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Post by petrolino on May 24, 2019 22:27:45 GMT
đč Lady Gaga đ»
'Disco Heaven'
New Project
Singer-songwriter \ multi-instrumentalist Lady Gaga performed in the SG Band in her early days, collaborated with Grandmaster Melle Mel and Lady Starlight, and worked as a professional songwriter. She was honoured as a Style Icon by the Council of Fashion Designers in 2011. She was the recipient of the inaugural Contemporary Icon Award at the Songwriters Hall of Fame on June 19, 2015. She turned 33 on March 28, 2019.
Gaga turbo-charged her solo career in 2008 with the release of the hit dancefloor anthem 'Just Dance' (2008) and her ensuing debut album became a top seller. She's released three more studio albums since. She's also cut the record 'Cheek To Cheek' (September 19, 2014) which compiles jazz standards she's recorded with crooner Tony Bennett, and the soundtrack 'A Star Is Born' (October 5, 2018) which showcases music composed for the fourth screen version of a 1937 film whose story & screenplay were the work of Alan Campbell, Robert Carson, Dorothy Parker and original director William Wellman.
Lady Gaga is currently working on her next studio album.
"Lollapalooza transitioned into a yearly festival in 2005, regularly drawing 100,000 people to Chicagoâs Grant Park over a weekend. In 2007, an unknown performer named Lady Gaga played the tiny BMI stage in the afternoon. When she came back to headline three years later, she added a tiny surprise set for stunned fans. âShe was wearing this see-through body stocking, and she started diving into the crowd,â says Perry Farrell. âThey started ripping at her body stocking, ripping at her hair, her ears, but she loved it. Every once in a while Iâll look at the YouTube video. Not many things can make me laugh for a good hour.â
- Andy Greene, Rolling Stone
âNowadays, a bunch of businessmen get together and look for a girl whoâs basically Burlesque. Having said that, I do like Lady Gaga. But it still is much more limited now.â
- Tina Weymouth, Inklings News
âI see all the guys playing those old songs. Let these guys know, like Lady Gaga, let me come in, just let me come in and pay me if you like it.â
- Sly Stone, The New York Post
"#LadyGaga Gaga Goo."
- George Clinton, Twitter
'M'Lady' - Sly & The Family Stone
'The Fame' (August 19, 2008) / 'The Fame Monster' (November 18, 2009)
'Just Dance' - Lady Gaga
âPrior to The Fame, Gaga was languishing in New Yorkâs Lower East Side as just another hopeful. The Manhattan-born Stefani Germanotta dropped out of NYU, where she studied music and would perform piano ballads at the legendary, nearby Bitter End. She embedded herself in the club scene, launching Lady Gaga and the Starlight Revue with Lady Starlight. The pairâs pop-burlesque show paid tribute to the Seventies and helped to mold Gagaâs onstage persona, the same one the world would meet in a few yearsâ time. âI suppose thatâs where the vanity of the album came from,â Gaga continued in her RS interview. âI operate from a place of delusion â thatâs what The Fame is all about.â Gaga also admitted to the pernicious habits that mingled with her self-professed narcissism and artistic perfectionism. She recalled that after leaving college she would spend hours in front of a mirror in her tiny downtown apartment, high on cocaine, practicing her hair and makeup until she felt like a star. Fame and the results of its pursuit are at the center of the album. These were ambitious themes from someone who was a musical unknown until the single âJust Danceâ and an accompanying video helmed by Melina Matsoukas (Lemonade, Insecure) took over the charts, eventually making it to Number One in the U.S. and five other countries. On the title track, she proposes the albumâs thesis: âI canât help myself/Iâm addicted to a life of material/Itâs some kind of joke/Iâm obsessively opposed to the typical.â It was aspirational pop with songs that sounded as luxurious as she wanted to be (though later albums like Born This Way and Joanne thrived on her returning to the grittier roots of her past). Gaga used star power, the desire for it and her lack of it at the time while also using fame itself as metaphors for love, sex and her identity. This approach is most effective on âPaparazzi,â maybe the albumâs most underrated moment of lyrical brilliance. She becomes the paparazzi in question when it comes to the obsessive, immersive love she has for the man at the center of the song. Itâs a classic pop tale of toxic love: bad romance â something sheâs proven time and time again to know a thing or two about â served on a diamond-encrusted silver platter. A pop weirdoâs wishful thinking transforming into inescapable reality would become one of the 21st centuryâs greatest Cinderella stories. For years, the name Lady Gaga became synonymous with the word âpopâ because songs like âLoveGame,â âPoker Faceâ and âJust Danceâ were not only platinum-selling megahits, but also pieces of music and art that challenged the way we thought pop could look, act and sound. Talk of disco sticks, metaphors for bisexuality and hypnotic club tales were worlds away from the virginal bubblegum of the late Nineties and built upon the proto-EDM of the yearâs biggest hits (Flo Ridaâs âLowâ was 2008âs longest-running Number One). Even the way Lady Gaga dressed, forsaking conventionally âpretty pop princessâ trends for high-fashion concepts, shifted the music worldâs idea of what âsexyâ could even be."
- Brittany Spanos, Rolling Stone
"I think that Lady Gaga is so different and she has taken the world by storm. I enjoy her music. So I think that she's unique, unique always has a chance."
- Smokey Robinson, Grammy Nominations Concert
"I admire Gaga. She's very talented and wise, that girl."
- Neil Sedaka, Israel Is The Homeland
"The minute I heard Lady Gaga, I knew. 'Paparazzi' -- it's great. I love it. I love all that pouting she does. She sounds like Betty Boop on there. You get the opportunity to have the gift. You should be sharing that and making people's lives better."
- Pat Benatar, ABC News
"Does anyone think global warming is a good thing? I love Lady Gaga. I think she's a really interesting artist."
- Britney Spears, Twitter
"Oh, he [Kurt Cobain] would love Lady Gaga. She writes her own songs, is an artisan in the line of Desmond Child, an artist! God bless her."
- Krist Novoselic, Army Gaga
'Paparazzi' - Lady Gaga
'Born This Way' (May 23, 2011)
"Five years ago, Lady Gaga released her second album Born This Way, one of the highest-selling albums in musical history. The albumâs success shouldnât be surprising considering that, at that point, Gaga was in the middle of an imperial reign over pop music: her debut The Fame (filled with self-described âsoulless electronic popâ) had sold over 10,000,000 copies worldwide, the single âBad Romanceâ was at the time the most watched music video in YouTube history, and a blockbuster collaboration with BeyoncĂ© had cemented her star credentials. So, when Gaga tweeted the announcement of her new album on New Yearâs Day 2011 alongside a monochrome teaser image lensed by Nick Knight, it seemed that nothing could go wrong. Instead, Born This Way is today remembered by critics to be a misstep in Gagaâs career, and the start of a downward descent that sheâs still yet to fully recover from. Yet listening back half a decade later, itâs clear that the album is Lady Gagaâs most ambitious musical project to date, as well as a poignant reminder of the mediaâs power to create and subsequently break down an artistâs reputation. The campaign kicked off with industrial techno banger âBorn This Wayâ, a powerful self-acceptance anthem that caused a stir with its deliberately literal lyrics. Nowadays, in a world where Hari Nef walks the runway at Gucci and Laverne Cox remains a beacon of hope for trans women of colour worldwide, the inclusion of the word âtransgenderâ in a pop song may not seem so controversial. Things were, however, different in 2011. Despite being an advocate for gay rights since the beginning of her career, âBorn This Wayâs trans lyric was seen as a mainstream artist deliberately painting herself into a niche. She also faced somewhat of a backlash from her gay fans and spoke in retrospect, namely at 2014âs SXSW, about how her label argued sheâd become âtoo gayâ. Ironically, âBorn This Wayâ also soured relations with another gay icon, Madonna, who famously branded Gagaâs music âreductiveâ after eagle-eyed listeners drew comparisons between the hit and Madonnaâs âExpress Yourselfâ. Problems persisted in the build-up to the albumâs eventual release date. The human-motorcycle cover was branded a joke by fans and critics alike, despite visually encapsulating the fusion of flesh and metal that defines the album soundscape. The Catholic-baiting âJudasâ video was similarly divisive, while its Easter Sunday release date sparking accusations of shock tactics. Again, the old argument of âstyle before substanceâ reared its head but, this time, it seemed to personally affect Gaga, leading to the star breaking down in frustration in a famous NME interview. The final straw came the week after the albumâs release, when press outlets worldwide seemed to solely attribute the albumâs astronomical first-week sales to a deal with Amazon which saw the LP sold at just 99p. Of course, things are different now â platforms such as Tidal and Spotify have added a new ambiguity to chart rankings, making them less headline-worthy than ever before. Lyrically, Born This Wayâs themes range from government corruption and gay marriage to to âHeavy Metal Loverâs brilliantly filthy opener âI want your whisky mouth all over my blonde southâ. Elsewhere, the anthemic chorus of âHairâ is underpinned by a metaphor that likens creative freedom to a good weave, whereas âScheiĂeâ contrasts off-kilter feminist lyrics with a spoken-word German bridge that literally translates as nonsense. Sonically, the album begins with church bells and soon descends into experimentation with glam rock, heavy metal, honky-tonk country and mariachi-tinged techno. It seemed that the artist formerly branded superficial and disingenuous was on a one-woman mission to smear her soul onto a metallic canvas; the results proved that Gaga could be sleazy, unhinged, and downright brilliant when she set out to be. Yet, no matter how celebrated the work was as a whole, it seemed nobody could shake the lack of a âBad Romanceâ-sized hit. One SLANT review lamented the lack of huge pop choruses (âwhatâs a pop song without a good hook?â), whereas the general fan consensus was that a string of poorly-selected singles had alienated fans. Five years later, Born This Way can be seen as the first introduction of the negative stigma that lingered with the star until and after the release of her subsequent album, ARTPOP. The press were particularly brutal in 2014 â writers and editors worldwide penned op-eds with names like âDrowning, not Waving: The Slow and Bitter End of Lady Gagaâs Careerâ and âLady Gaga was the Biggest Pop Star in the World: What Happened?â After she fractured her hip on the Born This Way Ball tour, Gaga began to slowly live out a career demise that she had predicted herself in the epic seven-minute âPaparazziâ video just a few years earlier."
