Gaga Sees Herself as a Tragic Hero from Greek Mythology on The Fame Monster

Lady Gaga sees her album The Fame Monster as a retelling of the Greek myth of Orpheus and Eurydice. Gaga plays the role of Orpheus who was a gifted musician and songwriter who died because of his fear of death and obsession with the past. This myth drives every song on The Fame Monster, explaining the album’s religious elements and moral elements. Underneath all the stylish synthesizers and catchy pop songs lie sadness and uncertainty. The songs on Monster feel like a glimpse into the deeply disturbed, yet beautifully twisted place that is Lady Gaga’s mind.

In Ancient Greek mythology, Orpheus’ wife Eurydice died after snakes bit her and he begs the gods of the underworld to make his dead wife live again on earth. The gods agree to resurrect Eurydice, but only on the condition that on the way up from the underworld to the upper world (planet earth), Orpheus must not look back at Eurydice as she follows him. When Orpheus and Euryadice almost make it to the upper world together, and Orpheus reaches the upper world, he looks back at Euryadice and he realizes his mistake. Eurydice didn’t reach the upper world yet and then she died a second time, except this time forever. After Eurydice’s death, Orpheus refused to worship all the gods except the sun god whom Orpheus called Apollo. The wild Maenads were crazy, drunken harlots who killed people in insane rages. The Maenads killed Orpheus by tearing him to pieces, beheading him and cutting him into pieces as if he were Mr. Potato Head. The myth goes that Orpheus’ decapitated head and lyre (his instrument) floated down the river still singing sad songs. Women on the island of Lesbos took his head and buried it and built a shrine for him. His lyre floated up to heaven. He ended up reuniting with his wife Eurydice in the underworld.

Lady Gaga is a piano-playing singer-songwriter who sings beautiful songs, many ironic and many mournful. There are many things on The Fame Monster that represent Eurydice’s death. They include the death of good friends, the death of past lovers, the death of womanhood, the death of a father, the death of confidence, the death of labor, the death of obsession and the death of lies. The main lesson to take from the myth of Orpheus and Eurydice is to never “look back.” When Orpheus planned on returning to earth to recreate his life with Eurydice, he planned on living in the past. He wouldn’t be growing as a person, but only destined to make the same mistakes.

The 1958 Alfred Hitchcock film Vertigo was driven by the main themes of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth of the perils of “looking back.” In the film, a man lost a woman that he obsessed over, and shortly after a woman who looks almost exactly like the dead woman comes into his life. He’s hell-bent on making the living doppelganger into the identical image of the dead woman, including changing her hair color and hairstyle and makeup and clothes. A life of repetition is not healthy. The Orpheus and Eurydice myth and Vertigo drive Gaga’s first single “Bad Romance.”

Set to a marching synth-fest of triumph (inspired by German techno music that Gaga discovered while touring Europe), “Bad Romance” is all about returning to life from the dead or getting a second chance, but swearing to never make the same mistakes. The object of Gaga’s affection on “Bad Romance” is someone from Gaga’s past who has been resurrected. For fear of losing her friend again, Gaga cannot make the same mistakes she made before. Gaga’s reference to Hitchcock’s Vertigo makes the theme of “Bad Romance” crystal-clear. The lyric goes: I want your Psycho, your Vertigo shtick/want you in my Rear Window, baby you sick.” In other words, Gaga is saying she accepts her friend’s Freudian craziness (Norman Bates, the killer and victim of Psycho). She accepts her friend’s obsessive tendencies (John “Scottie” Ferguson, the detective whose obsession gets the better of him in Vertigo). She’s accepts her friend’s voyeuristic pleasures (L.B. “Jeff” Jefferies, a photographer who’s temporarily wheelchair-bound becomes a voyeur spying on his neighbors spending all his time in the confines of his bedroom in Rear Window). Rear Window is probably the most relevant to Lady Gaga’s essential message that defines her career: Hitchcock made Rear Window to show how Americans are all “a race of Peeping Toms.” It’s a reference to the power of the media and how the voyeuristic society that is America loves to watch other people live or exist. Their watching is made even easier by advanced technology like the Internet and cell-phones.

Gaga declares with immense urgency that “I want your loving, I want your revenge” to her friend. She wants to avenge his death by simply living a brand new life focused on building a better future, and not living in the past. Towards the middle, Gaga sings thunderously in all her throaty-voiced glory “I don’t wanna be friends!” It’s clear that she didn’t act on her romantic feelings for her friend in his previous life, and now that she has the chance to not make the same mistake, Gaga makes sweet, rapturous love to her friend. By the end of “Bad Romance” she’s celebrating in ecstasy because her grotesque friend is now her beautiful lover.

Now that Gaga found her beautiful lover, it’s unfortunate that she has to kill him. The Fame Monster is not necessarily told as a chronological story, but it could be. It could very well be separate experiences of Gaga’s. Still, all the strength and courage it took for Gaga to finally become intimate with her friend on “Bad Romance, “and it had to end. But all great things have to come to an end and on “Alejandro” it is no different. The genius of Gaga’s songwriting comes into play when concerning the Latin theme of the song. Gaga once said that she “writes music for the dress,” meaning she creates the visuals for her songs as she writes the lyrics. The visuals include the choreography, the music video, the performance, hair, makeup and clothes. The background music for “Alejandro” is ‘90s Euro-pop spritzed with Caribbean flavor. However, the violin strings are what give “Alejandro” its Latin flavor. There’s even the sound of the ocean getting swept by the wind. The song’s producer RedOne must have had a vacation on his mind.

Gaga is singing about past lovers who just won’t seem to die. Whether Gaga has trouble killing the memory of her past loves or finding it hard to resist their romantic charms, she can’t seem to get them out of her life. What type of men would be hard to resist with their golden-brown skin and sexy accents? Latin men, that’s who. In a recent performance of “Alejandro” in Osaka, Japan, each of Gaga’s male dancers performed a piece of choreography where the man holds his female dance partners down a bit so they dip in the air and pantomimes putting a stake through her heart just like one would kill a vampire. Now we’re getting into Gaga’s head, where she writes music for the dress. This is when Gaga combines ‘Alejandro’s two visual inspirations consisting of Latin men and death, and creates a Mexican vampire. I can already imagine the dancers wearing black beekeeper veils indicating the song’s sense of mourning. The opening violin strings also exude the song’s sense of mourning sounding as if they’re weeping. There’s also plenty of matador-influenced choreography that Gaga and her dancers displayed in Japan in April 2010, which again builds on the Latin theme of “Alejandro.” As the candles burn and the Latin undead become, well, dead, Gaga has to push ahead pondering her identity without a boyfriend.

