Gaga Palmer Librarians

[gement]

Several months ago, Neil Gaiman linked to a quick song by Amanda Palmer about the philosophy of art called Gaga Palmer Madonna. It's funny, it's thoughtful, it's accompanied by ukelele, and I was humming it for weeks.

The same week, Ryan North of Dinosaur Comics linked to several different versions of Lady Gaga's Poker Face, which I'd never heard. He later linked to a mashup assembled by someone who followed his advice and LISTENED TO THEM ALL AT THE SAME TIME. I clicked on the mashup link. I heard some really powerful singing mixed up in there. I went and listened to all the versions.

Here is the official music video version of Poker Face. This is a version of Poker Face Lady Gaga did for BBC Radio One.

I could personally only get through about 30 seconds of the music video version. The vocals were flat-as-in-the-opposite-of-dynamic and the video seemed to entirely consist of a pop singer's skin being exploited by the media machine.

Then I clicked on the piano and wail version. I actually have a Pandora station named "Piano and Wail." Smoky alto, torch song with gospel aftertaste. Gah. I am a complete sucker for every single trick she uses here, and I am in envy of her breath support. I even like her hat.

To my shame, my first very strong reaction was, "If she can do that, why on Earth is she wasting her breath doing that fake stuff?"

And if someone talented wants to make pop music, why should we worry when there's so much other shit wrong?

Oh. That. Right. I can translate my statement directly to "Why are you spending time making music that you chose instead of music that I like better?" Just a touch of entitlement there. They're both performances, they're both finely calculated for exactly the effect they produce, and they both please a significant fraction of outside observers (which is to say, they're popular).

So that was my visceral realization of that principle, which I've been meaning to write about for months. It got me thinking about, for example, where I draw the "I know it when I see it" line on something like a loaf of bread being classified as art, craft, or production. The answer to that one is surprisingly complicated, and includes the number of loaves made at once, the origin of the recipe, the quality of the ingredients, the historical number of loaves baked by the baker, and whether they put the little decorative cut on the top.

Post-script: I now enjoy humming along with the original version of Poker Face. It grew on me. Like a fungus. A really catchy fungus. Having since learned that Lady Gaga has a pretty aggressive history of performance art, I can even almost appreciate the music video. (Before I knew that, I think it was hitting my consent buttons, because I rarely expect young female pop stars to have much say over their public presentation.)

So! Open comment thread for discussion of our personal reactions to pop art/high art/folk art. Where do you catch yourself viscerally drawing such lines, and do you philosophically agree with those emotional divisions?

---

Why did I finally get around to posting this?

The library school of which I am an alumna did a parody version called "You can use my catalog." The business librarian looks like she was born to wear a tiara. If you know any iSchool staff or current students, or just like really dorky librarian humor, this video was made for you. (Featuring Nancy Pearl, Mike Eisenberg, antelopes, and my roommate Eric!)

Um, most of these people don't usually wear skirts.

My birthday is tomorrow. I will announce plans later. Meanwhile, if you are looking for a small fool-proof gift and haven't thought of something more specific, I'm a sucker for clear crystal prisms (rainbow throwers). There will be at least one opportunity to hang out at my house in a celebratory fashion, and I will definitely not expect gifts. Company is awesome.

Comments

[rm.livejournal.com]

I hate those lines and I hate the viciousness with which people enforce them. I can't tell you how often I hear that I am wasting my life/intellect/value because I enjoy or do scholarship on pop-culture, as if the things millions or billions of people like aren't relevant or valuable. Opera was the trash TV of its era. The distinctions are utter, utter crap. I like stuff that's clever. Lady Gaga is RIDICULOUSLY clever and smarter than most opera. And I dig both, and I loathe that I only get vilified for one (I also like the flat video version. I think that flatness of those types of vocals are part of the statement in and of itself and the sound works for me as background music or trance-y shit to dance to).

[stolen-tea.livejournal.com]

I may have mentioned this phrase before, but at some point in college, a discussion about pop music generated the quote "I enjoy the music of Britney Spears the way I enjoy a finely crafted internal combustion engine". That's stuck with me as being a very appropriate way to look it at. There's a beauty to music that comes out of the folk tradition that's very different from the classical or jazz traditions, and once I made the connection that modern pop songs have about the same amount of internal variety as "Greensleeves" or an old hymn, it all clicked.