- Jake Hall, Dazed
"My thoughts are great about her. She's an innovator. She has some things she's leaning on. She saw LaBelle back in the day, she saw Madonna. She's not embarrassed to say those things. For her to be dressing like she does, I think it's necessary to see somebody outrageous who's talented. Her piano playing is phenomenal. She's a phenomenal entertainer. She's not afraid to make mistakes. She's not afraid to make you happy. I love her! Go, Gaga!"
- Patti LaBelle, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette
"She's like a meteor that just came from outer space and landed on the Pop landscape and just blew dust in everyone's face. And I think it's amazing....I think she's exceptionally talented, she's a force to be reckoned with. I'm a great admirer."
- Kylie Minogue, Access Hollywood
âI think itâs great. Itâs just wonderful. I love her. Maybe we should do something together - GooGoo and Gaga!. You know those GooGoo candy bars in Nashville? I could be Lady GooGoo.â
- Dolly Parton reacts to hearing Lady Gagaâs new release 'Born This Way (The Country Road Version)', Sounds Like Nashville
"Iâll be damned. Who knew? Lady Gaga was just a child and I started her industry. Well, I think sheâs great. I love the fashion jokes she makes â with her shoulder blade sticking out like a model with anorexia â and I like her songs. The scene in general... I hear stuff thatâs good. I couldnât name a lot of names, but when I listen to satellite stations with new music, theyâll play three or four things in a row that are good. Thatâs pretty amazing because itâs not always the case."
- Randy Newman, The Huffington Post
"I kind of see her as a female Alice Cooper. What she does on stage is basically the same thing Alice Cooper does. I write the songs for a character. I play the character -- you know, I sort of direct the whole thing. And that's exactly what she does. When we first met, we kind of really clicked together as friends because we're both in the same business. My normal Frankenstein, we decided to dress that character up as Lady Gaga -- a 14-foot Lady Gaga, She loved it. She saw it and e-mailed us back and said she loved it."
- Alice Cooper, Ultimate Classic Rock
"Do I like what? Lady Gaga? Oh, yes [laughs]. Yes, she's great. She's crazy. I love her."
- Johnny Hallyday, The Guardian
"I love Gaga and have a lot of respect for her. She came around at a time when we all needed something like her. She was fun but she brought a little bit of much-needed art-school pretension to what had become a little like watching auditions for Broadway."
- Shirley Manson, Vanity Fair
John Lydon on Lady Gaga
'Artpop' (November 6, 2013)
"Only Lady Gaga can record an album inspired by Greek and Roman mythology, Orwellian ideals, feminism, sex, and substance abuse, roll it all together and put out what is arguably one of the 2013âs very best albums of the year. Artpop is more than just a dance album; it is a pop music masterpiece with some of the very best work of Lady Gagaâs career. For anyone who believes pop is dead, itâs cookie-cutter music at best needs to sit in a room and really listen to the songwriting genius that is captured on Artpop. Though itâs hardly flawless by any means, Artpop is onto something here with a rich eclectic mix of industrial, Hip-Hop, techno, trance, electronica . . . a great departure from Gagaâs more rock influenced Born This Way. Track by track the musical styles do go all over the place, going from the very industrial sounding opener âAuraâ to the spacey follow-up âVenus.â Both tracks will not only grab you but youâll be completely blown away by their lyrics. From âDo you wanna see me naked, lover? Do you wanna peek underneath the cover? Do you wanna see the girl who lives behind the Aura,â to âWhen you touch me I die, just a little inside. I wonder if this could be love, this could be love. âCuz youâre out of the world, galaxy space and time. I wonder if this could be love. Venus,â this is just the beginning of an incredible musical ride on Artpop."
- Rob Perez, The Music Universe
"You know that art and pop have truly collided when Jeff Koons appears on MTV. For a video interview titled "Jeff Koons's New Muse Lady Gaga," the visual artist talked to MTV about how he came to work with Lady Gaga. Jeff Koons has been collaborating with Lady Gaga since the release of her album cover of ARTPOP, which the artist designed. He also worked with Gaga to create a logo for USA Today. Tonight, Lady Gaga revealed sculptures by Koons at a party called ArtRave."
- Leigh Silver, Complex
"Thereâs an awful lot of talent there. We see the gimmick part of it. I think Lady Gaga is talented."
- Frankie Valli, 'Proud To Be A Jersey Boy'
"She must be as weird as a snake's suspenders."
- David Crosby, Something Else!
"I go onstage for three hours, four days a week and have lost about 10 pounds in the last couple of months. The Lady Gaga song 'Do What U Want' makes me want to dance and made me revise the hustle. My girlfriends and I used to do this dance at clubs 30 years ago. Now it's a great way to exercise."
- Stevie Nicks, People
"Grace Slick requested for Stevie Nicks or Lady Gaga to stand in for her for the 50th anniversary concert performance."
- Julius Bradford, 'Jefferson Airplane Turns 50'
Bruce Dickinson on Lady Gaga
'Joanne' (October 21, 2016)
"It is axiomatic that pop stars will reinvent themselves, particularly when an album like 2013âs high-concept Artpop failed to connect as Gagaâs previous albums had. With this fifth album, Joanne (2016), Gaga stripped back the layers, both visually and aurally, offering up a less processed iteration of the now 31-year-old singer, a trajectory towards the ârealâ that included last autumnâs riveting Netflix documentary, Five Foot Two. As Gaga tells it on stage tonight, in one of many spoken segments, producer Mark Ronson asked the singer what theme she would choose for an album if she could only make one more, and she replied: âJoanneâ. Joanne was Gagaâs aunt who died in 1974, aged 19, of the autoimmune disease lupus, a loss that scarred the Germanotta family indelibly, Gagaâs father in particular. Five Foot Two bore witness to the making of Joanne-the-album, and Gagaâs own struggle with injury and chronic fibromyalgic pain (the reason this tour was rescheduled). Joanne had fewer concepts, and more guitars and piano ballads; Gaga wore cut-off denim shorts rather than the pelts of discarded Kermit the Frogs. A load of rumoured new songs with RedOne â the producer of many of her most memorable hits â were left off the record."
- Kitty Empire, The Guardian
"I'd like to get Lady Gaga really high or slightly drunk and try to find out what's going on in there...note to self."
- David Crosby, 'Crosby, Stills, Nash & Gaga'
"Music has just become way too commercial these days and record companies simply don't develop artistic talent anymore. There are a few that are good, like Lady Gaga, but most of them don't have any originality to them."
- Belinda Carlisle, Billboard
"I've had shout-outs from Lady Gaga even, which I think is pretty cool. Itâs just great to see that thereâs nothing women canât do. Women are getting absolutely everything that â not only they deserve â but are extraordinarily good at."
