Deconstructing "Bad Romance"

When Lady Gaga’s “Bad Romance” hit a few weeks ago, it was an event in a way that is rare nowadays. For one thing, her video not only got coverage—lots and lots of coverage—but it was actually anticipated, actually viewed, multiple, multiple times. “Bad Romance” exceeded hype, and the love for the freaky, weird, psychologically confounding, hyper-symbolic, sexy video only continued. Deconstructions of “Bad Romance” are all over the Internet, with many including a play-by-play using screen captures. “Bad Romance” has symbolism and sex written all over it, and really, the video is just incredible.



So what is Gaga saying? Like many of her other songs, the theme here is hard love—rough love, a bad romance, wanting something so badly that she’s caught up in something terrible but she doesn’t care. She’s upfront about her freaky side, and in her wanting, there is anger: “I want your everything / as long as it’s free.” The low growl of her voice, the thumping tone of the music, underscores her feelings. James Montgomery of MTV calls “Bad Romance” the bridge between the old “The Fame” Gaga and her new “The Fame Monster” Gaga, now with additional sex and spookiness. Some focus on the "sex slavery" aspect of the song and video or the occult imagery. Still other interpretations play off her quote, “That tough female spirit is something that I want to project. It's meant to be, 'This is my shield, this is my weapon, this is my inner sense of fame, this is my monster,' “in that she embodies different facets of womanhood through the stories she devises.

“Bad Romance” is practically several videos at once, and that makes it so wonderful and so difficult to deconstruct. There’s a basic narrative—in the singer’s words, she is “kidnapped by supermodels. I'm washing away my sins and they shove vodka down my throat to drug me up before they sell me off to the Russian mafia," but she escapes by blowing up the head guy in a fiery blaze—which is intercut with various other Gagas, each with its own look, every one easily a separate video. I love Gaga dressed in black, her yellow stringy hair falling down, those big black sunglasses obscuring her face. I love the babydoll Gaga, Kewpie doll eyes, innocence in a tub. I love Gaga, vulnerable, broken down, hysterical with (nearly) no makeup on, crying “I don’t wanna be friends!” There’s the alien Gagas, in Alexander McQueen ensembles, in diamonds and white latex and shiny gold, with snazzy headpieces and razor-blade sunglasses, in fabulous black lingerie and only-acceptable-in-a-music-video-this-artistic white thong underwear. Gaga, at various points, is all of many things: alone, vulnerable, innocent, dazed, wistful, childlike, terrified, satisfied, sexy, powerful, defiant, strong, beautiful.

Despite the diverse Gagas, she uses many of the same symbols and motifs as she has in earlier videos and public appearances—encasing her body in shiny orbs, spikes on her head and heels, weird lines on her body, either through clothing or through effects, faces and eyes covered, surrounded and studded in diamonds. The video itself borrows from many sources—some of her choreography, like the crawling, is directly from Madonna’s “Express Yourself” video, and in the opening there are allusions to her other videos and to “True Blood”. In the lyrics, there is a nod to Hitchcock: “I want your psycho / Your vertical stick / Want you in my rear window / Baby you’re sick”, though the whole song is about wanting in a psychologically damaging romance. She ends her performance on "Jay Leno" by grabbing her crotch, another move defiantly done in “Express Yourself”. She knows how crazy she is—she does call herself a “freak bitch” several times—and she wants all sorts of freaky things besides love, hard to quantify things, not to mention that she trills her own (stage) name in the cheers that surround the song. Then there are the animals—the dog that has appeared in all her videos, the bare cat hissing away, the goats on display over the bed, the bear peignoir she wears to present herself to her captor—and the death, violence, and alcohol that have shown up in other works.

The video moves between gray, dark lighting and bright white. The darkness finds her hidden away, in alien mode, but the blinding brightness is her exposed, in the man’s world, until she claims it. Gaga follows the same pattern, extremely pale to note her vulnerability and innocence, ending outfitted with red lace and strips of cloth, with black boots and gloves to symbolize the breaking away (Viva la Revolución!), her own power. The dancers clap around her, in celebration.

She has performed “Bad Romance” in a number of venues, and they all feature similar choreography, not only making it easier for the performers but also tightening her message. On "The Jay Leno Show", she opens dressed in a black bodysuit with huge shoulders, like a pillow growing out of her upper back. Her hands turn into claws, and her dancers, lying down, now start to claw awake and alive. Lady Gaga claws at the air, at herself, and then holds her hand out as if she wants a ring or a kiss as she sings “I want your leather-studded kiss in the sand”. “You know that I want you, and you know that I need you, I want it bad, your bad romance” she intones, and all the dancers form behind her, clawing their way forward. It’s creepy and cool. As the chorus continues, the dances go psycho, waving and clawing around. All the dancers are male, and they all are wearing masks. Even the musicians in the background are dressed this way.

She twists and stomps, and she shoots off an imaginary gun during “’Cause you’re a criminal as long as you’re mine”, just like in the video. The bridge is more clawing, baring her chest, and her dancers move closer, behind her. They dance in unison, before the lead dancer, a wire cage over his face, lifts her up through her legs, his hand on her stomach. It gives me the willies every time. His teeth are bared, his face menacing. These guys really are creeps. The final chorus, Lady Gaga’s right hand is a fist, and she pumps it up and down, determined.

