jason stives shows us he was Born This Way …
It’s a cruel world coming up in the pop music landscape. Never ceasing to amaze its potential, pop music can be over-glamorized, dumbed down, but still be infectiously amazing and critically overpowering. In the past four years, Lady Gaga no doubt has suffered from detractors for her lack of originality but praised for her tangibly creative songwriting and sultry techno-infused hooks. Since her 2008 debut The Fame, she has had much to live up to and fears of burning out and fading away have no doubt crossed this young singer’s mind. So to counteract those worries and to be personally satisfied and creatively fulfilled we get her latest pop opus, Born This Way.
I use opus loosely, as Gaga no doubt tries to make the 14-track release feel like a cross between latter-day Queen records and Madonna’s unfortunate-yet-praised operatic acting turn in Evita. Her influences are great, and listening to the album, you can see she has used this as a personal ode to her musical upbringings and influences while at the same time making a messiah like figure out of her fame and her love for her fan base. A bit empowering, yes, but needless to say there are things that lack fine tuning and are more done for the sake of a creative tryout.
As much as it pains me to use the comparison, Born This Way could easily be her version of David Bowie’s Berlin period, a time when fame was heavy on the chameleon rocker, but inspiration was vast thanks to touring the world and trying to be something other than a rock star. A track like the German-tongued “Scheibe” is lifted greatly from European club scenes and her ode to a Mexican harlot on “Americano” wants to be the aforementioned Evita. But for every track looking to be bigger than it actually is, there are hooks to go around, even if we have heard them all already.
Unfortunately, because Gaga has been quietly releasing tracks from this album for a few months now, the stale nature of songs like “Judas” and “Edge Of Glory” don’t come off anymore detrimental for the listener, even if the latter does have some real charm to it. What does work is the thematic and lyrical weaving of the tone of each song. Starting out with the downtrodden but uplifting “Marry The Night,” Gaga wastes no time in completing the get up and celebrate attitude she is obviously working towards by breaking the boom box on the album’s title track. For every moment that she views herself as a “loser,” not fit for this world, she keeps a positive undertone with anthems of identity (“Hair”), individuality (“ Bad Kids”) and secret love affairs (“You and I”).
But that doesn’t mean creating these statements is all necessary. The aptly titled “Government Hooker” doesn’t imply much and only tries to be quasi political with Gaga’s plea to “Put your hands on me/John F. Kennedy.” More successful but still hindering on her Catholic upbringing and taste for controversy is the aptly titled “Bloody Mary,” a fiendish nudge at Mother Mary but more akin to her defiance against the church she grew up under the watchful eyes of.
It may be in that last sentence we get the essence of Lady Gaga’s intent and necessary existence in popular music. There is talent to be exclaimed but not necessarily brought about on fare ground as the demand for bigger and better by both the commercial audience and record moguls makes it hard for an artist to match up to former efforts and superficial expectation to be held. Born This Way is by no means a heralded return to great pop music, but it’s no doubt satisfactory enough to be out amongst what has already become stale and still be a strong composition that shows further potential down the road.
Rating: 6.5 out of 10