It makes perfect sense that at the beginning of the ‘80s Italo-Disco-inspired “Monster” Gaga tells someone “Don’t call me Gaga” as if the person she’s addressing is supposed to address her by another name because she’s a different person. She’s been changed somehow. When she proceeds to sing she tells how she became changed in overly simple prose, as if she’s reciting a Grimm’s fairytale. Gaga tells the tale of a woman who goes out to the discotech and spots a guy who’s a bad boy. He’s probably the kind of guy with several tattoos on his body and a confident swagger. She sings the lyric “He’s a wolf in disguise/but I can’t stop staring in those evil eyes” in a slurred, mumbled manner, suggesting intoxication by alcohol, considering she’s in a night club. She’s supposed to be saying “evil eyes,” but it sounds very much like she’s saying “hero’s lies.” These two opposing statements, evil versus good, represent Gaga’s two states as two different people. Before the change, she thinks the guy’s eyes are evil, but after the change she thinks he’s a hero, but she doesn’t realize he’s telling her lies.

It’s as if her memory has been erased where the bad boy wolf disguises himself as a hunk each time Gaga goes out to the clubs to find a new love, when in reality he’s the same wolf in a human suit every time. The same thing happens every time Gaga goes to the club: she finds the guy, gets drunk and goes home with him. They have sex and he eats her heart and her brain, figuratively. Gaga compares his sexual hunger to the hunger of a cannibal or just some kind of beast who eats people.

“Monster” is an allegory for Gaga repeating the same old habits. She’s living in the past pursuing the same guys who will ultimately ruin her. Gaga said in an interview that “Monster” is about her fear of attachment and how she keeps falling in love with the monster, when what she really needs is responsibility of her womanhood and femininity. This sentiment explains her current state as a celibate woman who is now protective of her womanhood, physically and mentally, and exclusive to who has access to it. She figured that she has to figure out a way to live without men. She has to free herself from getting defined by the men she keeps and the sex she has with them. Before becoming celibate, Gaga’s past repeatedly killed her, deadening her spirit each time, but finally by taking ownership of her body, she killed the monster.

The depths of Gaga’s songwriting are most present on the song “Dance in the Dark.” Gaga’s songwriting is known to be three-dimensional in its scope, where different aspects of the song stack atop each other like a layered cake. It’s doubtful that someone would guess the true meaning of “Dance in the Dark” from simply listening to it because Gaga makes no mention of the actual subject at hand. There are three main layers of Gaga’s songs. The first is the surface layer, which appears to be quite simple and shallow. The second layer is the underlying meaning or story that’s represented by the metaphors of the first layer. The third layer is the way the background music relates to the lyrics. On the surface, “Dance in the Dark” is a song about a woman who’s afraid to dance at a night club because she fears her boyfriend is judging her with his eyes. The underlying meaning is a woman who prefers to have sex with the lights turned off, so her boyfriend can’t really see her naked body. An alternate meaning is the awkwardness that many people feel in their own skin, regardless of if they’re in public or not. The music is equal parts ‘80s New Wave, house music circa 1990 and techno. Both styles of music lend themselves to the cool, fashionable confidence that Gaga intends for the heroine of “Dance in the Dark” to attain.

Where does the existence of death, you may ask, and it involves the death of confidence, before the transformation. Like “Monster” Gaga (or some woman) transforms into something mysterious and not quite human. The transformation is her defense mechanism that kicks in to continue her existence. “Dance in the Dark” begins with a narrative, the first verse giving the story of a girl who now plays the role of Eurydice coming up from the underworld with hopes of entering the upper world, but is thrown back into the depths of death when her boyfriend looks at her. While the first verse is her first life, the second verse is her second life. She emerges as something beastly like a werewolf and something undead like a vampire, creatures of the night, of the dark. When Gaga narrates that the girl “still kills the dance,” she means she makes the sex deadly when she’s someone other than herself. The interlude at the center of “Dance in the Dark” is spoken. Here is where Gaga looks for strength in the gods and goddesses of fame who live in the underworld. Gaga calls on the blond bombshell actress Marilyn Monroe, the beautiful melancholy of actress-singer Judy Garland and troubled poet Sylvia Plath. She even calls on the spirit of child beauty pageant queen JonBenet Ramsey superimposing the words “Jon” and “blonde” (similar to the way Gaga played with the words “evil eyes” and “hero’s eyes” on “Monster”). Gaga says “work your blond/JonBenet Ramsey.” She even goes on to mention Liberace, Jesus, Stanley Kubrick and Princess Diana. What do all of these dead people have in common? They all died in the spotlight and remained in the spotlight even after their deaths. The dramatic natures of them live even longer in the public eye. One of the best lyrics on “Dance in the Dark” pulls the whole song together: “The moonlight’s her way, while she’s howlin’ at him.” The moonlight is the equivalent of a spotlight and having the moonlight her way is manipulating the spotlight, the cameras. It’s Lady Gaga’s modus of operandi.

The trusty songwriting of Gaga is the main reason the album’s second single “Telephone” is a richly textured piece of pop magic. Of course R&B/pop producer Rodney “Darkchild” Jerkins’ beat is a sweaty mishmash of ringtones and dial tones mixed with some of the most rambunctious bass programming you’ll ever hear. There are two separate personalities at work on “Telephone.” The song begins calmly with a harp melody that sounds almost classical, and when the beat comes in to bury the harp melody, it becomes more of a bass line than a main melody.

Gaga uses a pedestrian concept of a woman trying to get rid of a guy (maybe a boyfriend) who keeps calling her when she’s trying to get her drink on at a night club and turns it into a metaphor for her struggle with balancing work and play. Gaga is a woman who some would call a workaholic and she doesn’t get much time to relax and party. She’s the hardest woman working in showbiz today. She treats her career or rather art as if it was her boyfriend that she needs a one-night break from.

As the song progresses, Gaga goes from mildly annoyed to full-on aggravated. The choreography Gaga and her dancers execute on stage when performing “Telephone” pantomimes eating, choking or shooting to kill when the word “call” or “calling” plays. Once again, Gaga wants to kill someone. She doesn’t want to kill herself, but she wants to kill the urge to work when she’s supposed to be playing and losing herself in the life of the night.

Whenever the chorus plays, it’s clearly the angry part of Gaga’s brain speaking. Guest star Beyonce plays much more of an aggressive role on “Telephone” than Gaga does. Beyonce rapid-fire sings her way through the second verse and the bridge. Gaga is the good cop, while Beyonce is the bad cop. Gaga sings things like “it’s not that I don’t like you, I’m just at a party,” but still the chorus makes it clear she’s irritated. It’s appropriate that “Telephone” ends the same way it began with the same ethereal harp melody. It’s indicative that Gaga has disconnected her phone. Her head and heart on are lying on the dance floor, as the chorus declares. Orpheus she really is.

The heavenly synths that flash like beautiful, yet unstable rays of hope make “So Happy I Could Die” into a dream world. Gaga wants to kill the illusions that addictive substances like alcohol create. She feels more free and frankly, happy when she’s drunk. The verses sound like Gaga in a sober state, while the b-section vocals signal that the alcohol is taking effect, it’s creeping into her brain. When the chorus hits, she’s high as the sky, sounding untouchable like she’s the Cheshire cat from The Adventures of Alice in Wonderland evaporating in thin air with her head spinning all the around. The best part of the song is when Gaga and her producer RedOne harmonize together at the 2:43 mark singing the word “ooh.” The short vocal part sounds like satisfaction. “So Happy I Could Die” may sound so euphoric that Gaga could mistake her surroundings for heaven resting on beds of clouds, but there’s a sense that something is missing. It’s artificial happiness. When she’s under the influence of alcohol, Gaga unifies with the hologram of herself as the ideal woman, but it’s an illusion, just like virtual reality.

