Disco de Lady Gaga: “The Fame”

This is my new go-to cd for the treadmill. All of the songs (with the exception of "Brown Eyes", which kinda sucks) have a good keep-you-moving dance beat. They're catchy tunes that stick in my head long after my workouts are over, and Lady Gaga's voice is better than most dance-pop artists. I do have to say that the lyrics on this cd are definitely lacking (my reason for only 4 stars). They go into all-out stupid territory sometimes. For example: "I wanna take a ride on your disco stick," from Lovegame. Or, "...'cause I'm bluffin' with my muffin," from Pokerface. Oh, and the phrase "cherry-cherry boom-boom" is in, like, 3 songs for no reason whatsoever (her trademark, maybe? Maybe at 27, I'm just too old for this stuff). Still, it's a fun cd, and who listens to this type of music for the lyrics anyway?

Ha! Well, I admit that I ignored Lady GaGa until this month but figured I'd see what all the fuss was about and gave The Fame a thorough listen.

To start, I'd like to say that she is actually a solid musical talent. She plays piano and writes her own music which for a Pop act is very rare.

I also watched a few of her performances and was impressed that she did not lip-sync even though it sacrificed her singing quality at times. But hey, doing acrobatic choreography and singing at the same time is not easy at all. It's actually very hard to do and I admire any artist who can manage that without panting and losing their breath entirely.

The songs on this album are a mix of Hits and misses.

Pokerface and Paparazzi stand out as my favorites. These two tracks have a good foundation of analog sounding Synthesizers and very well executed progressions and choruses.

However, there are some real stinkers on here. One of them in particular is 'Ech, Ech (Nothing Else I Can Say)'. This track sucks and remind me too much of Menudo, The Jets or New Kids on the Block for me to stomach. Perhaps it's ironic. But still, being a listener of Classical Music I find that when irony sacrifices composition and expression it completely misses the point. Instead of phrasing an ironic structure or sound, producing an entire piece around an ironic concept diminishes the overall value of it.

My hope for this artist is that she progresses and develops her music and lyrical writing more and that 'The Fame' is written based on a concept and not her soulful expression and ideas. Pop has a way of going stale and entrapping artists in a particular style or sound. A fate which Lady GaGa may be facing if she doesn't push herself beyond this sound. If she is intent on staying "FAMOUS" or whatever, she has two options, kick it up several notches or keep cranking out Discopop Dance Songs. I hope she chooses the first option and faces her career with guts instead of doing what her new Pop contemporaries have been doing for the past decade and selling the same product over and over with increased PR in order to keep market value up.

Her style... Yes, there is allot of fuss about it, rightfully so! It's impressive and I am confident that if anything, her style will continue to change with each album she records. David Bowie being one of her primary influences will likely ensure that.

In summery, this album is a good first start and hopefully not the best she can do.

My advice to Miss GaGa is stay away from drugs and keep your focus on your music and develop your skills as a Musician.

I'd hate to see you go down in a blaze of glitter and flash bulbs before you truly have the chance to change the landscape of Popular Music.

Being original in this day and age is tough. Clearly. I think music listeners are grasping this fact more readily nowadays or else Lady Gaga wouldn't even be around right now. While Lady Gaga isn't original, she brings an interesting sound to the table full of pounding basslines, synthesizers galore, crazy vocal distortions, and some relatively good vocals to boot. When you can surround the listener with this much action, we'll be a bit more forgiving of lack of originality.

It's pretty clear Lady Gaga is here to do two things.

1. Make dancefloor ready music.

2. Use extremely racy lyrics.

Make no mistake, racy lyrics are nothing new. Just look at Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera primarily. Yet Ms. Gaga's voice is so different from the afforementioned singers and her beats are so good that it doesn't matter. These songs aren't anything most regular people are going to relate to, which is fine. They're fun...at first. By the end of the CD you know basically exactly what to expect which hurts the overall product.

If you only care about the music, nothing else, this CD is sure to please. There isn't any major missteps as far as the songs go, keeping a pretty steady pace throughout the entire CD. The first single, Poker Face, is still a good all around song, as is her current single, Just Dance. Other immediate standouts are Lovegame, Eh Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say), The Fame, Paper Gangsta, and I Like It Rough. The other songs are consistent with the feel of the CD so as not to drag down any spot of the duration.