- Cherie Currie, AAA Backstage
"Lady Gaga has spoken before about the inspiration sheâs found in the late rockstar, David Bowie (she even performed a tribute to him at the 2016 Grammys). And, on her mantel, she has a framed letter from him that simply and inexplicably reads: âDear Lady, Unfortunately I will not be in NYC for a few months but many thanks for the cake.â
- Jonathan Van Meter, Vogue
âWe need the younger generation. People like me, Jackson [Browne] and Bonnie [Raitt], weâve been doing benefits for 40 years and we need the younger generation, particularly people like Lady Gaga, with whatâs she got, 80 million people following her on Instagram or Facebook? We need those people that have incredible followings to be able to take a stand and bring information to their followers.â
- Graham Nash, Variety
'The Edge Of Glory' ~ Lady Gaga
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Post by petrolino on May 24, 2019 23:55:55 GMT
Piano Player
Her family say little Baby Gaga was drawn to a standing piano like a moth's drawn to a lit bulb. Though she could barely even reach the keys while standing on tiptoes, Gaga was already picking out tunes and chord progressions when she was around 4 years old. She gained a passion for fashion from her mother and is known for her associations with designers like the Italians Giorgio Armani and Donatella Versace, Frenchmen Jean Paul Gaultier and Christian Lacroix, British bad boy Alexander McQueen (who famously dressed Icelandic art fashionista Bjork) and German Karl Lagerfeld. In the world of art, she's known for her relationship with American Jeff Koons of York, Pennsylvania, but also holds down strong ties to Texan Tom Ford (director of the 2016 crime drama 'Nocturnal Animals') among many others. Gaga's keyed in collaborations with great photographers like Cindy Sherman, Ryan McGinley and Terry Richardson during this intensely creative period in her working life (I recommend you give Richard Kern that call - he knows you performed with Sonic Youth at Yoko Ono's benefit gig!) ... But I digress, Lady Gaga starts from the piano and works her way up; she enlisted Damien Hirst to transform one of her magical pianos years ago, and the rest, as they say, is history ...
"Lady Gaga has offered her Little Monsters a most unusual Christmas gift: a boozy, crass and carefree ditty titled "Stuck on F*ckin' You." As promised, the pop star issued the unreleased track off her best-selling album Born This Way as the clock struck midnight EST on Sunday (Dec. 25). Over a simple acoustic riff and stomping percussion from a drum machine, Gaga delivers a snarling ode to complicated romance that's reminiscent of Guyville-era Liz Phair: "Got all night, no cameras/We got no champagne, but we got drugs," she sings. The last 90 seconds of the song allows the singer to toss off some improvised come-ons and shout out her tour mates before she concludes, "Okay, just stop it, I could go on forever," with a laugh. On Wednesday night, Gaga revealed her plans to release the song, telling her fans that the track was "recorded live, in one take, on the tour bus. Uncensored." At the end of the track, she sings, "We're in Minnesota, and... it's a sold-out show again"; on Saturday she posted on Twitter, "So to give you a little background to the creation of this song. I wrote it in Minnesota after the Monster Ball on the tour bus." Gaga most recently performed in Minnesota at St. Paul's Xcel Energy Center in August 2010. "Stuck on F*ckin' You" follows last month's release of Born This Way: The Remix, which featured re-imaginings from her latest Billboard 200 chart-topper from Foster The People, The Weeknd and The Horrors, among others."
- Jason Lipshutz, The Hollywood Reporter
Pianissimo
"Brava, @ladygaga! (aka. Space Jelly from the year 2036) This girl can sing ANYTHING!!"
- Bette Midler tunes in to the 87th Academy Awards, Twitter
"@ladygaga made history w/her performance. F*^king BRILLIANT! Unparalleled. #LombardiTrophy goes to GAGA. Mic drop."
- Paula Abdul reacts to Lady Gaga's Super Bowl LI half-time show
Performing at the John Paul Jones Arena in Charlottesville, Virginia on a burning Construction Block Piano
'Artpop'/
"A classically-trained pianist, Elton John had his first piano lesson aged seven â and by the age of 11, he had won a junior scholarship to the Royal Academy of Music. According to one of his teachers at the Academy, John was played a four-page piece by Handel, and promptly played it back like a âgramophone recordâ.
As many aspiring pianists soon find out, Elton Johnâs piano parts are very difficult to play. Often they run counter to the vocal melodies which go over the top, to allow for Eltonâs famous flourishes, and this means that his melodies are very rarely doubled in the piano part. His 2009 live performance of âDonât Let The Sun Go Down On Meâ is a perfect example of this style, with his characteristic arpeggiated flow in the right hand broken up by some funky syncopated octaves. She might be better known for her extraordinary mezzo voice and meat-inspired costumes, but Lady Gaga was also once accepted to study piano at Juilliard. And from theatrical acoustic versions of her own songs to a brief flirtation with ragtime, she frequently plays the instrument in her live shows."
- Maddy Shaw Roberts, '7 Pop Stars Who Are Incredibly Good At The Piano'
Elton John & Lady Gaga join the Muppets
"Lady Gaga has the vocal quality of a mezzo. It was very convincing⊠I would think that several million people didn't know she could sing like that. She used portamento - gliding smoothly between the notes, very romantic phrasing - which is usually the province of straight opera singers. Most people who sing musical theatre now don't know anything about that - they only know either to sing very, very loud, or very very quiet. It did occur to me that she was holding the mic closer than Julie Andrews ever needed to. I am sure she would have the technique to carry over the orchestra. I think she could sing with the microphone a bit further way."
- Catherine Bott appraises Lady Gaga's 50th anniversary tribute to Robert Wise's musical 'The Sound Of Music' (1965) performed at the 87th Academy Awards ceremony, Classic FM
Bubble
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Laser
Lady Gaga has donated money to projects designed to invent futuristic pianos and engineer high technology musical platforms. She's also paid for the restoration of vintage pianos and written on the history of the instrument. The publication 'Piano Play-Along Volume 119 : Lady Gaga' is available through the Hal Leonard Corporation.
âI think Lady Gaga is f*cking awesome. Have you ever seen her play piano? Sheâll sit down and really throw down something. Aside from all the crazy outfits, sheâs a really f*cking good musician and she writes all that sh*t too."
- Zakk Wylde selects 'The Fame' for '10 Albums That Changed My Life'
For the 'Jazz & Piano' entertainment shows performed in Las Vegas, Lady Gaga returned to playing a classic Steinway ...
'Brown Eyes'
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Post by Admin on May 25, 2019 10:04:02 GMT
That's really good. A couple of sour notes, but very impressive nonetheless. Gaga's always at her best when she's acoustic... There's just no denying her talent.
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Post by petrolino on May 25, 2019 15:20:42 GMT
That's really good. A couple of sour notes, but very impressive nonetheless. Gaga's always at her best when she's acoustic... There's just no denying her talent.
It's pleasing to have free access to a performance like the one recorded at New York University. It reminds me of the live piano exams I took during my youth, an experience I always found horribly nerve-wracking, so much so that I'd get the shakes. My favourite among the early unofficial documentary films on Gaga - films that collect rare archive materials - is 'Glamourpuss'.
Back in 2009 - 2010, I recall reactions were decidedly mixed in the music world. Prince, like so many working within the mainstream pop industry, was superhigh on Adele, yet he declined to comment on Gaga, saying he'd need to meet her to see what her deal was. Multi-instrumentalist Joanna Newsom made headlines by being quite dismissive, branding Gaga as "Arty Spice". Bjork was understandably asked about Gaga and said she appreciated her creativity, though the music wasn't for her. On the other hand, there were a lot of rock n rollers of the past who did like her, as they embraced the wild theatrics and outrageous stage antics as the work of one of their own. Some even recognised the arrival of the woman we now know to be the undisputed queen of the earworm.
"If you finding yourself mentally bopping to âAlejandro, Ale-ale-jandro,â at unexpected moments, you are in good company. Scientists studying the phenomenon of earworms say they have discovered why some songs get stuck in your head, finding in the process that Lady Gaga hits are commonly playing in peopleâs minds. A team of researchers from the UK and Germany say that specific features of a tuneâs melody â including tempo and pitch changes â are responsible for some songs becoming earworms, although the general popularity of the song appears to influence how many people will have it on mental repeat. Writing in the journal Psychology of Aesthetics, Creativity and the Arts, the researchers describe how they collected the names of common earworms from 3,000 individuals who had been quizzed in an online survey on the topic. The upshot was a list of 1,558 catchy tunes that had appeared in the UK charts - jingles, childrenâs tunes and classical pieces were excluded - with more than 400 of the songs named more than once. Top of the pops for most frequently named earworms was Lady Gagaâs Bad Romance, cited by 33 individuals, with her hits Alejandro and Poker Face also appearing in the list of the top nine. The aptly named Canât Get You Out Of My Head by Kylie Minogue scooped second place."
- Nicola Davis (writing in The Guardian), 'The Science Of Earworms'
Sheryl Crow discusses Lady Gaga's addictivity with Mara Davis
That performance of 'Speechless' demonstrates the evolution of her bow-hair look, one of contemporary art's most striking creations. In this instance, I think it's got a touch of Gary Oldman's Count Dracula buns about it. Back then, Gaga was even in the running to play a live-action Sailor Moon due to anime fans expressing interest in such a prospect.
It's difficult for me to select videos to share as Lady Gaga has a delightfully alarming habit of shedding her clothes during performances. I love her jazz version of 'You & I' but can't post it for this reason, though I do believe its content is borderline (I erred on the side of caution). Another I rejected is the epic video for 'Marry The Night'. But I figure there's still plenty on offer, notably some of her early performances and acoustic set-ups.
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Post by petrolino on May 25, 2019 20:46:11 GMT
Picture This
'Dance To The Music'
7 Memorable Stories plucked from 10 Years of Outrage & Controversy
* Lady Gaga is a well-hung madman adopting different disguises.
* Gaga murdered Russian pop star Lina Morgana and stole her identity.