Because, boy howdy does it *work*.

The thing I like most about Lady Gaga is that she seems to take pop music exactly as seriously as it deserves. And yes! She's a performance artist! She's got an entire design studio partnering with her, she's got a noticeable body count of asshole men in her videos, she's set fire to a piano while playing it and while wearing a giant gyroscope dress... Sure, she's this generation's Madonna, and I think that's a good thing!

[gement.livejournal.com]

Please provide video recommendations. I am an utter square and have not kept up with popular music in mumble years.* This is why I had no ear at all for deadpan techno until I had some repeated exposure to Poker Face.

I like learning new music, I just haven't prioritized it and at this point I'm honestly not sure how people go about doing that.

* Some exceptions for piano/guitar/viola/accordion-playing singer-songwriter eccentrics. Mostly when people bought me the albums because they know I need to get out more.

[gement.livejournal.com]

I'm stunned, stunned I say, that this is your opinion! But seriously, thank you for chiming in. I always forget about opera's checkered past.

Given more exposure, I'm totally with you about the deadpan singing. Especially on a song called "Poker Face," it's stylistically perfect. I just had no ear at all for it when I started, and I'm exposed to so little mainstream media anymore that the T&A of a traditional music video just about punched me in the eye. It was an interesting exercise in remembering that just because I don't get it doesn't reduce its value.

[sistawendy.livejournal.com]

Most people don't know about the opera riots that used to break out in the 19th century. Sure, the rioters were well-dressed, but they were still hooligans.

[sistawendy.livejournal.com]

That video may change the way the world looks a librarians.

[zzyzx-xyzzy.livejournal.com]

high art/pop art/folk art -- to me the distinction is more of an economic/sociological one rather than much you can specifically point to in the music.

Folk music is easier for to describe. It's where the performer and the artist are not in distinct classes, so music is being produced within a group for consumption within the same group. Folk music also has a form dictated by economic constraints (people are making music with the equipment/knowledge they have access to.) Most new forms of music start out this way, e.g. how hip hop got started -- people wanted to throw parties, there was a Jamaican influence bringing a dancehall/toasting tradition, there were used record stores full of funk and R&B, they could rent PA equipment, and those were the constraints.

If a form of folk music catches on it often seems to transition to more of a "pop" mentality where there are distinctly performers and audience and a culture of fame, and it loses the economic constraints on production while retaining some of the same form, but the 'folk' parts are usually still happening in the background somewhere.

High art vs. pop -- I dunno. 'patronage' vs. 'mercenary' comes to mind, again more of a soicioeconomic distinction rather than form or content.

I do have an ear for techno, have spent way too much time listening to increasingly headier stuff, and so I think Gaga's arrangements are terribly dull, though other aspects of the art are a lot more interesting. But I appreciate how as-a-pop-star Gaga seems to have her own hands on the controls of her career, seems to have made the conscious decision to engineer herself as a pop star to get her performance art in front of an many people as possible.

[vixyish.livejournal.com]

To my shame, my first very strong reaction was, "If she can do that, why on Earth is she wasting her breath doing that fake stuff?"

I confess I had a very similar thought about her. The very first time I ever heard her, was finding a video on YouTube of her AMAZING AMAZING AMAZING live performance of "Paparazzi" on the MTV Video Music Awards. Then later I went and watched the official music video, which... wow.

I was certainly glad I'd heard her live first, because if I'd heard her recordings first, I'd never have sought out anything else of hers. She has a beautiful, HELLA powerful voice. What jarred me about her recordings wasn't about the pop style at all; it was that she was deliberately disguising, *diminishing* that power. You know how you can sing up in an imitating-a-little-girl kind of voice, on purpose? Under all the vocal effects and pop music, under the autotune, she's doing *that*. *That's* the part I don't understand.

And I've been meaning to post about it too, except I didn't really have a coherent point about it.

I remember wondering why on earth I kept hearing people sneer at her for all the theatrics and costumes. I *like* the theatrics and costumes! Plus it's not so different from what Madonna used to do; it's not *copying* Madonna, but it's sort of the next logical step after Madonna, if you see what I mean. And then having that thought made me realize that Madonna did the *exact same thing* with her voice-- listen to any of her earlier stuff, "Lucky Star", "Holiday", etc., it's all that little-girl voice, and we didn't get to hear her natural, powerful singing voice until much later in her career. (And seeing her live was the same 'woah FUCK!' experience.)

