My Response to Arrogant Bastard DJ White Shadow

CONFIRMED: DJ White Shadow has read this blog post. I tweeted it to him and he replied saying that he read it and that “it’s great to have an opinion.” Diplomatic PR statement, or cowardly refusal to engage? You decide, reader… (Since I know that he reads his tweets, though, I told him that it speaks poorly of him and everyone on Gaga’s team that none of them had the guts to tell her that the song sounds like “Express Yourself.” Will he reply? Time will tell…)

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Remember when the NME interview dropped and I speculated that, since Gaga revealed that no one around her had the courage to tell her that her “anthem of her generation” was blatantly plagiarized from Madonna’s “Express Yourself,” it is quite probable that Gaga surrounds herself entirely with sycophants?

Today, we have proof. Check out this quote from one of Gaga’s new producers, DJ White Shadow:

How many people have been copying Gaga since she came out? Oh, I have that answer: everyone. Have you seen all the lightning bolts painted on faces, or the one hand eye cover ups during photos, or the exact same promo posters being put up as Gaga’s, or the new popularity of unicorns, or the copycat fake “Oh I’m so cool with the gay community” rhetoric? Or how about the fact that there was barely any dance music on the radio until “Just Dance” came out? Come on motherfuckers, let’s keep it real here. If we are going to talk about who is chasing who, I think we all know the answer to that. So yeah, she did something new, and people had to reach back 20+ years to find a song that could have possibly sounded like it, and that made news? Come on. And I get to watch people try and fuck Gaga all the time and steal her shit, but guess what? While you were out trying to make the music she made off The Fame, thinking she was making The Fame v2.0, she went and made some next shit for you to chase for the next 3 years. So, suck on that.

Wow. Let’s take this cocky cunt’s bullshit line-by-line:

How many people have been copying Gaga since she came out? Oh, I have that answer: everyone.

A few have. Natalia Kills is a particularly glaring example, for instance. Besides her, I can’t really think of anyone “copying” Gaga.

Have you seen all the lightning bolts painted on faces,

No?

or the one hand eye cover ups during photos,

Two answers to this: (1) Apparently nobody covered one eye with one of their hands before Gaga did it in a split-second frame in the “Just Dance” video, (2) No?

or the exact same promo posters being put up as Gaga’s,

No?

or the new popularity of unicorns,

The fuck?

or the copycat fake “Oh I’m so cool with the gay community” rhetoric?

There’s a pro-gay zeitgeist, but Gaga is almost entirely a symptom, not a cause, of that.

Or how about the fact that there was barely any dance music on the radio until “Just Dance” came out?

Absolutely everything on The Fame has a precursor in three trailblazing albums: Loose, FutureSex/LoveSounds, and Blackout, whose sounds were crafted largely by the likes of Timbaland, Danja, and Bloodshy & Avant.

Come on motherfuckers, let’s keep it real here.

Indeed.

If we are going to talk about who is chasing who, I think we all know the answer to that.

Correct: Gaga is chasing Madonna.

So yeah, she did something new,

She didn’t.

and people had to reach back 20+ years to find a song that could have possibly sounded like it, and that made news?

It’s a rather famous song. The chorus to “Born This Way” was written in the same key and was, note-for-note, the same melody as the bridge to “Express Yourself.” The title of the Madonna song was trending on Twitter higher than the name of the Gaga song on the day of the song’s release. Let’s get real, here.

Come on.

Seriously.

And I get to watch people try and fuck Gaga all the time and steal her shit, but guess what? While you were out trying to make the music she made off The Fame, thinking she was making The Fame v2.0, she went and made some next shit for you to chase for the next 3 years. So, suck on that.

If he’s referring to “Born This Way,” then we’re about to hear an explosion of songs that sound like 90′s club remixes. If he’s referring to “Judas,” then he’s full of shit, since that song is most definitely The Fame v2.0. Perhaps there are fully innovative songs on the upcoming album, but from the previews we’ve been given, I seriously doubt it.

But there’s big news lurking underneath this: This man is representative of the type of people that Gaga surrounds herself with. That’s a rather unsettling thought!

The Stupdity of Comparing Britney and Gaga’s Lyrics

Little Monsters have offered up their new defense: “So you’re gonna tell the lyrics to Hold It Against Me are so great?”

Of course they’re not. But then, Britney isn’t the one heralding her music as anything other than fun dance-pop music, is she? If Britney were bragging to reporters that she had crafted the “anthem for our generation” and then released something like “Hold It Against Me,” then we might begin to legitimately ask such questions. But Britney — like another artist I quite like, Ke$ha — has never sold her music as anything other than what it is.

This brings us back to a point I make in my original essay about Lady Gaga: the heart of problem here is the disconnect between perception and reality. Gaga is selling her music as anthemic, generation-defining music. It is actually nothing of the sort. The lyrics to “Born This Way” are absolutely embarrassing. If you’re going to tell me that your lyrics define our generation and they end up being nothing but a giant pile of shit, then I’m going to have a problem. If you tell me that your song is “meaningful,” then I’m going to take a close look at the lyrics and judge them accordingly. Britney has never claimed that “Hold It Against Me” is a deep, inspirational anthem: just an awesome club track. Hence, there can be no comparison.

Actually, Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” Is Anti-Gay

The lyrics to Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” are alternately condescending, patronizing, melodramatic, cliched, obnoxious, and grating. Delivered with all of the subtlety of a sledgehammer, they represent all of the constricting, insulting stereotypes that normal gay people have fought for three decades. I thought we’d done a good job of burying this crap. Now, with Lady Gaga as the media’s appointed spokeswoman for gay people, we’ll have to deal with this bullshit once again — for months, at least.

The lyrics are worse than I imagined they’d be, and every reader of this site knows that my expectations were rock-bottom to begin with. But Gaga’s stans have already come up with their go-to defense of these insulting lyrics: If you don’t like them, you’re clearly homophobic. Gaga Daily is all abuzz with that meme. “The gays” need songs like this, we’re told; ‘Mother Monster’ unites us all in her unbounded love.

Ah, yes: “the gays.” Her old standby. Lady Gaga dedicates awards to “the gays.” She asks at her shows where “the gays” are, and dedicates songs to “the gays out there.” And this song, too, will be for “the gays.” But in fact, “Born This Way” is, at its heart, an anti-gay song. It is restricting and narrow; it looks at gay people and sees nothing but their sexuality. The truth about homosexuality is that it’s really not that big of a deal: it’s not a lifestyle and it’s not an ideology. Speaking as someone gay, I want people to look at me and see not homosexuality — but my values, ideas, and aspirations. My sexuality is an incidental part of my life. But people like Lady Gaga look at me and sees nothing but gay, gay, gay.

The lyrics are certainly horrific for their lack of poetry, but they are even more horrific because they reinforce every stereotype of gays of identity-obsessed fashionista queens. There is nothing tongue-in-cheek about the song.

In the final analysis, Lady Gaga is nothing but the other side of the same coin that the Religious Right occupies. Pat Robertson sees gays as a flaming bunch of queens who are completely obsessed with their sexuality. Lady Gaga sees us in the same way. She should not be excused, let alone glorified, for this insulting attitude, merely because she likes the stereotype. Fag-haggery is not pro-gay. It is demeaning, condescending, and constricting. Every gay person with any respect for himself should boycott this song and this album. And I am supremely confident that this song will produce the much-needed backlash against this delusional woman.