Will Lady Gaga Really Take Madonna's Crown?
Liz Smith

Will Lady Gaga Really Take Madonna's Crown?
Lady Gaga

"CHANGE IS inevitable. Except from a vending machine," said Robert C. Gallagher.

THE OTHER day we spoke of excess, in the form of the late producer and party-giver Allan Carr.

But what to make of Lady Gaga, who's today's queen of excess? The pop singer dresses like an alien and rules the charts with her techno dance tunes. New York magazine -- which refers to her as "effortlessly global" -- has her on its cover this week, and many pages inside. She's truly legit. (Once she was a schleppa, now she's Miss Mazzeppa!) She is also on the current cover of the handsome Hamptons Sheet, looking like ... I don't know what! However, one does take a second and third look. That's for sure. She is compelling.

Gaga recently put out a wild and wicked video, "Telephone" guest-starring Beyonce. The video caused a sensation -- lots of people loved it, then there were the moralists who found it offensive. (The vid highlights prison escape, mass murder, references to masturbation, a strong lesbian vibe and lots of skin.) Donny Osmond himself condemned it. Gaga, I'm sure, would have preferred harsh words from Sarah Palin -- so much more newsworthy!

"Telephone" is the most elaborate video in some time. It recalls the classic (and expensive) works of Michael Jackson and Madonna, the two artists who ruled the medium in the '80s and early '90s. "Telephone" made 2010 people sit up and take notice -- even those who were not really into La Gaga.

BUT, can Gaga hold onto her popularity? She has a powerful voice, though it is jacked up and often distorted via the electronica so beloved today. She can dance. She has humor. The outfits, however, are a gimmick that I fear will pall quickly; she doesn't need them. They look uncomfortable and even dangerous -- to herself and others. But that's just my opinion. New York magazine's Vanessa Grigoriadis insists, "That's the genius of Gaga; her willingness to be a mutant, a cartoon. ... One of her essential points is that celebrity should be the province of weirdos."

Lady Gaga is most often compared to Madonna, and cited as her inheritor to the crown as Queen of Pop. (It's certainly not going to be Britney!) Hard to judge at this point. The culture (and the music biz) has changed so much since Madonna's advent in 1983, that the landscape is almost totally unrecognizable.

Allowing for those changes, I don't "feel" Lady Gaga's impact as I did with Madonna -- La Ciccone was also interesting as herself, as a celebrity, a star, an instantly iconic figure on the world landscape. Madonna presented herself as a sexual creature, open to all experience. She was no mutant! Her "re-inventions" were mostly a matter of hair color, style and a different way of dressing. She always looked like herself, even when she shaved her eyebrows to Marlene Dietrich antennae and put in a fake gold tooth. She was a new-style star who still paid homage to the great goddesses of the past.

LADY G,'s transformations are far more manufactured -- deliberate costumes. One might say she is paying homage to the 1970s when performance art and camp sensibilities spilled out into the culture and the streets -- especially in New York City. Or perhaps she's taken some bits from John Cameron Mitchell and "Hedwig and the Angry Inch," as theater writer Michael Riedel suggested? However, she inescapably channels Madonna with remarks such as "I want to liberate my fans and free them from their fears." (Hopefully, Gaga won't channel Madonna's "Sex" book.)

Of course, Madonna's music (her ballads anyway) and her early lush videos were more to my taste -- as much as my taste would ever run to current pop music or MTV. Though she often lost me with her deliberate provocations.

As far as I'm concerned, the greatest thing Madonna ever did was her Marie Antoinette turn at the MTV Music Video Awards, vamping to "Vogue." It was sexy, edgy and funny. It was 1990. New York magazine points out, "Madonna hasn't had a sense of humor about herself since the early '90s, where Gaga is all fun and play." (I thought Madonna was pretty funny on "The Marriage Ref" -- maybe being back in America, and being single, is loosening her up again.)

MISS Gaga has yet to break through -- in my opinion -- as Madonna did, in terms of "stardom." No matter that Madonna's movie career never quite panned out, she always had that glamour vibe, albeit on the funky side. And her personal life was subject to wild speculation. She was -- and remains -- a gossip columnist's dream. (This columnist got to know Madonna, so there's that issue in terms of judging Lady Gaga's impact; she's not calling from Budapest with the scoop on her first pregnancy.)

Well, we'll see where Lady G. is 25 years from now. Initially, nobody thought Madonna would last more than a season.

Still, like Madonna, Gaga now finds herself the subject of major "think" pieces, such as Neil McCormick's brilliant critique of "Telephone" in the Daily Telegraph. He opines that Gaga "Might just turn out to be the ultimate video queen."

Hmmm ... although it would be absurd for Madonna, age 51, to be truly "competitive" with the much younger Gaga -- in fact the two appeared in an "SNL" skit, spoofing a rivalry -- maybe evaluations, such as McCormick's, will kick start La Ciccone into re-thinking what she's been doing in videos recently. She should get back to the mind-set that produced masterpieces such as "Like a Prayer" "Express Yourself," "Oh, Father," "Bad Girl," "Vogue" "Take a Bow" "I Want You" and even 2000's lovely, western-themed "Don't Tell Me."

MADONNA has her four children, her admirable charity work, her multi-mega-millions, her record-breaking tours, her gorgeous young lover, her legend and a mob scene wherever she goes. She ain't crying, and I'm not crying for her. Still, I could live forever and never again see Madonna's pelvic squat thrusts that she thinks is dancing, as in her most recent videos and concerts. We know you're fit, honey. And we know you love those techno sound effects. Enough.

It's time for another reinvention.

Lady Gaga - Telephone (Official Clean Version) featuring Beyonce

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