The entire performance is aggressive, but it’s not just her movements that personify this, it’s her songs themselves. The French lyrics that open the second bridge don’t just rephrase the central lines of “I want your love/ I want your romance”, they demand. She is not polite, she does not use the polite form of “to want”. “I demand your love” is followed by her wailing “I don’t wanna be friends” with “caught in a bad romance” swirling in the background, building up the pain. In a sense, the main storyline and the song don’t match up, because she has no interest in the man at the center of the story. But the choreography of her movements, some of her other selves—mainly the close-up of her face, crying—do fit with the song, and the consistency of her choreography throughout multiple performances suggest something else. As in other songs, she is aggressive and shameless, and the clawing, marching, and twisting only further the interpretation that this is her definition of a “tough female spirit”.

VMAs Tonight

I know that I said last year that I wouldn’t watch the VMAs. But I have been persuaded to by the very fun ads of VMA Side Story, singing montages featuring Taylor Swift, Cobra Starship, Ne-Yo, and Katy Perry:



The tagline, “The Stars Align”, in bright lights, is classy, simple, no real promise set up to fail. Russell Brand is back, presumably because they couldn’t find anyone else to host.

The preshow has already shown me what I know to be true: I have no business watching this. The VMAs target demographic is high schoolers, and I passed that milestone before social networking was popular. MTV Hits has been running videos of previous winners, dating back to 1997 (why that year? I had no idea, but the Video of the Year went to “Virtual Insanity”, by Jamiroquai. Ah, back to the days when the top title went to a video of technical ingenuity and genuine awesomeness, and not to some slapdash job for a song no one remembers.), and I was struck how wholesome the videos appear in retrospect, how respected: Madonna winning for “Ray of Light” in 1998 is so quaint...c’mon, Madonna winning in the (somewhat) near past? As usual, I had grumbles: 2003 was the big year for “Hey Ya”, not 2004 (the only explanation is that it missed the cutoff); 2003 had a number of big hits, and Missy Elliot does not come to mind. I can’t reiterate again how awful last year’s winner was. But the VMAs has long stopped being about the good stuff, though it can be found among a handful of this year’s nominees; I’m just too far removed. Now it’s about tweets and New Moon and a bunch of celebrities-in-the-making; watch for them to become household names in six months.

I know from experience large chunks of the show will be unwatchable, but I’m here for Gaga, Jay-Z, Beyonce, and a handful of other performers.

Notes on the broadcast will follow in a subsequent post.

Breaking Records Isn't What It Used To Be

There has been much brouhaha over the fact that both Mariah Carey and Madonna broke records last week.

Mariah Carey now has 18 #1 singles. Back in the day, before digital media took over the world, it actually took work to get a number one single. I know, I know, it’s hard to get a number one single now—any non-superstar would loudly argue against my point. I understand, I do, but before a number one song had to be out for several weeks, gaining on the chart, becoming a massive hit. A number one song, even for just one week, is a hit; it’s earned that spot. But nowadays songs just appear at number one, and it’s unfair. All Mariah Carey had to do was act like herself (“Mimi”, since that’s her post-“comeback” persona and not the crazy loon who pushed an ice cream cart on TRL), and therein the songs kept rollin’. “Touch My Body” is catchy enough, and it’s certainly not her worst single, but it’s not particularly memorable or great. I disagree with critics who say it’s a ripoff of “Always Be My Baby” (seriously?), although radio stations need to branch out into their Mariah Carey hit catalog and play something other than songs that originated from her Tommy Mottola period. “Touch My Body” is helped by the video, featuring geek man-boy Jack McBrayer of 30 Rock fantasizing how luscious touching Mariah’s body can be, but it hasn’t been out long enough to attain the notoriety that a number one song should carry, especially one that breaks Elvis’ record. Of course, an artist that has so many hit singles obviously has a few less memorable ones than others, but it seemed that there was no suspense regarding whether or not she would actually break the record; it was a foregone conclusion. Results rigged, anyone?

As for Madonna, at least her very deep catalog is accessed somewhat more on radio than Mariah Carey’s. I haven’t even heard all of “4 Minutes to Save the World”, which is quite a feat, yet it took me a few to realize that horrible snippet of Justin Timberlake was Madonna’s new song. Oh, the disappointment. Again, it hit the top ten already? The song’s been out for two weeks, maybe three. Songs should earn their high status, because it proves they are hits. In reality, both “Touch My Body” and “4 Minutes to Save the World” are going to be midlevel and minor (to put it nicely) hits, respectively. By July, you’ll have forgotten them already, and when you hear them at the end-of-the-year countdowns you’ll have a vague if misbegotten memory of the songs coming out last year. Nowadays songs flash out quickly, peaking early and then dying. Those aren’t hits, but they’re always described as one. A real hit has staying power. Current hits include anything that Chris Brown has sang on (including the bloated “No Air”), “Love Song” (which is actually a retort to her record company—now that song makes sense), and of course, “Low”, which is heading downward but still hasn’t gotten old. And that song’s been out since November/December.

As someone who’s always followed airplay and chart positions as a hobby, I’ve never understood how exactly they figure out a song’s ranking. Requests favor novelty songs (“The Bad Touch” “Because I Got High”) and teen and tween favorites (Backstreet Boys/Avril Lavigne/Jonas Brothers), but overall they have their small moment in the sun and wear out their welcome quickly. Bands like Matchbox Twenty and Maroon 5 do extremely well on Top 40 stations as well as ones that cater to older demographics, but you will never hear a Rob Thomas-penned tune on 9 at 9. Sales has something to do with it, but those figures are changed yearly as factors like iTunes gained traction and older forms of counting became obsolete. Every December when I make my predictions and listen to all the end-of-the-year roundups, I’m inevitably scratching my head at how one song ended up in the fifties when it clearly should be twenty points higher and how a top ten song managed to squeeze in when it clearly wasn’t that big a hit. Whatever…it at least makes the countdowns good betting material.