BittyGoesPOP

feeling really not positive

LOVING my hair feather. trend? yes. i dont care.

Sorority Girl

GAMMA DELTA OH-FISH! Gotta do the paperwork. Then I have a whole bunch of new sisters :)

Ma-GaGa*

Hmmm… Do I love or hate those who compare Madonna and GaGa? I guess I have to go with love — it only brings Madonna more positive attention (mostly). As a Madonna devotee and a member of the Facebook generation, I find myself unable to resist this comparison. Is it intelligent? Sometimes. Is it fun? All the time.

What I will attempt to do is dig deep into my mature, intelligent self and make a legitimate comparison, despite the millions of regurgitated attempts that already exist. Is it fair to GaGa? No, of course not! So let’s make a list of every advantage Madonna has on the poor “Lady”, and see if it makes for fair argument:

1. Time. GaGa released her first single on April 8, 2008. Madonna has about 26 years on her, releasing her first single in October of 1982. I guess the only way to fairly compensate is taking everything Maddy did between ‘82 and ‘85, THEN compare — but who has patience for that?
2. The Advantage of a Disadvantage. Nothing (in a sense) was done for Madonna. She was a female pop star in a time connecting hippies and hipsters, pagers and iPhones, MTV and YouTube, and housewives and working women — the epitome of a “transitional” period. In a time when the most complex form of digital Pop music was Kraftwerk, Madonna had the advantage of revolutionizing the sound of contemporary music and the culture of Pop itself, not just making it “cooler” or “more intense,” as GaGa is only able to do. Madonna had the opportunity to make Pop matter, not just enhance it, which, ultimately, she was very successful at. So, this extra work she had to do was simply a blessing — something other female artists will have much trouble doing, if it’s even possible anymore at all. 
3. Originality. This is where all the unfair comparisons tie in. Now, before all the Little Monsters go up in arms over me calling Madonna “more original,” let me explain. Who is to say Madonna is more original? She has that quality, for sure, but is she more so? No one knows, and no onecan know. What I’m trying to say is, think of the era in which Madonna found her fame, then think of GaGa’s. Madonna not only had a challenge to obtain fame in a male-dominated field of 80’s rockstars, she had agateway to global fame that other female pop stars simply don’t have in today’s world. Some say Madonna started it all; that Beyonce, Rihanna, GaGa, Perry, etc., couldn’t do what they do — unless they invented it themselves — without Madonna to pave the path for them. I believe this is true, but is this a reason to bash GaGa? Is the mere fact that GaGa was born in the wrong decade a reason to deprive her a spot in Pop’s royal family? I don’t doubt that if GaGa was blessed with a birth during the Korean war, she would have been able to transform the world, too. So, when I say originality, I simply mean having the opportunity to be original — something Madonna had, and GaGa didn’t.

”I’m more inclined to think that [Ludlam’s] thoughts on how theatre history can be recycled to create something ‘original’ and compelling do have a bearing on how ‘art’ is created in the pop music world … Do you think … that Gaga has drawn on Madonna’s work to create something ‘new’? And if so, how does Gaga use Madonna’s moments (poses, costuming, tableaus) to tell a different story, to achieve something artistically different?  I think Gaga is very much working within a tradition, one that Madonna has honed for decades.” 

 Yes, that’s Ludlam.

I could go on, but in true Madonna-fan fashion, I must stop elaborating on the defense for GaGa. However, I know one thing is true. I do not become angry over the argument of Madonna being better, I get angry over the argument itself. It’s unfair to both parties, and I only care so much because of how much emphasis is put on it. I understand the similarities, but it seems more just to compare GaGa to someone like, say, Perry? Or… Ke$ha? It would only help her…

Stodard has an optimistic point.  It’s a point that would eliminate every copyright known to man. But since Gags hasn’t done any direct copying, it stands legitimate. For now, GaGa is only, say, “rethinking”  all of Madonna’s hard work and recycling it for the hipsters of this century. And that’s okay, because that’s why Madonna did it in the first place, right?