All agog over Lady Gaga?

By ANN POWERS
LOS ANGELES TIMES

Almost immediately after she deposited herself in a corner booth at L'Espalier, the restaurant at Boston's Mandarin Oriental Hotel on the December afternoon after the first American date of her Monster Ball tour, Lady Gaga made a confounding statement.
    
 "I don't see myself as ever being like anybody else," said the 23-year-old known to her mom (eating lunch nearby) as Stefani Germanotta. "I don't see myself as an heir."
     
Yet there she was, in a blond Hollywood bob and black tuxedo-bra combo much like the costumes Madonna wore 20 years ago, discussing a show that conjures the spirits of Michael Jackson, David Bowie and the punk-rock drag queens of downtown New York and promoting music -- the newly expanded edition of her 2008 debut album, "The Fame," greatly enriched by eight new songs and repackaged as "The Fame Monster" -- that pays blatant homage to ABBA, Queen, Eurodisco and Marilyn Manson.
     
Gaga doesn't care. She wants you to trace her references. "John Lennon talked about how with every song he wrote, he was thinking of another artist," she said, making a less expected connection to a pop deity.
     
She has yet to attain the status of the Beatles, but in the ever-accelerating pop cycle, Gaga is a top sensation, and many people's vote for the most exciting artist of 2009. "The Fame" has sold nearly 2 million copies in the U.S. and reportedly double that internationally; her album and the single "Poker Face" both made the top three on the year-end tally of top iTunes downloads.
     
"The Fame Monster" continues this sales sweep, but it also considerably advances Gaga's artistic project with some of her strongest songs yet, including the ear-worm-infested "Bad Romance" and the sumptuously emotional ballad "Speechless."
     
The world is responding. She has made friends with Madonna, been interviewed by Barbara Walters and met the Queen of England at the annual Royal Variety Performance. The Monster Ball has sold out multiple nights in major cities.
   
This is all happening not because Gaga is cute or takes off her clothes but because (to use one of her favorite words) she is a monster -- a monster talent, that is, with a serious brain.
     
"I'm getting the sense that you're a little bit of a feminist, like I am, which is good," she said. "I find that men get away with saying a lot in this business, and that women get away with saying very little ... In my opinion, women need and want someone to look up to that they feel have the full sense of who they are, and says, 'I'm great.'"
     
Gaga's casual use of the term "feminist" was interesting; like many female pop stars, she has rejected the term in the past. But she's evolving. She is growing "more compassionate," she says, and focusing more on ideas of community, especially the one formed by her core fan base, a mix of gay men, bohemian kids and young women attracted by Gaga's style and her singable melodies.
     
Gaga does view her music as a liberating force. "When I say to you, there is nobody like me, and there never was, that is a statement I want every woman to feel and make about themselves," she continued. "I don't make it as a defense. I make it as, OK, guys, it's been two years, and I've made a lot of music, and I know my greatness is individual. And I want every woman to be able to say that."


     
As good a game as she talks, Gaga's real language is visual and, of course, musical. Discussing videos like the one for "Bad Romance," which she says is about "how the entertainment industry can, in a metaphorical way, simulate human trafficking -- products being sold, the woman perceived as a commodity," or the Ace Bandage-adorned costume she wore at the American Music Awards, which she said was "meant to be feminine, healing, bondage gothic," she sounds more like an art critic than an evolving club kid.
     
"It's a feeling," she says of the way she builds these little horror musicals. "There is a narrative, but the narrative isn't nearly as important as the images are, sewn together."
     
As for the songs that serve as the foundation for all of her other forms of expression, Gaga says she never wanted them to be anything but massive hits. "I don't want to make niche-oriented music," said the songwriter, who entered the music business writing hits for other artists, including Britney Spears. "I don't like it! I don't mean that to be in a rude way. But my taste is not there."
     
Since the release of "The Fame," Lady Gaga has been uncovering new layers within her basic themes. At first she just seemed like the most pop savvy of the clever young people using club beats as a basis for music that could be both cerebral and cathartic -- the way indie rockers used heavy guitars a generation before. It was easy to dismiss her as no more than a well-educated New York girl with a gift for pop hooks and self-marketing.
     
But then her public appearances began not simply to provoke but disturb. She made a video for her song "Paparazzi" that had her in gilded crutches and a leg brace. She turned that vision of crippled glamour even bloodier on the MTV Video Music Awards, an appearance she described as "my first truly original moment."
     
She has worn costumes that recast childhood icons like Kermit the Frog and Hello Kitty into ingenue's pelts. (The Kermit dress was designed by Jean-Charles de Castelbajac, who had adorned Madonna in teddy bears; the kitty couture was the brainchild of Gaga's main creative partner, Matthew "Matty Dada" Williams.) She has painted her eyes to look like an anime heroine. In the climactic dance sequence from Monster Ball, she adorns herself in the black feathers of a vulture and the yards-long blond braids of a victimized princess.
     
"I had a different vision for it in the beginning. Dada thought it should be braided, and I said, 'I never wear my hair braided.' He said, 'I know, but it's so Rapunzel, and it's something people deeply understand. And when you're wearing sunglasses on a scaffolding piece with a giant alien dancing behind you, I promise you it's not going to look like Rapunzel.'"
     
The hairpiece does look like something concocted by crafty kids in a basement; it reflects a key element of Gaga's aesthetic, the do-it-yourself spirit that contrasts with her taste for million-dollar couture. She works with major designers such as Alexander McQueen, who created many of the Monster Ball costumes, but also with newcomers like Gary Card, who made the skeletal headgear she and her dancers wore on the AMAs.
     
"The great thing about Gaga is she always want to push for the most extreme option," Card said. "With Rihanna and Beyonce there is an end result of desirability and unattainable sexiness, whereas Gaga is a really interesting bridge between the desirable and the grotesque. She's not at all worried about looking ridiculous or hideous; actually, I think she thrives off it."