* Gaga is an anti-Catholic corruptor of souls and a bad role model whose music videos should be banned from mainstream television.
* She ended Lou Reed's life in 2013 as a result of rampant egomania running wild.
* She's the cousin of pop singer Madonna (Louise Ciccone, who's also part Italian / French-Canadian).
* She's a distant cousin of musician Avril Lavigne (who's French-Canadian).
* Simon Cowell quashed the idea of her writing songs and voicing Betty Boop for his abandoned Max Fleischer project after hearing Gaga had gained 25lb (11.33kg) in weight.
Reckless entertainer Jo Calderone attends the VMA Awards in 2011
Scenes From An Italian Restaurant
'Judas'
American Psychedelica
"Lady Gaga will be immortalised in the name of a newly identified genus of fern. Researchers at Duke University in North Carolina have given 19 different species of fern the genus "Gaga", in recognition of the singer's "fervent defence of equality and individual expression". By honouring Lady Gaga in this way, the academics have doubtless paved the way for a series of fern-based costumes. Indeed, study leader Kathleen Pryer said the decision was inspired by Gaga's outfit at the 2010 Grammy awards: her heart-shaped Armani PrimĂ© getup apparently recalled the bisexual reproductive stage of these ferns. It was even, Pryer observed, the appropriate shade of green. While 17 of the ferns are simply being recategorised from the genus Cheilanthes, two are new discoveries: Gaga germanotta, found in Costa Rica, has been baptised with a reference to the musician's real name; Gaga monstraparva, from Mexico, gets its moniker from the Latin for "little monster" â Gaga's term for her fans. "As we started to consider [naming them after Gaga], the ferns themselves gave us more reasons why it was a good choice," Pryer said. At least one species, for example, has the sequence "GAGA" among its DNA base pairs. The ferns also have "somewhat fluid definitions of gender" and can even self-fertilise to spawn a new fern. More importantly, Pryer and her colleagues are big fans of Gaga's songs. "We often listen to her music while we do our research," She said. "We think that her second album, Born This Way, is enormously empowering, especially for disenfranchised people and communities like LGBT, ethnic groups, women â and scientists who study odd ferns!" In September, scientists at the University of Thailand gave Lady Gaga's name to a newly identified species of parasitic wasp, Aleiodes gaga."
- Sean Michaels, The Guardian
Cosplay Identities
"If I decide to make a coat red in the show, it's not just red, I think: is it communist red? Is it cherry cordial? Is it ruby red? Or is it apple red? Or the big red balloon red?"
- Lady Gaga
Evil Mickey Mouse
Andrew Garfield, Lady Gaga & Lily Cole perform Hansel & Gretel ('Brothers Grimm Tableaux' photographed by Annie Leibovitz) {Snow White orgy t-shirt is forbidden}
Edward Scissorhands
Little Bo Peep's whirling burlesque at the Met Gala (flipside to Sleeping Beauty from several years earlier)
'Applause' - TeraBrite
Accessories : Hats & Glasses
"Despite having hustled, stripped and set fire to hairspray cans with her tits out in bars across New York City for years, it wasn't until releasing her debut album in 2008 that Lady Gaga became a household name. Bewildered journalists couldn't make sense of her platinum hair bows, tiny leotards and that purple teacup she used to carry with her wherever she went. But she was an immediate hit among pop fans, who became enthralled by her inherently flamboyant sense of style, increasingly creative music videos and refreshing determination to push boundaries in a pop arena that was actually quite cool at the time, but not particularly weird. Although Gaga herself was undeniably eccentric, her music â particularly at the start of her career â was broadly palatable. Despite her debut being marketed as a complex Warholian exploration of fame, the tracks were catchy, repetitive and synth-driven. That said, they were also f*cking massive. The pulsing synths and hypnotic chorus of "Just Dance" were the ideal accompaniment to WKD-fuelled teen house parties worldwide and the built-for-choreography beats of "Poker Face" had the ability to turn any dingy small town gay club into a euphoric, glittering stampede. Kids across the world ate up her addictive hits, avant-garde outfits and messages of acceptance, propelling her to the status of global icon in just a handful of months. But it wasn't until the summer of 2009 that these aforementioned kids were given a name: "Little Monsters", which she began calling out to the crowd during her live shows. Giving a whole fandom a nickname of sorts was already commonplace in K-pop, but Gaga was the first to do it on such a grand scale in a western context â using it to describe the way fans would writhe, scream and dance in the pits of her high-octane performances. Naming her fans did two things. First, it created an "us" and "them" narrative. You were either a true Gaga fan, or you weren't. And second, it grouped them all together in a way that made sense online. For a generation of kids who existed on the internet, being a Little Monster meant more than going to a few gigs. It meant having a support network of like-minded people from around the world that you could interact with, like an extended family. Finally, there was a name for all the people who spent their waking hours immersed in the online world of Lady Gaga; one that was getting bigger by the year. This formation quickly created a new blueprint: Bieber fans dubbed themselves, "Beliebers", Taylor got her "Swifties" and the "Rihanna Navy" formed. But Gaga was the first. Professor Mathieu Deflem â who wrote the book Lady Gaga and the Sociology of Fame and dedicated an entire university course syllabus to her influence â agrees that Gaga's effect on fandom culture in this way is notable: "I would say that Gaga has at least facilitated this process for other pop stars and celebrities," he says. "Other stars now constantly name their fanbases â so much so that the effect is kind of wearing off. That also means that there is only one Lady Gaga, and that the impact of imitating her or adopting her various strategies are limited."
- Jake Hall, Vice
'Mary Jane Holland'
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Post by petrolino on May 31, 2019 22:37:46 GMT
đą Little Boots đą
Dead Disco
Pop Muzik
Singer-songwriter Little Boots was born in Blackpool, Lancashire, a coastal town sometimes described as the entertainment capital of the north-west. Blackpool is the birthplace of Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Graham Nash (the Hollies) and Robert Smith (the Cure), Maddy Prior of folk legends Steeleye Span, and it's home to psychedelic behemoth Jethro Tull. In their melodic song 'Autumn Almanac', the Kinks sang, 'I like my football on a Saturday, Roast beef on Sundays, all right, I go to Blackpool for my holidays, Sit in the open sunlight ...' Boots' father is a used car salesman and her mother is a writer. She attended Rossall School in Fleetwood, Lancashire; in 1874, Rossall became the first Church of England school to play a Catholic school (Stonyhurst College) in an inter-school sports fixture (cricket), leading Protestant newspapers to warn against such activities and advise Rossall parents to "be wary of encroaching papism". Boots' piano skills and ability on flute earned her a music scholarship, so she took up the harp. She developed her delicate voice while singing in choirs and took vocal lessons as part of her classical training, but Boots has always identified herself as a musician rather than a singer.
Boots entered the ITV talent competition 'Pop Idol' at the age of 16 but was eliminated in the early rounds. Undeterred, she performed with the Lancashire Youth Jazz Orchestra and as part of a jazz trio. She moved to Leeds, Yorkshire to pursue higher education at the prestigious local university, attaining a first-class honours degree. Boots subsidised her course by playing lounge jazz in hotels and bed & breakfasts around the north-west of England. At Leeds University, she formed the band Dead Disco with fellow students Lucy Catherwood and Marie France (co-founders of the retro-boutique fashion brand ART DISCO). Dead Disco released 4 singles but disbanded before they'd had a chance to record their debut album with producer Greg Kurstin in Los Angeles, California.
Boots returned home and embarked upon a solo recording career. She also recorded a 360 Session and participated in the making of an accompanying documentary film with synthesiser player Chris Kemsley and drummer Ben Chetwood. Together, they performed an exclusive set at Blackpool Sixth Form College where Boots had studied. This set was broadcast by Channel 4.
'I Found That Essence Rare' ~ Gang Of Four
'Hands' (June 5, 2009) {10th Anniversary}
Victoria Hesketh (Little Boots) & Florence Welch (Florence & The Machine)
'Symmetry' - Little Boots & Phil Oakey
"The course was the main thing that drew me to Leeds, it was quite unique, no-one else did it in quite the same way. It was not far from home, either. The music scene at the time felt very active. It was an exciting place to be. The Kaiser Chiefs were just taking off then. It was an exciting time. Dead Disco were an indie band with some electronic (elements) in there. We were inspired by bands coming out then. I write very poppy songs, it's naturally in me."
- Little Boots, Yorkshire Evening Post
"Does this remind you of anything? At a pop awards event, a lithe, aerobicised woman storms the stage in a platinum blonde wig, leather and diamantĂ©-studded corset, spiky S&M boots and a conical bra that shoots fire. Thatâs not Madonna, circa Blonde Ambition. It is Lady GaGa, currently the hottest new global star in pop, stealing the show at the MuchMusic awards in Canada last month. Or how about this: an electro duo fronted by a pale, skinny, androgynous young red headed woman with a big quiff, tailored suits and garish make-up, her high strung vocal blaring over cheesy synths and chintzy drum machine as she insists she is coming in for the kill. Not the Eurythmics, circa 1983, but breakthrough British stars La Roux, whose latest single, âBulletproofâ, went straight in at number one. And there is plenty more where that came from: Little Boots delivering delirious electropop in a minidress of reflective mirrors and duetting with The Human Leagueâs Phil Oakey; and floundering rock trio The Noisettes reinventing themselves with uplifting disco pop hit âDonât Upset The Rhythmâ featuring frontwoman Shingai Shoniwa in shaped hair and glam Afro couture Ă la Grace Jones."
