Lady Gaga is Rhapsody's 2009 Artist of the Year! To celebrate her coronation, we're kicking off a brand-new original video series called, simply, The Box. So enjoy Lady Gaga vs. the Box:
Why Lady Gaga Is Rhapsody's Artist of the Year:
In the course of approximately 15 months, she has become an American icon. The wide-eyed singer-songwriter formerly known as Stefani Germanotta has achieved this by being a kind of everywoman, albeit one with a predilection for face masks, monster voices and Kermit head fashion. She is both unfathomably glamorous and comfortingly average. She constantly pushes our social boundaries (and our buttons) with taboo-testing images and ideas, yet she always brings us home again, rooting us in a steady, stable beat we can dance to. She embraces the past (and makes no bones about her stylistic references to other artists), and yet she implies a future where freaks and geeks and queers might find a place (albeit a purposely freaky one) in the mainstream. And she admits -- no, exaggerates -- this ambivalence, the ambivalence of being an American icon. We both relate to and are fascinated by her because she shocks our systems, but asks us to join her in the shocking -- and mocks herself and the cult of celebrity in the process. That's why she's our Artist of the Year. Well, that, and the fact that the woman writes a damn fine pop song -- or six.
