Lady Gaga

RuPaul’s Drag Race Power Rankings, S09E01 – “Oh. My. Gaga!”

March 25, 2017 by krisis

Oh happy day, it’s a new season of RuPaul’s Drag Race!

That’s cause for celebration in my house (well, mostly just for me, but still), but coming from a stellar season of All Stars, I can’t help but wonder: Can this season of brand new drag racers possibly stand up to what many fans have called the best season of Drag Race of all time?

I don’t know, but a good way to get things off on the right kinky book is to book Lady Gaga as the guest for your first episode.

When I first heard that Lady Gaga would be on the premiere of Drag Race, my fervent hope was that they’d go for the BBC Adele impersonator trick, gussying up Gaga as a lower-rent drag queen version of her high class drag queen self to try to fool the other contestants. The episode played at that for a moment, but it’s real use for Gaga was much more clever – they used her as the best possible judge of drag the show has ever featured. Short of commentary from RuPaul herself (which usually comes only in the workroom), we’ve never seen this level of consistently incisive candor from a single judge before.

But, enough about Mother Monster – how did all the little monsters fare under her tutelage? Read on for my RuPaul’s Drag Race Season Nine Week One Power Rankings.

If you want to read more each week, please leave a comment and share on social media, okurrrrr? It’s the only way I can know someone is out there listening, henny.

35-for-35: 2010 – “Dancing On My Own” by Robyn

November 27, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]I went through a period in the late 00s where all I wanted was singer/songwriter dance music. For a while, the closest thing was Justin Timberlake or indie-rock pop like hellogoodbye, but neither quite scratched the itch I had. I wanted straight up, cotton candy, 80s style pop music with an auteur behind it and more texture than the typical radio tune.

And, of course, I wanted to hear women doing it.

Luckily, Lady Gaga arrived in 2008 with The Fame and rubbed my itch raw, but I would argue that if we’re talking about dance-pop auteurs we cannot even have the conversation without talking about Robyn.

Five years ago I would have had to follow that statement with “Yes, my 90s friends, the same Robyn of ‘Show Me Love.'” That’s not the case anymore, with “Dancing On My Own” in the credits of TV’s Girls and “Call Your Girlfriend” reaching surprising ubiquity in the year’s since its release.

I didn’t have that context in 2010, though. All I had was this queer record called Body Talk, Part 1 from the woman who sang “Show Me Love.” I had completely missed the “Konichiwa Bitches” years of Robyn’s second breakthrough because at the time I didn’t swim in those pop circles (because, I’d argue, she and Gaga revived those pop circles in the US).

I even wrote about my discovery process of Body Talk, Part 1, and how I was cool to “Dancing On My Own” on first listen but floored by the EP as a whole.

With hindsight, I’m also floored by “Dancing On My Own.” Despite the busy synth bass, the song has an uncluttered sonic aesthetic, adding in just one element at a time as in my 1994 pick “Closer.” (Note that the original version of this cut does not include the higher synth line that can now be heard in the video.)

“Dancing On My Own” has more than that common with that profane NIN cut. Each song is the perfect evocation of a near-universal human experience. Yes, “Closer” is more base and primary, but watching the person you want be with someone else while you sway on your own is something everyone has experienced at least once – from the most popular jock to the most ridiculed nerd.

Robyn turns that dejected feeling into something empowering – a chorus you are proud to shout along to on the dancefloor. It’s just an excuse to dance on your own.

Live @ Rehearsal Video Concert – November 1st, 2016

November 3, 2016 by krisis

[Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug][/Patreon-Nov16-Post-Bug]After a month of piloting Facebook Live lunch rehearsal concerts to my network of friends, this week I unveiled them on my Facebook page!

Setlist: Shake It Of w/Shake Your Body Down (to the ground), A Few Bars of Goodbye, Saving Grace, a totally off-the-cuff and unrehearsed cover of Lady Gaga’s Million Reasons, Bucket Seat, Saving Grace, and a special encore duet with EV on We Are The Crystal Gems (the theme from Steven Universe)

Performance Notes:

With my first solo performance in a LONG time under my belt two weekends ago, I’m starting to get a feel for my solo repertoire again.

