Postmodernism In Relation To Lady Gaga

By Joe Chamberlain

The Postmodern sensibility that anything can be considered cool in an ironic ‘I know it’s bad, but

it’s so bad it’s good’ way

Lady Gaga, is very obscure with her ideas to a point where she is like no other artist. Lady Gaga is an entertainer, rather than just a singer. People go to see her for a show, not just to hear her voice. She uses simple dance routines, which, on their own, would be really boring, however, her huge sets and strange costumes make her style very interesting and extremely popular:

Bad Romance

Work that is created based (entirely or in part) on older material. This incorporates sampling and will

take you from the realms of hip hop culture transporting you finally in today’s modern fragmented musical landscape. You will have to listen to some of

the artists to fully appreciate them and their workLady Gaga uses parts of older material and has her own take on things. For example, I think that Lady Gaga’s video ‘telephone’ uses a similar idea to Michael Jackson in the video ‘Bad’. Gwen Stefani also uses this idea of a jail:

Audiences that are both niche and mainstream. E.g.: Radio 1, 1xtra, BBC6, XFM

Due to Lady Gaga’s bizzarre sets, easy listening music and creative mind, she is immensely popular with five grammy awards and thirteen MTV Video Music Awards. She has the most watched video on youtube with Beyonce with an ever-increasing 135 million views.

Gaga is unable to be niche as she is so popular, however, she does dabble into other areas of music which allow her to express her talent in other ways than pop. For example, she sang with Tony Bennett in a ‘Swing’ type genre:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPAmDULCVrU

This still has 8 million views, but it is far more niche and specialised than the pop genre she mainly features in.

The ways in which people engage and listen to music e.g.: iPod, DAB, mobile phones, etc.

As Gaga is so popular, the ways in which you are able to engage and listen to her music is endless. You can listen to her on the radio, on your iPod, on the TV, on your mobile, iPad, youtube, soundcloud, iTunes, concert, in your car (Tom Parkin) and even on your Hi-Fi.

The legal issues surrounding sampling. (Led Zeppelin ‘borrowed’ heavily from old bluesmen and it took years for the songwriters to be credited and paid royalties. The same group took a hard-line stance

initially to be sampled by hip-hop groups.)Legal issues surrounding Gaga’s work is Copyright infringement. Copyright infringement is the unauthorised or prohibited use of works under copyright, infringing the copyright holder's "exclusive rights", such as the right to reproduce or perform the copyrighted work, spread the information contained within copyrighted works, or to make derivative works.

Other than that, people are able to remix her songs and people have live lounge covered her songs too, such as Rolldeep:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ux2Y3jXpRH4

The state of the music industry incorporating any recent developments that change how we

access/interact with music e.g.: Spotify, X Factor, iTunes, illegal downloading, free CDs with newspapers

etc.Although I have done nothing but talk about Lady Gaga’s popularity, it is the key issue with her music. Her popularity is so vast that we will do anything to access her music and so companies are ever increasing the ways to stop illegal downloading, such as newspapers giving free CDs so that royalties can be paid to the artists. It is estimated that 95% of music downloads in today’s society are illegally downloaded. So in order for the artists to make money, they need to make the best of TV shows such as X Factor and to involve themselves in other activities such as celebrity endorsement or, as Gaga did, have a private show to yourself with Paul O’Grady.