- Neil McCormick, The Telegraph
"As far as Little Boots is concerned, only one thing happens at this recording studio in north London. "This is where I hang out with 80s legends," she laughs. Earlier this year, she recorded a track called Symmetry, from her top five album Hands, with Phil Oakey of the Human League in this very room. And today she is going to be rehearsing here for a BBC 6 Music session with Gary Numan, synthpop's prince of darkness, a man who 30 years ago was one of the most adored pop stars in Britain, even if the music press treated him more as a figure of mirth than menace. His head full of Philip K Dick and JG Ballard, Numan was, to say the least, a different kind of pop star. He wore boiler suits, painted his face white and lined his eyes kohl-black; he coldly intoned songs about machines programmed to rape (Down in the Park), robot prostitutes (Are 'Friends' Electric?) and sci-fi ultraviolence (Cars) over icy keyboard patterns. Virtually unimaginable in this Simon Cowell age, his dystopian visions and songs of alienation connected in a big way with the British public, making him the strangest of teen sensations and the biggest solo artist in that period between punk and the arrival of the new romantics. Little Boots and Numan have yet to meet, so Blackpool's pop princess is a bit nervous. "He's got such an aura," she says. "You don't quite know what to expect. His whole aesthetic is quite uncomfortable yet somehow enjoyable. There's something really uneasy about it, a dark, unsettling vibe, that I really like." Does Little Boots â Victoria Hesketh to her family â believe one can draw a line between what Numan was doing in 1979, Year Zero for British synthpop, and what Little Boots is doing in 2009? "Maybe, although I don't know what it would go via," she says. "All I know is, I listened to a lot of his albums and he influenced the sound I make. Even though my music's upbeat, that doesn't necessarily mean it's uplifting â it can still be dark. I like that: uplifting music with dark lyrics." When Numan enters the studio, he is far from the impassive cyberman of lore. Dressed in jeans, black T-shirt and Doc Martens, like an off-duty metalhead, he is unswervingly friendly and polite. He also has an unmissable shock of thick black hair, just one of the things, along with his aeronautical misadventures (he famously used to fly â and crash â planes) and brief support for Margaret Thatcher, for which he was lampooned in the UK press. Today, though, he is lauded by a new generation of electro popsters, including Sugababes (who had one of the hits of this decade with Freak Like Me, based on a sample of Are 'Friends' Electric?) and Basement Jaxx (whose Where's Your Head At? sampled Numan's M.E.). In the US, he is hailed as one of the greats by industrial rockers such as Nine Inch Nails and Marilyn Manson, while the likes of Dr Dre, the Neptunes and Timbaland have used snippets of his music as the springboard for their futuristic R&B. As it turns out, that pokerfaced demeanour of his was just a front all along. After he and Hesketh exchange pleasantries, Numan explains what lay behind the facade of arrogant disdain. "I was burying a lot of emotion," he says of the extraordinary moment when he was catapulted, aged 21, from nonentity to household name virtually overnight. "I was very young and still living at home, being mollycoddled, and I hadn't experienced much, but like every teenager I felt angst. My problem was, I had Asperger's syndrome, and that had a big impact on how I related to the world." At grammar school in Slough, the 15-year-old Gary Webb was referred to a child psychologist following a series of violent outbursts during which he would "smash things up, scream and shout, get in people's faces and break stuff". He was given antidepressants and anxiolytics, and diagnosed with Asperger's. A couple of years later, reborn as Numan, he sought solace in punk, although he was unable to identify with the scene's politicised rage. "I didn't find any comfort in what they were talking about because they seemed to have more specific problems than mine," he says. Numan suppressed his anger, inadvertently inventing a new emotion for pop: new-wave numbness. "I got really hung up with this whole thing of not feeling, being cold about everything, not letting emotions get to you, or presenting a front of not feeling. It seemed to be very important at that time, which is why I wrote songs like Metal â about machines wanting to be human â or M.E., about being the last machine in the world, not the last person. It was all about denying emotions, which was fake because obviously I was highly emotional; I just couldn't control it. So I wrote about being the opposite of that â totally in control of your emotions, completely cold, because that's the image of myself I wanted to project."
- Paul Lester, The Guardian
'Mathematics' - Little Boots
'Beat Of Your Heart' (unreleased demo stack album, bootlegged)
"In attempting to straddle the tricky divide between 'credible' and 'pop', Marina and the Diamonds ends up encountering similar problems to label-mate Little Boots. After two limited releases last year on the Neon Gold imprint, Marina has opted for the slow-build, unleashing the lovely and understated piano ballad 'Obsessions' last February, followed by the almost-perfect pop paean to outsiderhood, 'I'm Not A Robot'."
- Mary Bellamy, Drowned In Sound
'Marina & The Diamonds' perform 'Prima Donna'
'Nocturnes' (2013)
âI was quite naive when I started out. All this hype happened and everyone had decided what kind of artist I was going to be before Iâd even figured it out. The first album had to be rushed to be finished in time for all this hype and everyone was like âyou know, youâre the English Lady Gaga, thatâs what you are,â and I probably wasnât that. And I definitely am not now. So it was kind of difficult.â
- Little Boots, Music OMH
"Today's the big day," said Victoria Hesketh. "It's kind of exciting and scary." The U.K. singer, better known as 29-year-old electro-pop artist Little Boots's new album, Nocturnes, has just premiered, and she's currently en route from Boston to New York City. Later, she'll play a pair of showsâincluding an intimate album-release gig at the Diesel store in Soho, NYC; tomorrow, she'll hold court over a sold-out crowd at the Music Hall of Williamsburg. Somewhere in between, perhaps in the early-morning hours, she noted, when the madness dies down, "maybe we'll celebrate." It's been some time since Hesketh felt this sort of nervous anticipation. In the digital age of music, in which artists churn out new albums at a fever pitch, the four years between Little Boots's 2009 debut album, Hands, and her latest, is a practical eternity. "It was nice to not have to rush the album," she contended. Then she paused. "But at the same time, I didn't need four years." Still, she added, "It wouldn't have been the same album if it hadn't taken me the time, and I hadn't gone through the whole process to find the right people and getting the right songs for it." The delay was due in large part to Hesketh nailing down the precise vision for her new album. Whereas Nocturnes still retains the singer's trademark blend of dance music, synth pop and house, it feels far more ethereal than Hands, and is a definitively more cohesive effort. "That was really deliberate," she says, adding that she feels this album better expresses who she is as an artist. Coming to the States, she added, is a welcome relief. At home in the U.K., where Little Boots is more of a household name, fans attending her gigs come largely psyched for her pop numbers. Comparatively, "in the States, it's a little bit different," she explained. "Because we didn't have the same chart success, the people who come to the shows know more about me as an artist, and they get it a little bit more." We also had to ask, what types of styles are dominating her wardrobe these days. "I've been wearing vintage 1970s, Studio 54-type dresses, and lots of jumpsuits," she revealed. "Ever since I've been a little girl [my clothes] have been really bound up in the music I'm listening to or creating."
- Mari Sarai, Elle
"Almost four years after her debut record Hands propelled Little Boots into the limelight, electro-pop songstress Victoria Hesketh has returned with a new album Nocturnes. Produced by Tim Goldsworthy of DFA Records fame and featuring a host of collaborations that include Andy Butler from Hercules and the Love Affair and Simian Mobile Discoâs James Ford, Nocturnes is the most personal and âmeaningfulâ statement of Heskethâs career. With a love for analogue synths and a record bag full of 80âs disco Hesketh has fused her passion for the retro dancefloor into an expansive and distinctly modern pop sound."
- Anton Spice, The Vinyl Factory
"Her 2009 debut, Hands, might have launched Victoria Hesketh to global acclaim, but sheâs been hard at work building the Little Boots sound ever since. Darker, deeper, and more polished, the follow-up, Nocturnes, carves bold synth-pop from a unique palette of sound. The album stomps through â70s disco, â90s house, and everything in between, but itâs never disorienting. Instead, Little Boots meticulously threads together each of her influences. Nocturnes might be steeped in electronics, but Little Boots makes sure to keep one foot firmly planted in the analog world."
- Sasha Geffen, Consequence Of Sound
'Shake' - Little Boots
'Working Girl' (2015)
"Last summer, Little Boots, aka Victoria Hesketh, released her new album Working Girl, plus two series of more recent remixes in the fall. Hesketh is a woman of many trades, pop icon by night, sometimes turning into a House DJ, label owner during the day⊠and still finding time to dip a toe in the new tech pool."