For me the standout here is “Status Quo.” I invoked it in this year’s anniversary post, and this is one of the strongest versions of it I’ve performed. It has all sorts of extra ornamentation I’ve never done before. Definitely wish I had that one in studio quality!

“Shake It Off” was a decent rendition, and I’m starting to get the muscle back to pull off three whole minutes of those hammers (seriously, it’s a workout).

I was really focused on keeping “A Few Bars of Goodbye” on the slower side since I tend to gain speed on songs in 3, but the tempo focus distracted me from some of the lyrics. That said, it’s great to hear it at the right speed (and I got the final chord right)!

“Million Reasons” was a bit of a train-wreck, but that’s the fun of doing this live and not as some big studio project where such things would never sneak through. Early Trios featured plenty of beautiful wrecks. I need to take the key slightly up from there to get to a better place in my range for sustained notes – you can hear how much trouble I’m having with breath management. It’s a statement to how damn good the song is that the quality still shows through my shaky performance.

As for the pair of Arcati Crisis songs, “Saving Grace” and “Bucket Seat,” I’ll simply say the transition to doing that material sans the incomparable Zina on drums hasn’t been the easiest.

FB Live presented an interesting technical challenge, because FB offers nary a means of broadcasting video from a desktop device. I tried for a few weeks by using my phone, but discovered that the cap on its WiFi upstreaming capabilities meant that live music just didn’t sound great.

After a bit of research, I found a magnificent walkthrough on JoelComm.com that explained desktop-based streaming and even included an applet to generate your streaming key! Once I installed the excellent open-source software OBS I was ready to stream (the next best solution is hundreds of dollars).

The next hurdle is achieving studio-quality sound. The sheer volume of me clips any standard cellphone or laptop mic, plus those mics aren’t great with dealing with reflections and echo and can make even the most pitch-conscious singer (which I am not) seem out of tune. Unfortunately, OBS doesn’t play very nicely with my studio setup, or else this would already be a solved problem. It’s a work in progress.

Track-by-Track: Lady Gaga’s Joanne – “Grigiot Girls” and “Just Another Day” (Bonus Tracks)

October 30, 2016 by krisis

lady-gaga-in-the-studio It’s the last of song-by-song essays on Joanne, which means we’re also only a days away from an explosion of music and comics content in November!

I’m in unexplored territory here – the only time I heard this pair of bonus tunes was on Lady Gaga’s release night concert, so I don’t have a week of them seeping into my brain to speak from.

“Grigiot Girls” lies squarely in the pop/country sound, and could have helped anchor the acoustic urges of the LP.

It’s also… a little silly? I mean, pop/country songs tend to be a little silly in their over-earnestness, and this nails it, singing about “tough girls on the mend” who “toss that cork” and call each other up to pour their hearts out over a glass of wine.

(It helps that it comes from such an emotional place – at her launch concert, Gaga introduced it as a song for her friend who is living with cancer.)

On one hand, it’s by far Gaga’s most embarrassing song. On the other, she nailed the sound and sentiment of a country radio tune. You can just feel a stadium full of drunk fans singing along to the chorus of “All the pinot, pinot grigiot girls” while waving their hands in the air.

Part of that is a full-on commitment to the genre; the production here pushes a lot farther than Gaga dared on “Joanne” and “Million Reasons” with its process acoustic guitar sound on the verse and the generic drum loop and accents of piano on the chorus.

I think it was a good idea to leave this song as a bonus track. Delivering anything so squarely country on the LP would have opened up a whole new range of criticisms to be hurled at it. As it is, Gaga uses the genre more as an inspiration than a touchtone.

The real story here is “Just Another Day.”

Holy glamorous Bowie, how is this song not on the mother-loving album?