Cannibalism is the metaphor of choice on “Teeth.” Gaga offers her body (her “bad girl meat”) as food to satisfy someone else’s divine hunger. Against music that sounds like voodoo would be close by, Gaga says she wants the truth, she wants to see “your fangs.” “Teeth” is a close counterpart to “Bad Romance” because both songs are about loving the ugly and dark parts of a person and turning those parts into something beautiful and luminous. Open your mouth, show those teeth, those blood-covered teeth. The truth is blood, it is religion.

Lady Gaga did a lot of slaying on The Fame Monster. She figuratively slashed herself and others to pieces and in the end became cleaner and more pure. She became more liberated. Let’s hope Gaga continues to never “look back” and continues to change the world “one sequin at a time.” Bless her sequined soul.

Jealous rapper M.I.A. Exemplifies the Kanye Effect by Attacking Gaga

The recent comments from “Paper Planes” rapper M.I.A. chastising global pop superstar Lady Gaga for being “a mimic” and not as “weird as she thinks she is or tries to be” are nothing more than jealousy and attempts for publicity. Many critics say the “beefs” make music more interesting and that's the truth. If anything, M.I.A.'s criticisms will only make Gaga even more famous and more popular. Think of it as the Kanye West effect that he applied expertly in transforming Taylor Swift’s pop crossover into a stunning phenomenon.

I never understand why some celebrities or whatever you want to call them make comments that are obviously calculated to generate publicity for themselves, but instead backfire and generate publicity for the subject of their ridicule. Kanye generated public sympathy for country singer Taylor Swift when he meant to discredit her for winning an award he thought his friend Beyonce deserved more by interrupting Swift’s acceptance speech. Kanye’s stunt led to Swift hosting Saturday Night Live and becoming an undeniable phenomenon basically sweeping the 2009 Country Music Awards and 2010 Grammy Awards. It’s telling that Kanye’s stunt did nothing for his career. In fact, it quieted his career a bit because it just made him seem stupid.

M.I.A. didn’t interrupt a speech, but her comments in NME are definitely meant to discredit Lady Gaga, but she’s not saying anything that anyone hasn’t said before: Gaga is derivative and she doesn’t deny it. Sure, compared to her strange outfits meant to evoke the avant-garde and Pop Art, her music seems tame and is derivative of other artists’ music, but that’s part of who Gaga the artist is. She’s a pastiche of pop culture, from Madonna’s platinum blond hair and dark eyebrows to the '80s Italo-disco/house music influences that dominate her sound, as well as the few Queen-like ballads she throws into the mix. M.I.A. even goes on to say that Gaga “mimics” M.I.A’s quirky rap-style, I guess in reference to Gaga’s spacey rapping on her No. 1 hits “Just Dance” and “Poker Face.”

As one blogger noted, despite all of her fame and success Gaga remains a nice person who seems insanely devoted to her fans. She probably has one of the most loyal fan bases I’ve seen in a long time. She doesn’t trash-talk other artists the way M.I.A. has done. M.I.A.’s comments reek of jealousy. As the famous quote goes “Jealous people poison their banquet and then eat it.”

Gaga Turns Her Personal Fears into a B-movie Horror Show

Lady Gaga decided the best way to interpret her fears of life that concern love, sex, addiction, beauty and the importance of the truth is by reimagining her fears as archetypical monsters on her second album The Fame Monster (Interscope). The result is a collection of catchy hook-filled pop songs that are concurrently macabre and funny, and play like a 1950s B-movie replete with theatrics and gimmicks.

In horror master Stephen King’s nonfiction book, Danse Macabre he splits the archetypical monsters of the horror genre into three categories, which originate from three novels: the vampire (from Dracula), the werewolf (from Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde) and The Thing without a Name (from Frankenstein). Two additional archetypes include the Ghost (from The Turn of the Screw) and the zombie. King also classifies the horror genre into three levels: terror, horror and revulsion. He says “terror” is the strongest element of the three. The terror gives rise to the suspense a person feels before a monster is revealed. “Horror” the moment at which a person sees the monster and “revulsion” is an over-the-top, gross-out visual of a monster.

The Thing or the unknowable Other is the archetype of choice on The Fame Monster’s opening song, “Bad Romance.” Gaga herself said that “Bad Romance” is about being in love with your best friend. She portrays her “best friend” as an ultra-masculine leather daddy who cruises S&M Leather bars. Lyrics like “I want your leather-studded kiss in the sand…’cuz you’re a criminal as long as your mine” suggest the S&M image. This best friend sounds like he could easily be one of the extras from the 1980 Al Pacino thriller Cruising. The men who went to Leather bars in the late 1970s into the 1980s were homosexual and the homosexual is a prime example of The Other, the mysterious outsider of society. Gaga defines herself as an outsider who’s different in her approach on most things, and was an outsider in high school. The sound scape of “Bad Romance” fits the aesthetic of the song that is driven by the main theme of the Other, that is a darkly hopeful tribute to 1980s dark wave music with sprinkles of 1990s house/trance music. The leather-studded Other of the song is a person that is seemingly sinister, but Gaga says that this Other is a best friend that she can have sick, dark fun with. In the process of paying homage to the horror/suspense films of director Alfred Hitchcock Gaga exhibits a clever play on words twisting Hitchcock’s classic films into sex jokes (“I want your Psycho, your Vertigo shtick/while you in my Rear Window, baby you’re sick”). When she sings these plays on words it’s almost as if she’s sharing inside jokes with her best friend. The main message to take out of “Bad Romance” is that regardless of quirks, sexual orientation, gender, race or religion, love is something that is beyond the physical body and the physical world.
The fear that lies within “Bad Romance” is Gaga’s fear that someone else won’t accept her as freely as she accepts them.

