removed from the dingy, smoke filled, roach infested, psychotic criminal patronized hovel they usual play at and are allowed to play in front of larger audiences who just might appreciate them rather than trying to see how quickly they can dodge Molotov cocktails. It allows them access to better studios, better equipment and better producers and very often gives them the ability to create better music.Many bearded, pipe smoking, hipster tossers wax poetically about how the band used to be purer, more about the music before they sold out but what these grade-A, cleverer than thou, head-up-their-own-arse wankers forget is that this is the bands career and method of income and that selling out usually means the difference between full meals or eating their own head lice for nourishment. I am not upset The Peas sold out, I am upset with the apparent glee they tossed away key concepts such as originality, wit, feeling and sense of fun and embraced all the worst aspects of pop music today. The album
The E.N.D. (The Energy Never Dies), is like their magnum opus, their own personal Necronomicon, into which they have poured all their hate, soulless lust for attention and fame and the dessicated husk of their creativity. All this without mentioning will.i.am's reign of terror as the producer-de-jour, where he presided over some of the worst music shat out by the industry to date. The less said about
The Duchess, the better.
On the other hand we have Lady Gaga, who in the space of one year has manage to stalk up the steps to the throne of pop stardom wearing a get up composed of a venetian mas, rubber bands and a plugged in toaster. A lot of stink could be made that Lady Gaga is a ruthless attention whore, who dresses up like a crack addict caught in a Goodwill/hardware store over night, however, despite her outlandish outfits it never stops feeling genuine. The crazy outfits seem to bespeak of a barely contained creativity, and her rise to fame through the gay clubs in New York City just seems to add to this mystique. Beyond that, Gaga seems to have decided to create her own brand of pop stardom on every level available to her, and her efforts have been improving at an exponential rate. "Poker Face" her debut, was a very catchy song, but when held up next to later efforts such as "Paparazzi", it sounds amateurish, and these two songs are on the same album!
Additionally we are privileged to receive her music videos, which push the boundaries both in terms of taboos, artistically and commercially. The much hyped "Telephone" video is the best example of this. Well over ten minutes long, feat. the recently dethroned Queen of Pop Beyonce paying her respects to the new Queen, shameless digital advertising, full frontal nudity, costumes that belong in modern art museums and the Pussy wagon. What strike me most is that the video was not released with television in mind. In its entirety it would never be shown on those few networks that still show music videos. It is a video made for the internet and it plays on and to the ebbs and flows of that medium like a master violinist on a Stradivari.
Finally, with Lady Gaga we can see a mind at work, with her most recent release, she pays homage to probably the most successful pop group ever. The song, titled "Alejandro", could only scream ABBA any louder brought them all onto the track and went down on them each in turn. Lady Gaga is claiming ABBA as a spiritual predecessor and inspiration and is acknowledging the fact that without those squirrly Scandinavians she would not be able to do what she does.
In all, I cannot wait for what Lady Gaga is going to next, what next song she will bring out or what crazy contraption she will wear next. Maybe she will go to next Grammys as a full fledged Cylon Centurion, maybe she will be a centaur. There's no way of knowing. Unfortunately, with The Black Eyed Peas, we know exactly where they are going. It ain't going to be pretty.
