Lady GaGa featuring Beyoncè
Telephone

There was a time when the word POP matched with spectacle...

With an artistic sense tending towards the excessive, the kitsch, which made the creation of music videos accompanying the pieces that artists published indispensable, contributing to creating styles and trends, status symbols, and cultural phenomena.

While Michael Jackson was undeniably the founder of this movement with his grandiose videos for "Bad" and "Thriller", countless were his successors. Needless to say, after the '90s and entering the new millennium, the expression within POP music videos has waned, making them all look the same and hard to distinguish. If before there was the extreme madness of people like Aqua with their cartoon-like mini-stories, now the videos are all reduced to choreographies and sexy teasing inside clubs or discos... Or to various nudities mixed with simulations of lovemaking...

The same music protagonists have nothing that distinguishes them from one another anymore, all seem copies of each other in attitudes and looks (Beyoncè and Rihanna, Justin Timberlake and Usher, Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson), as in the music which for many was already of little depth before, now takes on the role of tasteless spice in the visual dish.

As a regular club and disco-goer, and therefore willing or not, a victim of media hype and dancefloor hits that rage (of which I still consider myself a supporter, not believing that only intellectual music or cinema can be the only source… But also disposable objects useful to unwind my synapses and hang out with friends……) I have always thought that the current world had had enough of those '90s rich in excesses. The same icons of this genre survived the musical extermination, like Madonna, had given up on transfiguring themselves, and relaunching adequately to previous standards, falling into the anonymity they had always distinguished themselves from. Of the latter, it is impossible not to mention the negative phase known to fans with the name of the last album, that Hard Candy that simply followed trails and trends, bringing no innovation to the POP scene, especially at the image level. Closing the eyes and thinking of the queen’s videos, the provocative "Human Nature" comes to mind, but especially two of the most beautiful videos that Pop could lay down in a card game with style: "Frozen" and "Bedtime Story". 

These two masterpieces, dreamlike and baroque, were the pure essence of pop, able to easily beat the mini-films of Jackson in a hypothetical popular approval ranking.

So, strong with these memories, last year I approached Lady Gaga, the new Pop phenomenon. Temporary passenger, I repeated to myself more and more times. Well, it wasn't so. Setting aside her music, disposable as much as you want but with a certain underlying style, we inevitably face someone who chews pop art like Cheerios at breakfast. Diverging from the initial Christina Aguilera-like image given by the video of the single "Just Dance" and partly with the subsequent "Pokerface", La GaGa acquires fans at an impressive speed when, by virtue of her success, she begins to dictate to her record label, dressing herself and writing her videos.

It is indeed with "Paparazzi" (which the video of this review is the ideal sequel), but especially with the sci-fi and excessive "Bad Romance", that her role as a Pop icon is consolidated, as she uses the same language of marketing and mass media, thus resulting perfectly homogeneous with the consumer society that produced her, configuring her as a pure manipulator of images, objects, and symbols already manufactured for industrial, advertising or economic purposes. Fashion itself is part of her being a phenomenon (her look was taken care of by the late Alexander McQueen and countless other hotheads of international fashion, generally those who have very little of the accustomed) making her, in fact, an uncalculable X factor, something apparently nonconforming (although we all know well how far this reality is from the truth)

A few days ago, Lady GaGa did it again... She released "Telephone".

And it is genius. Stephanie Germanotta creates nothing... Yet she's genius. The only label with which this woman can be categorized is: TARANTINO-ESQUE!

Exactly Tarantino-esque... Just like the PussyWagon from Kill Bill that appears in the video. Everything refers to everything, everything is a quote, everything is satire, everything is pure Pop Art. The Diet Coke cans instead of hair curlers... The cigarette butts turned into fashion accessories... The black and white striped prison outfit elected as a motif to be printed on haute couture garments... The traces of the big old pop stars, like Gaga's own look in the prison choreography that’s so Madonna '90s..... The ironic and trash dialogues, with a Beyoncé who says to her buddy just out of prison "you're a bad girl….a bad bad bad girl, Gaga."

The cooking show scene is then absolutely splendid, with the caption "Let's Make a Sandwich" appearing on the screen, with GaGa teaching how to properly poison food, complete with a side recipe for the right doses of poison... In short, an exquisitely refined hodgepodge, extreme citationism, and fun... A video like hasn't been seen in a long time. Overlooking the sad presence of Beyoncé whom I personally am beginning to hate with all my strength (despite being able to boast together with GaGa having given life to one of the best pop videos of the 2000s, the much-parodied Single Ladies) and the final dance which, as enjoyable as it is (Lady Gaga dressed as Wonder Woman is priceless), is a part I could have done without, hoping for other flashes of genius equal to all the previous ones, it is undeniable how this 9-minute and 30-second blender manages to leave no one indifferent, both lovers and detractors. 

Exactly like Tarantino does in cinema, Lady Gaga manages to stand out in the music video environment while recycling elements already used, like a homeless person in the dumpsters of showbiz… And damn it… She does it incredibly well! Do yourself a favor, go watch the video… You may hate her, you will surely hate the song accompanying the images… But that's not what you should focus on. For better or worse, have a look… This is surely the video you'll hear about all year long...