"Express Yourself!" "Express Yourself!" is mostly what I saw as I rode to the airport Friday morning. I'd missed the boat, so to speak, neglecting to download Lady Gaga's "Born This Way" when it hit the world at 6 am, so for a few hours, I had to form an idea of the awaited track based on my Twitter timeline. I had expected a sleek, proto-pop-house anthem (the comparisons to "Vogue" that were present in smaller numbers only reinforced this). When I finally was able to download it, instead of processed horns and the plastic beats of Steven Bray and/or Shep Pettibone, what Gaga was serving to my ears was hi-NRG realness.
While there is some melodic intersection with "Express Yourself" (see Madonna's "What you need is a big strong hand to lift you to your higher ground" versus Gaga's "So hold your head up, darling you'll go far, listen to me when I say..." and/or "So if you want it right now..." versus "I'm beautiful in my way..."), the sound of the song has a much more tenuous connection to the (former?) Queen of Pop: the galloping arpeggiation, the swift tempo, grinding guitarishness of the track is most reminiscent of
"Born To Be Alive," the biggest hit of Patrick Hernandez, whom Madonna dated and danced back-up for. If "Express Yourself" is a fancy car that goes moderately fast, "Born This Way" is a parade of sounds zooming by.
What a perfect setting for gay pride! The production by Gaga, Fernando Garibay and DJ White Shadow seems to bespeak an understanding of gay culture way beyond the ham-fisted lyrics. I talked to MTV News regarding the conflation of activism and commerce (and previously wrote about the trend of gay-pandering by pop stars for the Voice), so I have little left to say as far as what Gaga's doing with that (although no matter what, I think we can all agree that tailoring explicitly gay anthems on such a mainstream level is something new and foreign to pop, and more importantly, gay culture, and its effects remain to be seen). The lyrics are kind of dumb and simplistic, yes (since when is being on the right track a birthright?), and they do contain some off-color terminology for the sake of meter and rhyme. (However, I wish all the energy devoted to arguing about words like "chola" said by someone clearly invested in the concept of harmony would instead be placed on fighting actual bigots or charity work. Splitting hairs with those clearly on the right side is a gigantic waste of time for everybody.)
But underneath all that is a fairly sophisticated knowledge of gay music -- in echoing "Born To Be Alive," "Born This Way" falls in line with the music "Alive" helped birth -- the hyper-electronic, hi-NRG sounds that disco morphed into after the '80s (the kind of stuff that was played at the insane NYC gay club the Saint back in the day). My favorite thing about "Born This Way" is how dorky it sounds -- it's just so bold in its exuberance. This works so well because if you examine overt expressions of gay pride -- parades, rainbows, drag queens -- the thing about them is that they aren't cool. They're amazing and special and so, so important, but their flamboyance is direct at odds with the notion of cool. Within pop culture, there's a current notion that being gay is cool, and it's so ridiculous. It's not. It's just how some people are. "Born This Way" seems to get that entirely.
February 13, 2011
from fourfour
YASSS!!!!!!
I'm up to 187 spins.