While “Bad Romance” was about Gaga’s yearning for a love separate from sex and all things carnal the song “Monster” is all about sex. The archetype at the center of “Monster” is the Werewolf, which pertains to the Beast within all human beings that is just waiting to be unleashed. Gaga gives the song a narrative format, in which she casts herself as a club girl partying with friends, and her night is interrupted when a sexy guy catches her eye. Like most movies that feature werewolves, like 1981’s The Howling, Gaga notes in the lyrics that she vaguely remembers the sexual encounter she’s had with the sexy guy while he was in werewolf form, in monster form (“We might’ve fucked, not really sure, don’t quite recall/but something tells me that I’ve seen him, yeah”). By having a vague memory of her sexual encounter with the guy she makes clear that she sees something familiar in the man, despite having her most memorable experience with him as a hairy, massive werewolf. She looks into the “evil eyes” of the man and sees the familiar, alluding to the classic phrase “the eyes are the windows to the soul”; she can see the beast within in the man. The fear at hand on “Monster” is Gaga’s fear that her intense, sexual attraction to a bad boy with a “monster” in his pants will become nothing more than just sex. Gaga wrote “Bad Romance” as a love letter to her best friend who she loves, but with whom she doesn’t necessarily have a sexual relationship. On “Bad Romance” she actually sings that she doesn’t “wanna be friends,” that she wants to take the strong friendship to another level. On “Monster,” Gaga wants love and friendship, so she can get the chance to get to know the bad boy; so that he’s more than a sex object. Following the narrative of the song, Gaga’s fear becomes reality when the bad boy not only beds her, but sinks his teeth into her flesh, mixing their blood together. At this point in the song the bad boy transforms from bad boy into vampire who is cannibalistic (“He tore my clothes right off/he ate my heart and then he ate my brain”). It’s in the hypnotic chorus that Gaga is a zombie stomping around repeating monotonously “he ate my heart.” Gaga’s producer RedOne plays the bad boy “monster” by providing the male part during the chorus “I love that girl…wanna talk to her, she’s hot as hell.” His voice has a deep, menacing and mysterious tone to it. Before the zombie-like parts of the chorus, Gaga sings with her signature gusto “that boy is a monster” repeatedly atop RedOne’s midtempo production that sounds as if it was inspired by the warm, lush euphoria of early ‘80s Italo-Disco music. Her inner thoughts, presumably coming from her emotionally-driven heart, respond to the carnal statement “that boy is a monster” with the question “could I love him?” It’s this simple question that sums up the meaning of “Monster”: Is it just really good, kinky sex or could Gaga actually love this man?

In tone and in lyrical content “Dance in the Dark” is the most melancholic song on The Fame Monster, even more so than the album’s song dedicated to death, “Speechless.” Set to a 1980s Goth-dark wave musical score by pop producer Fernando Garibay, “Dance in the Dark” is the story of a girl who likes to have sex with her boyfriend with the lights off. Gaga alludes to the environment of a loud, nightclub where the lights are scarce and darkness dominates by singing lyrics like “some girls won’t dance to the beat of a track” and how the heroine of the song “kills the dance,” but it serves mostly as a metaphor of performing and moving one’s body like a “dance.” However, Gaga pointed out in a December 2009 interview that “Dark” is not just about being insecure when it comes to sex, but being insecure when it comes to everything. Gaga says that lyrics like “run, run, her kiss is a vampire grin/the moonlight’s away while she’s howlin’ at him” are meant to show how the heroine of the song is helpless without the moonlight (meaning the dark, since the moon is only at its brightest when it’s dark outside). The moonlight liberates her, but daylight and even bright artificial light paralyzes her and figuratively destroys her. Gaga says that “Dance in the Dark” speaks to “how women and some men feel innately insecure about themselves all the time. It’s not sometimes, it’s not in adolescence, it’s always.” It’s that inner voice that tells a person that they’re not worthy of attention and they end up feeling embarrassed and feel like disappearing into themselves. It concerns a fear of being seen, and ultimately judged. During a spoken-word rap-like break similar to Madonna’s spoken-word verse on 1990’s “Vogue,” Gaga pays tribute to dead icons that maybe inspired her self-image and reminded her that everyone has dark moments, even the rich, beautiful and famous. Tortured celebrities Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland are a few that are mentioned, and it’s no coincidence that Gaga mentions Marilyn and Judy who were gay icons like herself. The song says that there’s safety in the dark, and people can be anything they want in the dark, which makes me think of how alcohol can be used as a way to “dance in the dark.” Alcohol gives insecure people confidence and essentially hides their true, sober selves. The drunkenness acts as a mask. The first time I heard “Dance in the Dark,” I thought the same thing as Gaga’s explanation about perpetual insecurity before she even explained it, but I’m an insecure person and that’s how I naturally read into the song. Gaga’s explanation is really where the main purpose of “Dance in the Dark” lies: Gaga is insecure just like so many of her fans and the song is further reminder that Gaga understands her fans.

With the exception of the vampire/S&M allegory “Teeth,” the remaining songs on The Fame Monster aren’t overtly monster-like. Three out of four of them are romantic and lithe ballads. The smoldering “Alejandro” would be a slow ballad, but it’s bolstered by RedOne’s fusion of Ace of Base-like 90’s Euro-pop and the main violin melody from Italian composer Vittorio Monti’s 1904 concert piece “Csardas.” Of course the mention of “Fernando” during the lamenting chorus is clearly a nod to ABBA’s 1976 hit “Fernando.” “Alejandro” has more in common with “Fernando” than the name Fernando. Both songs share a theme about finding true love, and holding on to the hope of finding love despite failed experiences of the past. Gaga sings the names of three men, Alejandro, Fernando and Roberto: the men are examples of numerous relationships that only disappoint her. She puts the focus on Alejandro by repeating his name the most because he’s presumably her current relationship and the relationship that she desperately wants to work. She’s putting her faith in Alejandro. This interpretation of “Alejandro” as Gaga’s prospective savior exists because the lyrics during the second verse, “And all those flames that burned before him/now he’s gonna firefight, gotta cool the bad.” Alejandro is the firefighter who will save Gaga from the burning fire of failed love of the past. The monster that glides around ballet-like around “Alejandro” is the ghost of Gaga’s past relationships, as is the voice in Gaga’s head telling her that her current relationship with Alejandro will fail. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Often the worse monsters wreak havoc in a person’s psyche.

“So Happy I Could Die” follows the same slow, dreaminess of “Alejandro,” but it’s less romantic and more like an alcohol-induced mirage. “So Happy” speaks to the artificialness of drunken nights when everyone who’s been drinking seems to be “best friends” and it seems like nothing bad could happen, but sadly it’s all an illusion. I’ve experienced this and it’s a state of mind that I wish could be reality, but it just isn’t and I end up feeling intense disappointment the morning after, because it’s as much a dream, that exists in my head as a dream that I have when I go to sleep at night. The monster of “So Happy” is alcohol, and the fantasy it promises. On the dramatic torch song “Speechless” in the vein of ‘70s classic rock (think Elton John and Queen) Gaga serenades her father, as a plea for him to save his life. Gaga’s father needed an important heart surgery in order to live, and her father at one point refused to undergo surgery leaving Gaga in a world of grief, which led to her even reflecting on her own life. She’s left to face the monster that is death. She uses the word speechless as a synonym for death and lifeless because when a person is dead they can’t say anything. The theme at the heart of “Speechless” is the rugged brokenness of the human spirit and body. Gaga spends most of the song in second person describing her once-sick father through different stages of his life: as a teen who grew up in the aftermath of the rebel without a cause James Dean in the ‘60s and ’70s (“With your James Dean glossy eyes/in your tight jeans with your long hair/and your cigarette-stained lies”) and his life as a middle-aged man who consumes alcohol to deal with the disappointments of life (“I can’t believe how you slurred at me with your Johnnie Walker eyes/He’s gonna get you/and after he’s through…”)

Gaga plays with words again by simultaneously incorporating her father’s heart surgery and her friends’ disappointments in life. When she sings “Raise a glass to mend/all the broken hearts of all my wrecked up friends” she’s saying that her friends have broken hearts figuratively, and her father has a broken heart literally and figuratively. Gaga ends the song by saying “Some men may follow me/but you choose death and company” and this lyric is “Speechless” in a nutshell: it takes a lot to choose life over death when living in a world of despair, but Gaga wants to live and wants her father to live and she got her wish.