It’s wonderful! It hits the clanging piano spot of “Come To Mama,” is rife with sonic references to Elton Join like “Hey Girl,” an even adds in a serious McCartney-at-the-piano and Queen aesthetic to the proceedings (it’s a serious soundalike to “Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy”).

It’s also one of the best sets of casual, not-trying-too-hard lyrics Gaga delivers on the disc – which is perfect, because it’s a song about being casual and not trying too hard.

Just another way to prove I love you, and it’s hard today
I’ll lay back in my chair and find a way
And when you say that thing that you say that makes me mad
I’ll turn away, I’ll turn away, I’ll turn away

And think of different ways to keep my spirits up
And choreograph hours with playful, joyous thoughts

We both know I could learn a thing or two
About relaxing. Hey, I love you
And after all, it’s just another day

Despite all of those classic sound-checks, the song doesn’t feel trapped in a bygone era the way “Come to Mama” does thanks to some clever flourishes of synthesizer that add to the keys and horns.

How did this song get left off the LP? Sometimes with bonus tracks it’s that the song was sonically too close to another tune or that it would have pulled the album in the wrong direction. I just don’t see that here – this is the perfect one-to-one replacement to “Come to Mama,” and it could have been added before or after “Angel Down” to give the back half of the disc some much-needed pep.

Track-by-Track: Lady Gaga’s Joanne – “Angel Down” (Track 11)

October 29, 2016 by krisis

We’re just two songs away from the end of my song-by-song essays on Joanne, which means we’re also only three days away from an explosion of music and comics content in November!

This is the end, my friends.

Well, not really, because the deluxe edition of this LP includes a pair of bonus tracks, but this is it for the actual track-listing.

“Angel Down” is Lady Gaga’s most on-the-nose social commentary to date, reportedly written in response to Trayvon Martin’s murder in 2012 (which might indicate that this song missed the cut for Artpop).

The song has a grand melody that’s half hymnal, half Friday night drinking song. It’s honestly one of her most distinct – especially the climb on the major seventh chord in the chorus.

Gaga and her collaborators don’t quite seem to know what to do with this bold-voiced but reflective track. It’s scored with big block piano chords, moaning guitar swells, and delicate peals of harp. Gaga sings with a broad, chesty voice that hints at Ethel Merman over occasional wheezes of electronic drums.

The elements pass by in fits and starts, never coalescing into a memorable gestalt. The final song sounds as much like a demo as the “Work Tape” on the Deluxe edition of the album. The Work Tape version sounds much closer to “Million Reasons” – in effect, awesome. Given Gaga’s intent to show many different facets of herself on Joanne I get the avoidance of repeating the same sonic palette, but she did the song a disservice with the actual treatment.

The first verse struggles in the vague, metaphorical area where many of the more sincere songs on the disc dwell, but a strong chorus lifts it out of the muddle. Ultimately the song is only composed of four couplets, further reinforcing it’s hymnal qualities- a unique pair in each verse, a repeated verse refrain, and a chorus. It’s the second verse – the last original lines on the disc – where Gaga finally seems to figure out how to make the vague into something universal, elevating the entire song by association.

Doesn’t everyone belong in the arms of the sacred?
Why do we pretend we’re wrong? Has our young courage faded?

Shots were fired on the street by the church where we used to meet
Angel down, angel down. Why do people just stand around?

I’m a believer. It’s a trial, foolish and weaker
Oh, oh, oh, I’d rather save an angel down
I’m a believer. It’s chaos. Where are our leaders?
Oh, oh, oh, I’d rather save an angel down

On the whole, “Angel Down” is a missed opportunity to show off something memorable, and it’s all down to the arrangement. Given its hymn-like quality, the church references, I feel like “Angel Down” begging for is somber brass arrangement a la New Orleans Jazz or even Louis Armstrong. It’s a chance to connect the country theme of Joanne to Cheek to Cheek to show that Lady Gaga’s transformation here is not so sudden.