- Nadia Says, Kaltblut
"People always used to tell me how lucky I was doing what I love but I never see it as luck, rather as hard work, determination and persistence. I know a lot of people who talk about wishing to do something or who dream of quitting a job they hate and doing something else; they talk about it like it is an unachievable fantasy, whereas if they were proactive and just tried to make things happen they might surprise themselves. Iâm not saying itâs easy but if you think how much time we waste on social media for example rather than going out into the world and having actual experiences⊠just small changes in your life balance can have a big impact."
- Little Boots, Kaltblut
"Striking in office chic â a pencil skirt, monochrome shirt, sharp black vintage Christian Dior blazer complete with oversized shoulder pads, and a neat bob of peroxide blonde hair â Little Bootsâs appearance is quite a contrast from the pixie-like pop princess in sparkly dresses of a few years ago. Anointed the next big thing in pop in 2009, she topped the Sound Of poll and was nominated for the Britsâ Criticsâ Choice. Today, Victoria Hesketh â named Little Boots for her tiny, size three, feet â has requested that we do the interview in an office setting, to bring to life the theme and title of her new EP, Business Pleasure, which marks a clear step from her shiny pop past. âThereâs huge pressure to look a certain way,â the 30-year-old says, reflecting on her naive earlier years as a pop star moulded by the music industry. âAnd, letâs be honest, itâs to look the way that is a manâs idealised version of what should be â a perfect singing Barbie. It goes along with the whole thing of the pop stars are the girls who sing the songs and look pretty and then the boys are in the back doing all the brain work.â Hesketh didnât start out as a pop star plucked out and moulded by industry bigwigs. Instead, she was carried away by an industry that wanted to make her a chart-topping star. Classically trained from the age of five in piano, flute and singing, she grew up in Blackpool and was writing her own songs by the time she was in her teens. She first drew attention to her music by posting self-penned and recorded songs on Myspace and YouTube. âFrom the very beginning I tried to defy that with my little YouTube videos, creating all my music on these gadgets,â she recalls. âFast forward a year or two from that and I was in a little silver dress with jelly fillets down my top, three inches of make-up, hair extensions, eye lashes, and God knows what else.â Not that she blames the record label. âIt wasnât like I was just a puppet getting pushed around. But if youâve grown up singing in the mirror dreaming of being a pop star and someone says, âok, weâll make this come true, but you have to do thisâŠâ, youâre probably going to go, âoh, ok thenâ.â And so, very quickly, having moved to London, she was living the dream, experiencing the excesses of pop. She recalls the time she performed a showcase on the top of New Yorkâs Trump Tower and was paid in diamond jewellery. âItâs in my mumâs house â I think she sometimes wears it,â she says. âI was in crazy situations where moneyâs getting thrown around â just being disconnected from music. I was sat next to Benny [Andersson] from Abba and Sandra Bullock on Jonathan Ross and I was like, âthis is insaneâ, and then I went back to my crappy flat-share in Hackney and said âdo you mind if I leave my equipment in the front room for the night, Iâve just been on Jonathan Ross and Iâm a bit tiredâ. It was a very surreal time where on one level youâre doing these huge things and on another level youâre very normal.â Little Boots parted ways with her record label after 'Nocturnes'. Not that she has any regrets about the experiences. âI had some amazing opportunities and Iâm not saying this big bad thing happened to me. Itâs just quite weird fronting something when youâre one cog in a wheel of something much bigger. Now I try to run the whole machine.â And she really does; there are no record label committees assembling to decide on her hair colour, extensions or next single release. During the making of her second album, Nocturnes, Hesketh parted ways with Atlantic and launched her own independent label, On Repeat. Itâs no vanity project; she talks animatedly about her plans to start releasing music by other artists in the near future. Nocturnes came out on the label but was written for a major label to be a major pop release; nevertheless, keen to bring it back in line with her love of the leftfield side of pop, she had it produced by DFAâs Tim Goldsworthy. Business Pleasure and her upcoming third album are the first releases over which she has full creative control."
- Elisa Bray, The Independent
"Born Victoria Hesketh, Little Boots has released two full length albums, both of which presented boundary-pushing ideas of what modern pop and dance music could be. Hands, released in 2009, preceded the wave of festival-tent EDM that eventually engulfed Top 40; follow-up Nocturnes repurposed fast-paced thumping melodies from electronicaâs past, presaging present-day danceâs streak of â90s-informed nostalgia. Working Girl feels like her most comprehensive self-portrait to date, a series of keyboard-pounding, strobing songs built around a common theme â what itâs like to be a woman in the workforce, as its title suggests â that Hesketh made totally on her own terms. Thatâs not to say the freedom wasnât a bit daunting at first. Fully untethered from a corporate contract for the first time, Little Boots remembers the initial fears that drove her to dig deep on her new album. âI think Iâve really learned to trust myself,â the 31-year-old says. âItâs a thing that I maybe didnât do before. When youâre independent you have to really run everything. You canât decide for other people, you canât let someone else get on with his job and then blame him if it goes wrong.â With total autonomy, the singer maintains that her mission remains the same: bridging the gap between accessibility and avant-garde. âI want to make up the most poppy music in the most weird way I can, so Iâm just constantly trying to marry these two worlds of pop and rock,â she says. âYouâre in this iffy place the minute you start making records thinking about pleasing others. Thatâs your downfall, that means somethingâs going wrong. Iâve really learned to ignore all that outside noise.â
- Brennan Carley, Spin
'Working Girl' _ Little Boots
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Post by petrolino on Jun 1, 2019 0:20:35 GMT
Little Sonic Darts
In the early 1960s, New Yorker Robert Moog and Californian Donald Buchla were building synth technology that would change the musical landscape. Little Boots has been studying the work of these masters while living in L.A., a city she's made her home away from home. She performs electrolab sets and dj's in the zone, she's been guest speaker at major events like the NAMM (National Association of Music Merchants) exhibition in southern California, she's been interviewed alongside some of the greatest minds active within ambient and electronica and she's worked with a variety of musicians, mixers and producers. Early in her career, Boots was inspired by the counterculture explosions that occurred in Britain, France and Germany in 1968, which is significant as these were movements born out of protest. The emergence of bands like Can, Kraftwerk, Amon Duul II, Popol Vuh, Neu, Faust and Tangerine Dream occurred as Francoise Hardy and France Gall were engineering dreamy pop numbers within an experimental landscape sub-occupied by bands like Magma and Acanthus. Boots' open embrace of French pioneers ranges from ambient artist Jean-Michel Jarre to disco king Marc Cerrone, yet she also spins discs from deep house dj Laurent Garnier, electronica bands Air and Daft Punk and electroclash artists Miss Kittin & Hacker. In Paris, they call her Mademoiselle Vicky. Her remix app is named the 'Reactive Remixer'. When she retires, she plans to tend to her garden.
"J'Ă©tais le Lady gaga de mon Ă©poque."
- Marc Cerrone
'The Four Horsemen' - Aphrodite's Child (Demis Roussos, Silver Koulouris, Vangelis Papathanassio & Lukas Sideras)
Multi-Instrumentalist in Blackpool & L.A.
'Stuck On Repeat' - Little Boots
See No Evil
Paul Lester interviews Mike Oldfield (The Guardian) :
Paul Lester - How much do you remember of your LSD trips?
Mike Oldfield - Gawd, quite a lot. They were very, very scary. I think it's better to go the new age route, where you raise consciousness through chanting and meditation, rather than take drugs. Having said that, we wouldn't have all those beautiful tracks like Lucy in the Sky With Diamonds, and we probably wouldn't have Tubular Bells â a lot of things, really â without drugs.
Paul Lester - When was your last trip?
Mike Oldfield - Back in the 60s, I think. It's a life-changing thing. You're never the same afterwards. I was in such a state of confusion, insecurity and paranoia that I had to go through the Exegesis rebirthing experience to get all that out of my system. It was like going on a military boot camp for four days. It was excruciating.
Keytar
Tenori On
Piano & Stylophone
'Boyfriend' - Little Boots & Brother Boots
Hear No Evil
"Iâve had the unique perspective of coming into the film scoring world at a time when it was still the golden age. The old studio system was still intact when I first became interested, so I remember and met a lot of the old-timers. From the time I started my career until the present, the revolution of technology has changed every facet of film scoring and filmmaking. At the beginning, the editors were working on Moviolas and I was working with pencil and paper. Little by little, over a period of 15 years, which culminated about 10 years ago, there was a total transformation from a non-computerized set of tools to a computerized set of tools, and the people who survived that change have had to change their skill-set. The editors that were cutting on Moviolas and flatbeds are now having to work in software programs like Avid and Final Cut. The cinematographers who were working in 35 millimeter now are working in digital. The composers who were recording onto analogue tape are now recording onto drives. And all of the technology that records picture, sound and everything else â including scripts â is all computerized. I donât think of myself as a pioneer, but I was using a lot of these tools in the early 1970s. I did show Walter Mirisch what I had intended to do with Mr. Majestyk using some fairly crude tools at the time. I had an early Moog, a few early synthesizers. People donât know this but there were actually some consumer-grade Moog products in the â70s â a thing called the Moog Satellite â I still have one. I had the ARP 2600 â I still have that. Nightmare on Elm Street was recorded in a home studio, which was not very common in the year 1983. I was not uncomfortable with the technology. I was usually one step ahead as it came and I was very happy to have it."