The remaining songs on The Fame Monster are two songs, one technologically advanced and the other organic and a bit supernatural. The song “Telephone” is something to prepare for because it’s so fast that it just might hop away frantically like a jack rabbit. “Telephone” is by no means romantic or lithe like “Alejandro” and “So Happy I Could Die,” but instead it’s sweaty, and erratic, and the fastest song on Monster. Imagine you’re at a club and you just bought your first drink of the night and your cell phone rings constantly. It’s either the same person or different people. It might be a friend who wants to hang out or your mother or grandmother calling to check in, when all you want to do is get tipsy and dance with someone sexy. It’s Rodney Jerkins’ kinetic dance track that signifies the hyper urgency of Gaga’s need for disconnection. In true Gaga fashion she makes her need for mental disconnection physical. She sings that “I left my head and my heart on the dance floor,” suggesting the macabre work of writer Edgar Allen Poe more than any pop diva I can think of. The subject matter and staccato pace lend themselves well to the vocal style of Gaga’s diva-in-crime Beyonce. The Houston native Beyonce is one of the pop singers who is responsible for popularizing staccato singing (read: rapid-fire singing) in R&B and pop music. The annoying threat of technology seems like a redux of Beyonce’s 1999 hit “Bug-A-Boo” with her old group Destiny’s Child. The monster that caused Gaga to dance around like a headless horseman is technology, but the monster is also the voice inside Gaga’s brain telling her that she doesn’t deserve to have fun, leaving her feeling guilty. In the end, when her cell phone rings Gaga is pressing the “f--- you” button on it that stops the ringing and sends the incoming call into voicemail. “Can call all you want, but there’s no one home, and you’re not gonna reach my telephone.”

The Fame Monster opened on an S&M note (“Bad Romance”) and closes on an S&M note (“Teeth”). “Teeth” is a Southern Gothic song replete with southern gospel vocal riffs and the type of brass section that plays at a traditional New Orleans funeral ceremony. The song plays like one of Anne Rice’s epic vampire novels set in New Orleans; like Rice’s novels, “Teeth” is carnal and humid. As on “Monster,” on “Teeth” Gaga uses cannibalism as a metaphor for the often bloody, ugly truth (“Take a bite of my bad girl meat”). Just think of “Teeth” as the club girl from “Monster” transformed and out of zombie form, and instead more like a receptive human being, but changed like Sigourney Weaver’s character in 1984’s Ghostbusters after she’s overtaken by the monster. Even though Gaga wants to love with her “hands tied,” she’s the aggressor who’s just playing the submissive sexual partner; it’s passive-aggression, but she’s really the dominatrix.

Gaga’s perpetual mission statement is about obtaining the truth, and inspiring people to be their true selves no matter how much society thinks they’re sick freaks. This all furthers Gaga’s fascination with transformation from one state to the next, which explains why she demands from her lover “Tell me something that’ll change me.” Untruth is the monster displayed on “Teeth.” Whether it’s telling lies to others or to yourself, you’re a monster because you’re not free and you might as well be a creature tied on a leash in a cage.

The Fame Monster runs the gamut of the monster archetypes Stephen King lays out in his book Danse Macabre, and Gaga’s use of them is inventive to say the least. It’s further evidence that she doesn’t care much what other people think, and she’s not afraid to look grotesque. Despite all the monsters present on Monster, the album is never terrifying, but instead it’s theatrical, which is a core part of who Lady Gaga is. In high school, she was a drama queen (literally) who acted, danced and sang with all the flamboyance of a female Freddie Mercury. Gaga succeeds in freeing herself a bit more and inspiring her fans, or at least she inspired me, but I, like many would give a lot to be as free as Gaga seems to be.

LADY GAGA RIPS HERSELF OPEN TO SHOW HER INVISIBLE MONSTERS

I recently read Chuck Palahniuk’s 1999 novel Invisible Monsters for a third time and it reminded me uncannily of the plight of pop star Lady Gaga. Invisible Monsters tells the tale of fashion model Shannon McFarland who gets her jaw shot off by a rifle. After her disfigurement and a series of painful letdowns, Shannon has to find a way to feel beautiful and happy. Author Palahniuk uses colorful language to personify objects and objectify people, all in a beautifully grotesque way. Palahniuk makes a person’s large hands seem monstrous or a person’s “Plumbago lips” intimidating. A human being can be grotesque in mental and physical ways. Lady Gaga’s second album The Fame Monster is a struggle between herself and the physical world, that physical world where ugliness and old age make people feel like monsters. Having an out-of-shape body is called ugly. A long nose is called ugly. Wrinkles and gray hair are called ugly. This is why no one wants to be ugly, old or both. All of the songs on Monster express Gaga’s internal feelings about self-esteem, physical beauty, sex and love. Her internal feelings are grotesque like monsters because they’re scary and fatal if they overtake Gaga. As the fairy godmother of sorts pre-op transsexual Brandy Alexander advises in Invisible Monsters, “Do the things that scare you the most.” By way of avant-garde dance-pop, Gaga documents her mission to face her fears on The Fame Monster.

Half of Monster is a highly carnal affair. It’s an album that’s very in touch with the body. Generally, beauty is an expensive and plastic ambition, especially in America. Plastic surgeons mutilate people in the name of beauty, slicing and dicing their bones and skin and molding it into something disgusting and artificial. In Invisible Monsters, fashion model Shannon states how knowledge of plastic surgery altered her perspective. “It’s scary, but now when I see somebody blush, my reaction isn’t: oh, how cute. A blush only reminds me how blood is just under the surface of everything.” Going under the knife for cosmetic reasons is risky because death is possible. Even if a person survives their plastic surgery, for several days or months they have to stay wrapped up in bandages like mummies and who knows what person will emerge from the bandages. The first words Gaga speaks on “Dance in the Dark” are “Silicone, saline, poison, inject me,” which are plastic surgery in a nutshell. “Dark” is a gloomy zombie waltz that plays as a sort of electronic version of Beethoven’s “Moonlight Sonata.” “Dark” is sad and tragic, but somehow hopeful. The more you hear that chorus “baby there’s a dance in the dark/’cuz when he’s looking she falls apart/baby there’s a dance, there’s a dance in the dark,” the more it sounds like a mantra. “Dark” solicits visions of mummies and Frankensteins lurching around. The legendary monster Frankenstein is particularly apropos for the song because plastic surgery patients are like Frankenstein because they’re made of assorted parts. “Dark” also reminds one of hard, plastic mannequins with frozen expressions and poses. You can just feel the chilly, wintry air emitted from the industrial sound of the instrumentation. Gaga resurrects a few famous dead stars. She controls these celebs with a force that is Gaga’s fight to escape the dark tunnel to get to the light. Gaga wants the glitz and glamour of supreme confidence instead of the gloom and doom of insecurity. The famous zombies that Gaga brings back to life include movie stars Marilyn Monroe and Judy Garland, poet Sylvia Plath, musician Liberace, Princess Diana and 6-year-old child beauty pageant queen JonBenet Ramsey. All of the celebrities Gaga mentions on the spoken-word interlude are known for their camp value. Marilyn and Judy and JonBenet were examples of hyper-femininity characterized by pounds of makeup and big hair; this made Marilyn and Judy popular inspirations for drag queens around the world, which drag queens exaggerated. Sylvia Plath’s relevance is just overwhelming despair. The mention of JonBenet is unexpected, but it oddly fits with the macabre weirdness of “Dance in the Dark.” JonBenet’s life on earth was grotesque because she dressed like an adult Barbie doll full of hair extensions, wigs and makeup, which made JonBenet look grotesque. She was pretty, but never cute because she looked artificial. She was a living doll who was defined by garishness and ultimately horror. Princess Diana was pure classy glamour in the vein of Jackie O. In many ways, Lady Gaga is a pastiche of all the stars she namedrops. She dresses in the sparkly, garish costumes of Liberace, the blond haired glamour of Marilyn, JonBenet and Diana and the melancholy voice and brown eyes of Judy Garland. All of the celebs are icons (JonBenet was an icon of the media’s devastating power), and Gaga has become an icon in her own right. Let’s just hope that she never reaches a tragic end like the stars she mentions.