I wish I knew if it was a record-label-pressure thing, a what-sells-when-you're-getting-started thing or not. That wasn't my first thought; Lady Gaga just doesn't strike me as someone who gets manipulated.

But as far as a line between whether something is art, craft, or production? Oh man, I got nothin'. I don't think about those distinctions because they're impossible to draw. If anything, I think the others are just a subset of art. It's all art if you've put a bit of your soul into it.

[gement.livejournal.com]

Yes, exactly, re: the lack of coherent point. I didn't have much of one either, and poorly articulated the subject of discussion to boot. I think that most of my friends philosophically agree that the distinctions are a distraction at best. I left some room open for discussion on that point, but I was mostly curious for reactions like yours...

and like mine toward bread. I mean... BREAD. When I can be passing petty judgments in my head on the validity of bread? It's time to look at where those judgments come from.

[maribou]

1) Happy birthday!
2) If you know Joe Tennis, feel free to tell him he now has a following of people who are all swoony over "that codex guy".
3) Indulge me by allowing me to quote myself else-lj, from March: "I've liked her for a long time now (as these things go) and I think I only just figured out why. I've seen a lot of "artistic nudes" by (mostly) male photographers over the years in which the female subject is just an object - something to be strikingly or shockingly posed. (This isn't always BAD, it's just extremely more common than would make me comfortable.) Anyway, watching a Lady Gaga video is like watching one of these subject/objects animate themselves and start fucking taking OVER the frame. She can dance in a bikini and still make you focus on her face. Very pomo and strangely .... punk? Whatever, it delights me." - After that I googled around a bit and found tons of stuff where she talked about her respect for Lou Reed and the Warhol crowd... which, yeah. You get it now, anyway.

[stolen-tea.livejournal.com]

No video recommendations, sorry... I don't keep *that* in touch with pop music. I just sorta philosophically prefer to see the good in everything, you know? :)

BTW, I was just pointed at a nifty book that tackles this aspect of cheese. The author is a sometime-punk who's the cheesemonger for a worker-owned co-op grocery store in San Francisco, and a large part of the book walks that line between appreciateing the fancy stuff, and yet appreciating the good points of the common stuff too. And it doubles as a "cheese 101", too!

http://www.powells.com/biblio/9781603582377

Or you can borrow it the next time we meet up, if you like, reminders willing.

[gement.livejournal.com]

HA! J knows Joe Tennis and will pass that on.

[annissamazing]

Sorry for the "me too" post, but this really sums up my feelings as well. I had the same experience. Her performance of "Paparazzi" on the MTV Video Music awards was also the first time I'd been exposed to her and my reaction was something like, "Woah!"

Her music isn't my cup of tea, but I recognize that she is incredibly talented.

Also, happy birthday. :)

[capnexposition.livejournal.com]

Lady Gaga operates in a very weird space, to me. While I generally agree with you on the art vs. exploitation thing (in the sense that I feel many artists subsume their financially non-viable creative drives in favor of pursuing what will SELL), I think Lady Gaga is essentially using exploitation as her art form. Granted, I don't know her mind or her aims, but it seems to me she is using the exploitation of her body to give her a canvas that people will come LOOK at. The music, while catchy, has never struck me as her real creative outlet. I think she herself is the actual art. The dresses, the hats, the videos, the persona is what she is really playing with. That isn't to say she's not a good musician. She's a very solid musician, but she's an awesome performer. I think she is rapidly approaching the point where she will become Gibson's Idoru.

[littlemystories.livejournal.com]

And if someone talented wants to make pop music, why should we worry when there's so much other shit wrong?

Yep, this here would be a first-world problem.

I really liked her video/short film for Telephone - amazing crazy concept outfits and a hot butch.

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

The Klingon Opera Riots were far worse!

RE 2)

[stardragonca.livejournal.com]

And an Amen from the choir.

[memegarden.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting all this! I enjoyed the videos. Like you, I greatly preferred the smoky keyboard version to the pop version. A major factor being that I could understand the words much better.

[stolen-tea.livejournal.com]

Ooh! Another bit on the elitism front, from r_ness:

http://www.mcsweeneys.net/links/monologues/15comicsans.html