- Charles Bernstein, Artsmania
"No paycheck for three years. I lost my house. I had to borrow money from Sean Cunningham to pay my taxes. Also, my first marriage had failed, and I was smoking a lot of grass, then graduated to cocaine. Finally, I walked away from the drugs. And I had this one idea, so I set off to write a script."
- Wes Craven, 'Freddy Lives : An Oral History'
"We were living in Venice, and Wes had a studio in the back. Heâd be there in his bathrobe and a pith helmet, banging on the computer. And oh my God, it was a wonderful script."
- Mimi Craven, 'Freddy Lives : An Oral History'
Tambourine
Minimoog
Laser Harp
'If...' - Jean-Michel Jarre & Little Boots
Speak No Evil
"By the late 60s, Terry Riley was already celebrated in experimental musical circles. In fact, since 1964, the Californian-born musician had become a cult figure on the west coast scene. That's because in November that year saw the first performance took place of In C, still Riley's most famous work, and variously heralded as the first masterpiece of minimalism and the work that ushered in a new musical era, after which the world was never quite the same. Some of that may have turned out to be true, but when Riley came up with In C on a bus ride in San Francisco, it was a piece that was important to him for different reasons. The work crystallised his musical thinking up to that point (as Keith Potter reveals in his book Four Musical Minimalists): his interest in improvisation â already cultivated thanks to collaborations with Pauline Oliveros, Morton Subotnick and others â and his love of John Coltrane and Miles Davis. In C also reflected and refracted the inspiration of the repetitive musical structures he had heard and loved in north African music. It was written as a piece that was defined by the interactions between the members of a diverse group of musicians and which would be different in terms of duration, structure and tempo every time it was played. And, like so many of the greatest musical breakthroughs, In C is simple to understand, but rich, subtle and diverse when you hear it performed. In C's score is made from 53 musical modules, fragments of musical material and melodies (and not all of them in the key of C either. As the piece progresses, different waves of pitch-centres and modalities are cycled through.) The players move steadily through the fragments, although they can omit them as well, and the modules can be played faster or slower than they're written, accompanied by an ever-present chiming octave C in a piano or mallet instrument. (The idea for that time-keeping piano part could have been Steve Reich's, who, along with Oliveros and Subotnick, was part of the ensemble who played the piece for the first time at the San Francisco Tape Centre.) How many times each is repeated, and how long a performance lasts, will vary each time the piece is played by different forces: it's possible to race through it in 20 minutes, or to luxuriate in it for an hour and a half. Part of In C's notoriety is that it also seems to embody the hippy-ish sensibility of west coast America at the time, and to evoke a trippy, blissed-out state of musical mind. (On his own use of drugs, Riley told William Duckworth that LSD was "the element of the consciousness-raising movement ⊠[with] marijuana as a sister drug ⊠It had a lot to do with those times, you know. There was something emerging then that people were hungry for: almost as a public at large, especially young people. I know we weren't interested in making money. We were really only interested in having these mystical experiences.") But that's to miss the point of In C's musical qualities, and its subtly brilliant answer to the conundrum of how you create a piece that simultaneously empowers its performers and insists that they listen to each other and take responsibility for the performance as much as the composer, but which is also always essentially itself, a piece that cannot be mistaken for any other. In C does that brilliantly. Along with Cardew's Paragraph 7 from The Great Learning, it's as elegant and beautiful a solution as there is."
- Tom Service, The Guardian
"Had it been anyone else except Giorgio Moroder I would have said no⊠but this promised to be a night to remember. As the inventor of Italio-Disco, a major player in the creation and spread of Euro-Disco, a key architect in the creation of EDM, as an influential Academy Award winning film composer, a four time Grammy winner, the Svengali behind icon Donna Summer, and a slew of other accomplishments, it was clear that if I allowed my snobbishness to prevent me from going, I would regret it for the rest of my life. And no, it certainly did not hurt that Little Boots was on the bill. On the way to the venue I let my mind wander on the past. As a gay black rocker, looking back on Moroder put me in an interesting and unique place. While back in the day rock fans tired and hated disco with a passion [that Comisky Park debacle in the summer of 1979, theâ some would say racist and homophobicâ rejection of black music on rock radio and the hypocritical embrace of white rockers who scored massive hits with a disco beatâamong them The Rolling Stones, Queen, Rod Stewart, and KISS] and criticized itâs adherence to the all important beat [something funk did not do], its seeming monotony, and a wealth of artists who were largely anonymous, there were just as many pleasures to be enjoyed. One thing that always impressed me about Moroder was that he could apply his style to rock as well as disco to brilliant effect. David Bowieâs original version of âCat People (Putting Out Fire)â was an arresting and moody track that presented the constantly morphing singer in a sinister and overtly sexual light, which was new for him at the time (1982). His handling of Bonnie Tyler on the rocker âHere She Comesâ from the forgotten Metropolis soundtrack clearly outdid Kim Carnesâs âBette Davis Eyesâ as the ultimate tribute to beady eyed bitch beauties everywhere (drag queens in twenty seven states would kill for that track). I also remember hearing âCall Meâ by Blondie blasting all over the radio in the summer of 1980 and it felt like nirvana; Moroder and Debby Harry had managed to take the business end of disco and fuse it with hard new wave and punk, creating a song that the gays, blacks, punks, rockers, and new wavers could all dance together to (and they did with a vengeanceâŠthe song stayed at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 chart for six weeks). And though I was not her biggest fan, I found that Moroderâs collaborations with Donna Summer were hardly just product; when they werenât creating concept albums (Once Upon A Time [1977] used Cinderella as a starting point, Bad Girls [1978] alluded to âladies of the nightâ without coming out and saying it, and The Four Seasons of Love[1976] offered an extended song for each season) they were adapting pretentious oldies like âMacArthur Park Suiteâ into swirling epics so lush and glamorous you needed an aqua lung to get through them. Where Noel Harrisonâs original (and William Shatnerâs cover) were dead on arrival, Summer and Moroderâs version seduced listeners to shake there asses and give in to the fantasy. Looking back on the late seventies where me and my cousins would funk out at The Warehouse on a Saturday night, I had to admit that I had forgotten how much fun the music and times were. This was before radio demographics, the internet, AIDS, the two Bushâs, a couple of recessions, corporate take overs, school shootings, seasonal terrorist attacks, mass deportations, and God knows what else ruined the party. Being young used to be a lot of fun, and with dance music, and particularly disco, it was an avenue of discovery and glamour. All of that nostalgia was clearly on Little Bootsâ mind as well, as she came out in a white sparkly loose fitting pants suit and looked like one of those âhip birdsâ from a British youth exploitation movie from the 1960âs (think of Judy Geeson and you get the picture). For her set she went for a selection of pungent oldies (The Jackson 5âs âDancing Machine,â a muscular re-mix of Sylvesterâs classic âDo You Wanna Funk?,â âLet the Music Playâ by Shannon) before closing with a transcendent âYou Make Me Feel Mighty Realâ (Sylvester again) and her own âNew In Townâ which had the already sweaty audience exhausted. Then the Master took the stage and to say the least, what happened next was nowhere near what I expected. Looking grand and magisterial, the white haired Moroder (whoâs now somehow 78 years old) came out and spent the night spinning his hits while projections flashed on the screen behind him (exactly why I donât go for DJ shows to begin with). But rather than calling it a âjuke box concertâ this mash up did something far more and unexpectedâŠit drew me in, engaged me, and tickled me to no end."
- James Currie, 'Giorgio Moroder And Little Boots Live In Chicago At Thalia Hall' (In The Loop)
Moby, Gary Numan, Jean-Michel Jarre, Nic Harcourt, Little Boots, Julia Holter & Hans Zimmer
Inside the Laboratory Platform Stack : Little Boots performs 'Shadows' with MAUD (the macro modular vertical synthesizer) designed by incite in Los Angeles / Little Boots spins 'People From Ibiza' during a Disco House set in The Lab LA (Mixmag platform)
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Post by laughingsnowman on Jun 1, 2019 10:55:53 GMT
I gather you're a fan . I am too but I haven't really liked anything she has done musically since Artpop.
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Post by petrolino on Jun 1, 2019 12:36:47 GMT
I gather you're a fan . I am too but I haven't really liked anything she has done musically since Artpop. I am, particularly the first three albums and some of the odd recordings she's made. I didn't like her last album so much but there are tracks I enjoy and 'Perfect Illusion' ranks among my favourite singles.
Not seen 'A Star Is Born' but it's not really my kind of thing and the music I've heard seems to reflect this. It's probably Adele's favourite Gaga album.