“The person you love and the person who loves you are never, ever the same person,” says fashion model Shannon McFarland in Invisible Monsters. The person who loves someone who doesn’t love them back is practicing unconditional love. Unconditional love is never asking the person you love to love you back, through the good and bad. Lady Gaga proclaims that she’ll be loyal through the bad. She desires a “bad romance.” Gaga says she will accept the things about a person that society deems freakish or inappropriate. She’ll accept the grotesque things that her proposed companion hates about himself. Gaga uses the leadoff single, “Bad Romance” as her vow to provide a sanctuary for whomever it may concern. Gaga sets her vows to a soundtrack constructed by Swedish producer/songwriter RedOne (the man behind Gaga’s past hit singles like the ride-off-into-the-sunset-on-horseback triumph of “Poker Face”). RedOne frames Gaga’s fervent vocals and catchy hooks with sinister synths for this techno pop opus. Whether having a “disease” (homosexuality, bisexuality or anything not accepted by society that society thinks will infect society) or the “ugly” of person because beauty is all in the eye of the beholder, she accepts them. On The Fame Monster, Gaga constantly seeks freedom from society’s trap full of restricting social norms and conformities. Hence, Gaga’s mantra “I’m a free bitch” that pops up on a few songs on Monster. By freeing herself from society’s trappings, Gaga is also free from the hate that restriction and oppression breed. The “lover’s revenge” that Gaga sings of on the chorus of “Bad Romance” is the emotional baggage that getting hurt creates. Most people say they don’t want to be in a relationship with someone, who has emotional baggage or stuck in the past, but Gaga wants it all. Since being truly free is all about being truthful, Gaga wants for her companion to rip themselves open and spill their blood and guts out to her. She wants no illusions. It’s the villains who want to destroy in order to rebuild a society. As Brandy Alexander says, “Our real discoveries come from chaos.” Lady Gaga wants a “criminal” who’s willing to destroy and rebuild in order make a better, more free world.

A pulsing, throbbing phallus that’s ready to attack. It’s a monstrosity. RedOne’s 1980s Italo-Disco beat buttresses some of Lady Gaga’s most striking hooks after “Bad Romance" on the song "Monster." The electronic sounds breathe and groan like digital creatures, with a strange urgency. The groans of the synths as the man and his “monster” equipment start to thrust. Aggressive in its danceability, “Monster” moves like an animal that’s dangerous, yet irresistible. As the beautiful Brandy Alexander says, “Do the things that scare you the most” and Gaga does this, by experiencing sex. It might be masochistic to seek a phallus that is too gigantic and could potentially hurt her physically, but Gaga is a free woman who wants her heart and brain eaten. Carnality is another way to free yourself by finding the truth, embracing the beast inside. Sexual penetration is like knowing someone’s darkest secrets. Vampires penetrate the human flesh to taste the substance that runs through the gamut of the human body, which is none other than blood, burgundy blood. Gaga wants to get to a point where she can write the truth in blood on the wall telling her story and everyone else can follow suit. She says “the truth is sexy” and is her “religion” on the song “Teeth.” The truth is the blood that keeps her heart beating. “Teeth” is at once tribal with its primal background voices and rousing energy, especially the rousing chant “help, need a man, now show me your fangs.” Since the truth is sexy, the truth is sex. It’s carnal as much as it is religious. There’s always a very thin line between carnality and religion.

The song “Speechless” involves the absence of talking, the absence of speech. “Speechless” is a tribute to a parent. Parents are like God to their children because the parents created them, as Shannon McFarland points out in Invisible Monsters. If one had their jaw missing as Shannon does then speaking verbally would be difficult. She doesn’t have lips to shape the words she wants to say. Lady Gaga wrote “Speechless” as a way to convince her father to undergo open-heart surgery because of his bad heart, who at one point refused to get the surgery. Faced with the threat of death, Gaga had no words to speak, so she used music to say the words she couldn’t speak. “Speechless” is the rare piano ballad (aside from Gaga’s frequent acoustic performances) that has Gaga in full Elton John mode circa 197 with a big, wistful chorus. Gaga’s vocal phrasing is pure Freddie Mercury of Queen. She pays tribute to her father by also paying homage to rock stars of the Arena Rock genre.

What will be Lady Gaga’s next act? That is the question. As much as she reveals some of her personal struggles and revealing the truth, she is still a mystery. With her elaborate costumes and headdresses, Gaga is a “sphinx, a mystery…indefinable” as Brandy Alexander described disfigured fashion model Shannon McFarland. Gaga has become the glamorous person she’s always wanted to be. She transformed from a brunette in frumpy clothes to a blond entity of pop music. She’s come back from the dark depths of addiction, listening to dreary New Wave of The Cure alone in her apartment while using heroine. Gaga survived all of that to become the person she’s always wanted to be, the creature she was always meant to be, as the Pet Shop Boys proclaimed on their exquisite 1990 single, “Being Boring.” The main message of both The Fame Monster and the novel Invisible Monsters is to “rip yourself open,” but make sure to “sew yourself shut.”

ON ‘THE FAME MONSTER’ LADY GAGA SEARCHES FOR A SAVIOR

: Lady Gaga is the Red Queen of the Monsters

Vampires, werewolves and even Cookie Monsters all claw their way through Lady Gaga’s second album The Fame Monster. Gaga uses a monster motif as a platform to express her deepest fears, whether they’re fears of sex, love and life in general. Many people think fame, fortune and beauty solve all problems, all insecurities, but often those things only ease problems. Growing up insecure and still harboring insecurities, Gaga intends to show her fans that insecure people can achieve their dreams just as she did by conquering her fears, her monsters. She says that her fans (who Gaga lovingly refers to as “little monsters”) can be the people they’ve always wanted to be.

