So I Got a Question: Is Ke$ha Talented? (Part 1 of 3)

If I were to write about the question of whether Lady Gaga is talented—more specifically, whether she has some natural musical/performance/creative ability she has honed through time and practice into skill that she is putting to good and exciting use—here’s how I would do it:

• I would start off looking at her music videos. Are they good? How have they progressed? I would say, Wow! Look at how “Paparazzi” marked the turn from the cool but more simplistic early videos like “Just Dance” and “Poker Face” to the epic “Bad Romance,” “Telephone,” and “Alejandro”!
• I would look at her live performances. I would remark on how her exemplary acoustic performances demonstrate her vocal and musical skill as well as her ability to morph around her songs in fantastical ways. I would express awe at the spectacle of all her other live performances, both in concert and on television.
• Lastly, I would make some general remarks about her musical and vocal abilities, her songwriting, the progression of her career and how she has/n’t grown, and her image. (Basically, how she has a great voice and great instrumental skills, writes excellent songs of many varieties, has crafted a complex persona shifting over time, and how her music has evolved from The Fame to The Fame Monster and how it looks set to change again with Born This Way.)

That’s what I’d do for Gaga. Now, in three parts, I’ll do it for Ke$ha!

The Sexualized Desexualizing of Adam Lambert

Here’s an argument simple to follow:

1. Adam Lambert is a raging homo. Proof:

2. Adam Lambert isn’t afraid to bring out this aspect of his sexuality in his live performances. Proof:

3. In his music videos, Adam Lambert is being desexualized / pseudo-sexualized / heterosexualized. His true sexuality is being replaced with either a generic romantic and asexual longing or a sexuality marked with no genders, many genders, or women. Proof:

Yummy Like a Cat in Heat (or, My iPod, Part 1)

While I’ve had “Hollaback Girl” and “Wind It Up” on my iPod for a while now, I’ve recently made two exciting additions I thought I’d share with you.

First is “What You Waiting For?,” which I heard described recently as quite possibly one of the best pop songs of the last decade. I have no comment on that, but I can certainly say the song is amazing, and the full video is quite a sight!:

In a sign of just how big Lady Gaga is at present, a friend to whom I showed this video called it “Gagaesque,” both in length and content. However, this video was made in 2004, when the Lady was only 18 and four years away from her breakout hit, “Just Dance.” Additionally, much of the content of the video is based on imagery from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking-Glass, which decidedly predates all of these popstars.