Lady Gaga is one of those artists that you can't say someone else will like. I really enjoy her but I have friends who cannot stand her. So if you'll enjoy this CD or not is all about your taste in music. For me though, I'll keep recommending it. While The Fame isn't a big departure from other things out right now, it's interesting enough to check out for sure.

Lady Gaga's gimmick -- aside from being a Female impersonator (hey, folks: s/he's "bluffin' with her muffin," to quote her own damn lyric, a lyric to which she adds that she's, "stunnin' with her love-glue gunnin...." I'll probably be flamed here for pointing out that Gaga is male -- but hey, by all means, feel free to do the math for yourself) -- is harmonic contrast, taken to the absolute extreme: Gaga presents a female voice with backing vocals that are exclusively male, for example; uses alternations of vocoder with vocal, and even drops her male backing vocals (Poker Face) so deeply down into the mix -- to levels of bare audibility (and seemingly keyshifted and placed into mono) -- while keeping her own lines recorded almost into the red -- all of which is fine, by the way, perfectly fine. It's a hit-record by the numbers, but this is really, REALLY well done.

"Just Dance" is such an obvious monster at radio that I imagine record company execs were literally drooling over the future numbers -- any song THIS well done can move a million units in re-mixes ALONE. "Poker Face" is double-bridged (using a bridge into chorus and another bridge out of it), "Just Dance" uses a rap in the place of a guitar solo (her own, in one mix, a male voice for the current radio edit) -- again, this is all about harmonic contrast. Some of the songwriting here is remarkably sophisticated, the crux of it is that the sophistication here is used to communicate the simplest of possible messages -- another contrast -- call it poetic contrast, if you like.

"Just Dance" and "Poker Face" are obvious singles, although "Poker Face" is not your typical single selection due to the incredible degree of songwriting sophistication -- the fidelic qualities aside, here. I do wish Gaga would fade-out the obvious singles instead of hard-stopping everything; some at radio seemed to have re-mixed a fade-out into Gaga's titles themselves, and feels correct for mass market airplay -- and Gaga, if you're reading this, let me say that this feels utterly correct for club-play, as well; it's not exactly a secret that giving the DJ a nice long fade-out to work with makes things a lot easier for the guy spinning the wax at any club, and improves your own spin-count.

I notice (welllll... at least I think I notice) that Gaga is sharp enough to keep the bass line slightly leading the drums during choruses, while the bass line seemingly trails the drums during verses -- the choruses thereby seem WONDERFULLY set-off and are some TRUE earworms. Gaga has a voice that seems to be in F, is naturally sharp, and with a natural trill as well as power -- Gaga CAN sing, keys are held and pitches are true, even live (well, from what I've seen at YouTube so far) -- and is set off, once again, by backing vocals that are male, generally in E or C, generally buried in the mix, used to set-off her own vocals via contrast -- Gaga is clearly the star of this show.

The amount of thinking that went into the production here is obvious; this is an absolute monster of a record made by people who clearly know what they are doing. Gaga's look, presence, manner, and sound are the result of an awful lot of thought -- she has everything she needs to be the next generation's Cher, and I mean that in a good way.

You know... one more thought: we have had so many years of pop music pretending to be anti-pop; think of the entire grunge movement, for example... that Gaga's timing into the marketplace couldn't have been more perfect: Gaga's quote that pop art, "will never be low-brow," allows her to actually position herself as a musical anti-hero by firmly embracing the confines of pop AS AN ACT OF REBELLION. (!)

Yeah, I'm telling you: if Nirvana and Peal Jam had never happened, Gaga would never have had the opportunity to explode like this.

You KNOW I'm right.

Looking out across the musical horizon of the moment, Gaga is probably the sharpest knife in the drawer.

The potential career here for this person, whoever they are, is a FRANCHISE.

A fan of Christina so I am reluctant to write a review on Gaga but after the release of Ms. Aguilera, I am so disappointed and I think this CD must deserve some praise. This is the best dance music out there right now if you don't care for Bieber that much. Lady Gaga is not famous at the releasing of this CD but she does now thanks to her talents (she's not that pretty but hey I just care for the music).

The sounds are very catchy and unique and I just love it. I heard it's called electronic new disco. These days music are too explicit and it is just to me unapporriate. I just like the clean one and NOT Christian music as well. At first I like the first songs at the first half of the album but now I started to explore and like the second half eventhough the lyrics is a bit more edgy...