In today’s world of celebrity, reality shows are the main media that turn unknowns into instant celebrities. After these instant celebrities (more like pseudo celebrities) realize that their time in the spotlight is almost up, they become obsessed with extending their time in the spotlight. Like any addiction, an addiction to fame is a disease. Gaga used her first album The Fame to show how she, like many, viewed fame as the road to riches and diamond rings. The Fame Monster is a reminder that fame and fortune don't cure low self-esteem or pain, but instead they make a person more at odds with his problems. Instead of getting diseased by the falsehoods of fame, Gaga seeks purification and the truth.

On the humid “Teeth” Gaga seeks the truth in the supernatural land of New Orleans. “Teeth” conjures images of ghostly Plantation homes, alligators, gospel choirs and Anne Rice’s vampires. Like many of The Fame Monster’s songs, “Teeth” is a rallying song that acts as a call to arms to all the people in the world who seek the truth. Gaga looks to the vampire as an antidote for lies, and she seeks a savior. As she states in the song, she seeks someone who can be her religion. Once those fangs penetrate the skin of her neck, she will be bitten by the truth because as Gaga said, “the truth is sexy.” On all of The Fame Monster’s songs, Gaga is either searching for a hero to save her or turning to a vice to deal with the disappointment of not finding her hero. She’ll take anything she can find to cope with the often cruel world. Even on the Mexican lament “Alejandro” (the rare song on Monster that doesn’t sport a triumphant hook), Gaga is scared of love and sex, but she still looks at her boyfriends as father figures, and apparently these various boyfriends are disappointments. Her disappointments are all set to a coasting track designed by Gaga’s Swedish producer RedOne, paying homage to 90s group Ace of Base.

Instead of hoping that some Prince Charming saves her, Gaga hopes that monsters will save her. On “Monster” she dumps the bloodsuckers in favor of hairy beasts. Gaga becomes entranced by a “wolf” or a werewolf. On the last line of the first verse she sings that she “can’t stop staring in those evil eyes,” cleverly pronouncing the word “evil” like “hero” (Who even knew that was possible), so the sentence sounds like “hero’s eyes.” Once again, Gaga is searching for a hero to save her. During an interview, Gaga revealed that the monster of the song’s title refers to a guy’s manhood, the pinnacle of the male anatomy. That’s not such a clever metaphor, but her references to werewolves and even allusions to Little Red Riding Hood (“Girl you look good enough to eat”) make “Monster” colorful and theatrical. Sonically, “Monster” is a tapestry of earworm hooks just bubbling with melody set to a backing track that sounds as if it time-traveled from the mid to late 1980s, specifically from Janet Jackson’s 1986 blockbuster Control.

The murky first single “Bad Romance” is like Gaga’s Want Ad for a hero, a hero that’s “leather-studded” who’s a diseased “psycho.” It sounds like she wants the S&M killer from the 1980 movie Cruising or any of the kinky killers from Brian De Palma’s Alfred Hitchcock tributes. Speaking of Hitchcock, Gaga manages to reference three Hitchcock movies, Psycho, Vertigo and Rear Window, and just like those films Gaga casts herself as a Hitchcock blonde wanting and needing to be saved. Ideally, Gaga wants to find someone like herself who she can share “lovers’ revenge” with. “Bad Romance” is armed with a statuesque chorus and aggressively catchy hooks. Gaga is like a world-class chef when it comes to cooking up some of the greatest hooks in pop history. The standout hook on “Bad Romance” is the chant, “Ra-Ra-Ah-Ah-Ah/Ro-Ma-Ro-Ma-Ma/Gaga, ooh-la-la-la/Want your bad romance.” The words are nonsensical and work more as sounds, but it’s Gaga’s delivery that makes it memorable: she sounds like Cookie Monster from Sesame Street, as if the nonsensical words she sings are garbled because she has a mouth full of cookies. Maybe Gaga is deliberately referencing Cookie Monster, and if so it would be a clever tie-in with The Fame Monster’s monster motif.

When Gaga isn’t on the hunt for a hero, she’s spending her time in clubs introspecting. She reflects on topics ranging from not allowing herself to have fun (“Telephone”) to turning to vices like alcohol to cope with problems (“So Happy I Could Die”). With all the talk of monsters, death would be an inevitable topic. The piano ballad “Speechless” is probably the most personal song Gaga has ever recorded so far. It’s not dressed in clever metaphors, so it’s quite direct. Gaga said in an interview that “Speechless” is about fearing death and how death leaves her at a loss for words, as it did when her father was suffering from a heart problem that would kill him if untreated. The song emphasizes Gaga’s powerhouse mezzo-soprano voice. The lyrics “I’ll never talk again” and “I’ll never love again,” point to that paralyzing feeling, which death inspires of a person ceasing to exist. The person’s earthly presence is gone. Lady Gaga continues to introspect on “Dance in the Dark.” As the title states, Gaga is saying that she’s afraid of the light because light equals nakedness. She fears sex on “Dark,” which is the result of insecurity about her body. Ridicule causes shyness and shyness is paralyzing. Gaga says that she feels comfort in the dark shadows where no one can see her and she can just be free without being self-conscious. Gaga’s fear of light parallels with nocturnal monsters like vampires and werewolves. Using this parallel, Gaga casts herself as a bloodsucker that has a smile that is “a vampire grin” and a werewolf who’s “howling” at her boyfriend. “Dark” promotes feminism. Like the majority of The Fame Monster, “Dark” functions as a call to arms to females in the world suffering from the media’s obsession with beauty. Gaga is also speaking to males because males have to deal with weight issues and overall looks. When thinking of “Dance in the Dark” imagine the gloomy 80s New Wave band The Cure singing a song about feminism.


The monsters that live inside Lady Gaga’s head and around her actually help her. Mistakes can be monsters, as the phrase goes, are something to be learned from. If people don’t make mistakes they often don’t become stronger people. Mistakes or monsters give people character. Whether Gaga wants a guy with a “monster” in his pants or a “monster” she can pour into a glass, they all make Gaga the inventive musician that she is. Gaga had always hinted at a darker, more gothic side to her personality on The Fame, but on The Fame Monster she approaches her dark side head on.

KE$HA’S ‘ANIMAL’ IS A EUPHORIC RELIEF IN THIS WARZONE OF A WORLD

Warm skin that’s moist from the body heat. Ears are ringing from the music and everyone’s voices are inaudible. Eyes are blurry and your footing is off-balance. Confidence and euphoria overcome you and you feel like you’ll never get old and the night will never end. This is what it feels like when listening to Ke$ha’s debut album, Animal (RCA/Jive) A collection of rainbow-colored electro-pop full of punk-inspired hooks, Animal has the same effect as a bottle of Mike’s Hard Ice: Animal’s sugary intoxication is fast-acting. The album exists for the simple purpose of making people dance until their clothes come off and 22-year-old Ke$ha knows this. She’s young and she doesn’t take herself too seriously. Even on the more introspective songs she still makes clear life is her party, and in a cruel world full of layoffs and terrorism who wouldn’t want to be invited to her party?

Every song on Animal is up-tempo or mid-tempo making them always danceable. The album is a hybrid of electronic music and joyous pop-punk because of the futuristic synthesizers (that always lend themselves to thoughts of the future), and Ke$ha’s often Auto-Tuned vocals that have become requisite for pop-punk music and its emo leanings. Emo music is characterized by an emotional vocal style that includes a lot of belting. As much rapping as she does on her tracks like “Tik Tok” she also performs vocal runs that are definitive of pop music. Just think of Kelly Clarkson’s vocal gymnastics on “My Life Would Suck Without You” filtered through a voice similar to pop-punker Avril Lavigne’s and you have Ke$ha’s vocal performance.

Ke$ha sums up Animal’s theme in a matter of lines on “Tik Tok”: “I’m talkin’ ‘bout everybody gettin’ crunk, crunk/boys tryna to touch my junk, junk/and I’ll slap him if he getting’ too drunk, drunk.” Ke$ha splits up Animal into three subjects that are partying, obsessive love and invasions of privacy, but all the subjects revolve around partying. Ke$ha’s approach to music seems to always involve intoxication whether it’s becoming intoxicated by alcohol or obsessive feelings about love. This approach is executed perfectly on Animal’s opening song, “Your Love Is My Drug,” on which Ke$ha says she might “need some rehab” and her “heart is fried.” Maybe Ke$ha’s preoccupation with intoxication accounts for her tipsy persona, which she exhibits in interviews as well as her music. Since Animal is meant to be escapism for people to listen to when they want to feel carefree, the songs like “Drug” and “Hungover” seem like glimpses of the less carefree aspects of life that Ke$ha keeps to a minimum. She makes it clear that she’s aware that life isn’t always a party, but people should still try to party as much as possible. Ke$ha’s goal is not to remind people of their myriad problems, but to inspire them to be happy. On songs like “Tik Tok” and “Take it Off,” Ke$ha presents an image of herself as the ultimate party girl. The image Ke$ha presents of herself within these type of songs is of a party girl, but not like a Britney Spears who is the sorority girl type of party girl who gets dolled up in miniskirts and heels to party. Instead Ke$ha prefers to dress down to party in 80s memorabilia T-shirts, Doc Marten boots with her blond hair a mess. She’s the party animal who can out drink the guys and adopt their pimp logic and use it as a sort of female empowerment, but of course not in a too-serious way.

Throughout Animal Ke$ha channels her fellow female pop stars, who have all had #1 hits created by Ke$ha’s mentor super pop-producer Dr. Luke. Some of these pop stars include Kelly Clarkson (“My Life Would Suck Without You”), Katy Perry (“I Kissed A Girl”), Avril Lavigne (“Girlfriend”) and even Miley Cyrus (“Party in the U.S.A.”). Dr. Luke has made his career from always having big, urgent hooks that are maddeningly catchy, so it only makes sense that some of past hits would work their ways into Animal. Ke$ha is a songwriter in her own right writing a song on Miley Cyrus’ latest album. She even takes some “ooh-whoa-ooh-whoas” from Miley’s “Party in the U.S.A.” on Ke$ha’s somewhat melancholy “Blind.” Despite the influences, the perpetual facetiousness in Ke$ha’s voice keeps the Valley-born singer’s songs sounding distinct. The Max Martin-produced “Kiss N Tell” is very similar to Kelly Clarkson’s “My Life Would Suck Without You.” “Dinosaur” has that playground chant appeal that brings to mind Avril Lavigne’s Dr. Luke-produced “Girlfriend.” With its vocal gymnastics and urgency “Hungover” has a similarity to Avril’s “I’m With You.”

Animal’s coda is its title track, which Ke$ha uses to address her need to constantly party as a way to deal with life’s un-pleasantries. Lyrics like “I’m not asleep, I’m up for the fight/into the magic/and I don’t want the concrete, I am alive/comes with the tragic” make crystal clear that Ke$ha’s partying is essentially her fight for life. Maybe if she stopped dancing she would just become another victim of this warzone of a world. The title track has a driving pulse much like a heartbeat, and is urgent. It’s the song that steps aside from the other songs on Animal and reflects on what all the songs mean as a whole. As Ke$ha sings on the chorus, “the world is spinning at the speed of light” and time is not on anyone’s side, not even the young and people might as well enjoy life’s often fleeting moments of fun. Ke$ha’s Animal is not fleeting, but it is one of life’s rare moments of fun. Bring Ke$ha’s magical brand of party pop into your life and drink it up.

BRITNEY CHANNELS HER TEEN POP PAST ON ‘3’

A platinum-blond Britney in her "3" music video

Britney Spears’ “3” is a feverish piece of electro-pop that is reminiscent of Britney’s virginal pop glory days despite its sexual innuendos. It’s the perfect pop song that sounds more in line with the Britney of ten years ago.

Swedish producer Max Martin provides “3” with a midtempo beat full of skittering synths that’s indistinguishable from any of the electro-pop songs on the radio ranging from Ke$ha to Adam Lambert, but the songwriting is “3”’s saving grace. Swedish songwriter/instrumentalist Shellback (man responsible for those catchy hooks on Britney’s “If U Seek Amy” and Pink’s “So What”) makes lyrical and melodic magic for Britney. Despite not having a muscular chorus that is usually synonymous with Max Martin and Shellback, “3” makes up for it by having a muscular melody.

Since its radio release in September “3” has been marketed as a controversial song about having threesomes and living sinfully, but ultimately “3” is a playful piece of glossy pop that possesses an effervescence closer to Britney’s teen pop past. She may sing rebellious lyrics like, “are you in, living in sin is the new thing,” but her vocal delivery of those lyrics is so peppy and cheerleader-like that the risqué lyrics have no weight. Sure, Britney used to be a Mouseketeer and she’s always sounded a bit Disney, but her last two albums, Circus and Blackout were surprisingly dark and mysterious. The albums sounded like a woman who’s had her share of partying hard and smoking cigarettes, but on “3” Britney sounds chirpy again. On the b-section (which really is a chorus/hook masquerading as a b-section) Britney moves in out of her head, middle and chest voices while singing “are you in, living in sin is the new thing” with a hopefulness on the words “new thing.” Britney even uses 1960s folk groups as sexual euphemisms citing “Peter, Paul & Mary” as a creative way of saying “a threesome.”

Despite its slightly pedestrian beat “3” has a starry-eyed bridge that serves as a period for people to slow their pace of rapid-fire dancing and catch their breath. The twinkling synths and fist-pumping bass are rave-like inspiring a vision of people waving glow sticks in the shadows of a club, and a DJ working the ones and twos. The marching bass winds “3” back up to its elementary chorus full of counting. There’s a sense of power-pop urgency about Britney’s pitched vocal delivery and as is “What we do is innocent” lyric, which sounds like a mantra for a generation or an era; maybe an era past like Britney’s glorious teen pop past back when the Backstreet Boys and ‘N Sync ruled the planet.

Maybe “3” is a sign that Britney’s music will take a brighter, more “innocent” direction. A change of pace might be just what Britney’s music needs.