Do you have any Gaga favourites?
Did you ever hear any music from Little Boots? She broke through around the same time as Lady Gaga, was quite successful here in U K but left for America where she's built a loyal fanbase in the underground and become a fixture on the music technology circuit.
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Post by petrolino on Jun 14, 2019 23:32:40 GMT
The Visitation
'The story of Gaga is a story of being young in New York City. Stefani Germanotta grew up in a duplex on the Upper West Side, on one of the eclectic blocks between Columbus and Amsterdam in the West Seventies that are a mix of prewar brownstones, tenements, and modern condos. Her father ran a company that installed Wi-Fi in hotels, and her mother worked for a time as a V.P. at Verizon. They sent Gaga and her younger sister, Natali, 18, to Sacred Heart, a small Catholic girlsâ school up the street from the Guggenheim. âSacred Heart may have been prestigious, but there were lots of different kinds of girls,â says Gaga. âSome had extreme wealth, others were on welfare and scholarship, and some were in the middle, which was my family. All our money went into education and the house.â
Her classmates say that her family was tight-knit. âWhen John Kerry was running for president, Stefani supported him and her father didnât, so she joked about that,â says Daniela Abatelli, Sacred Heart â05. Gaga was one of the only students with a job after school, as a waitress at a diner on the Upper West Side. With her early paychecks, she bought a Gucci purse. âI was so excited because all the girls at Sacred Heart always had their fancy purses, and I always had whatever,â she says. âMy mom and dad were not buying me a $600 purse.â Because her parents told her that they had sacrificed for her education, Gaga took school seriously from a young age. One of her favorite childhood memories is playing a piano concert at Sacred Heart at 8. âThere was a line of twenty girls sitting in a row in our pretty dresses, and we each got up to play,â she says happily. âI did a really good job. I was quite good.â
At 11, she began attending a full day of acting classes on Saturdays. âI remember the first time that I drank out of an imaginary coffee cup,â she says, closing her eyes. âThatâs the very first thing they teach you. I can feel the rain, too, when itâs not raining.â Her lids pop open. âI donât know if this is too much for your magazine, but I can actually mentally give myself an orgasm.â She hisses a little, like one of the deviant vampires in True Blood. âYou know, sense memory is quite powerful.â âAndy Warholâs books became her bible,â says a friend. âShe would highlight them with a pen.â By eighth grade, she had also realized that acting was a way to meet boys and began auditioning for plays with Sacred Heartâs brother school, Regis High School, on 84th Street, near Park Avenue. She always landed the lead: Adelaide in Guys and Dolls, Philia in A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum.'
- Excerpt from 'Growing Up Gaga' (published in NY Mag)
'Pop star and actress Lady Gaga is speaking out about her faith after receiving what she perceived as criticism from a Catholic culture website. The exchange appears to have started earlier this week when she took to Instagram to thank Father John Duffell of New Yorkâs Blessed Sacrament Church for delivering a âbeautiful homilyâ at her familyâs restaurant. In the imageâs caption, she wrote, âI was so moved today when you said âThe Eucharist is not a prize for the perfect but the food that God gives us.â â Father Duffell, Blessed Sacrament Church. Nourishment.â As The Christian Post points out, though she is known for some provocative music and roles, she has been open about her Catholic faith in the past. Back in 2010, she told Larry King that though she had some issues with the church itself, she considered herself religious: âI am very religious. I was raised Catholic. I believe in Jesus. I believe in God.â A day after the initial post, Lady Gagaâwhose real name is Stefani Germanottaâonce again took to Instagram to respond to an article from âCatholicLinkâ called, âFrom Lady Gaga to Steph Curry: 5 Things to Remember When Celebrities Share Their Faith.â The piece praised Curry for making âfaith more than just a Tweet or FB status,â but said, âMany celebrities are sharing Bible verses, quoting priests, and singing Christian music while at the same time still leading a typical Hollywood lifestyle void of Christian values such as modesty and purity.â Gaga took issue with the piece, responding directly to the articleâs author, writing in another Instagram post of an article screenshot,
"Dear, Becky Roach Mary Magdalene washed the feet of Christ and was protected and loved by him. A prostitute. Someone society shames as if she and her body are a manâs trash can. He loved her and did not judge. He let her cry over him and dry his feet with the hair of a harlot. We are not just âcelebritiesâ we are humans and sinners, children, and our lives are not void of values because we struggle. We are as equally forgiven as our neighbor. God is never a trend no matter who the believer."
It didnât take long for the site to post its own response. They wrote:
"Dear @ladygaga, your screen shot was a one part of the article which was not aimed at judging you, rather it was an effort to help Catholics to have a balanced and positive view of when celebrities publicly share their faith. It was an invitation to value the hunger of God that exists in the world of the famous. It was a reminder to not forget that they, like us, are fragile and that we should not judge, rather pray for them. This said, what you wrote is absolutely beautiful. It is one of the most touching comments we have ever read. Know that we will be praying that experience of Godâs mercy continue to grow and bear fruits for you, for the people that you love, and all of your followers."
- Relevant, reporting on May 12, 2016
Preparing for the show (on HBO)
âYesterday my friend Fr. John Duffell met a graduate of the Convent of the Sacred Heart in New York.â
- Father James Martin responds to Lady Gaga on Twitter
Lady Gaga hits the typewriter for the personalised family portrait 'Joanne'
"Stefani is a good girl, really sweet and normal. She isn't from a dysfunctional family and she isn't going to burn out like Britney Spears. Sacred Heart taught us to be very disciplined, very strong, successful women in whatever we chose as our careers, and she has chosen to be a performer. We were a rich kids' school but with good morals. Stefani was a straight-A student who wore her skirt to her knee, as we were supposed to, and knee-high socks. I was so shocked when I first saw her perform as Lady Gaga. It was at a Lower East Side club, the Slipper Room, and she was in a coned bra and little hot pants. I said, "Damn, you have changed."
- Cristina Civetta
'Alejandro : The Ambient Opera'
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Post by petrolino on Jun 15, 2019 0:16:37 GMT
L.A.Stories
Homage to Michelle Pfeiffer in 'Scarface' (1983) @ Consequence Of Sound
* This week, Little Boots dropped her new single, and here it is, as posted by Boots herself just 6 hours ago (and counting) ... hope you enjoy it!!
'Secret' - Little Boots
Boots on Twitter
Vinyl Shopping
Cocktail Fever Poolside
'Strange Girl' - Joyce Muniz ft. Little Boots
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Post by petrolino on Feb 28, 2020 23:42:14 GMT
Tales From New York
* Today, Lady Gaga dropped her new single, and here it is, as posted just 18 hours ago. I was at work when I got the party started but I can now listen on a superior sound system. The video is directed by experimental filmmaker Daniel Askill who rose to prominence with the release of his short film 'We Have Decided Not To Die' (2003). Askill has worked extensively with Sia.
'Stupid Love' - Lady Gaga
She's Lost In Music (She's Lost In A Trance)
'You Won't See Me Cry' - Moon Boots ft. Little Boots
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Post by petrolino on May 28, 2020 21:42:42 GMT
Lady Gaga helps launch landmark Multi-Video Call Concert online during Covid-19 Pandemic as New York & New Jersey hit particularly hard ...
New York
'Photographer Jordan Gale was curious to see how New Yorkers would adapt to a post Covid-19 summer. What he found was a combination of resilience, resourcefulness and joy â exhibited through socially distant block parties, community service, and people from all walks of life soaking up the sun ...'
New Jersey
"I was raised Catholic, and it informed my writing very deeply, and it continues to this day. There's simply nothing I can do about it. When I go to the creative well, many of the images and stories and the parables and the myths come up from inside me. I'm not very religious today, but if I see a priest, there's a glint in the two of our eyes (laughs)."
- Bruce Springsteen
'Girls In Their Summer Clothes' - Bruce Springsteen & The E Street Band
New Perspectives
"Global Citizen, organisers of the eight-hour One World: Together at Home livestreamed benefit concert, have announced that the show raised $127m for coronavirus relief efforts.
The concert, co-organised by the World Health Organisation (WHO) and Lady Gaga, featured intimate performances from global music stars at home as they self-isolated during the coronavirus crisis, including the Rolling Stones and Billie Eilish. Songs were interspersed with messages from actors such as Matthew McConaughey and Lupita Nyongâo, as well as other figures including Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey. While the two-hour television broadcast portion â also screened by the BBC in the UK with additional performances from Paul McCartney, Tom Jones and more â was framed as a gift to essential workers, the preceding six hours invited donations, with the bulk of the cash coming from corporate sponsors. The WHOâs Covid-19 Solidarity Response Fund will get $55.1m, while $72.8m will go to charities such as food banks and housing providers. The WHO fund is used to allocate tests and treatment, and to support development of a vaccine. Inevitably, the fundraising took on a political tinge, coming shortly after Donald Trump withdrew US funding for the WHO. Speaking to Variety, Hugh Evans, chief executive of Global Citizen, said: âIt is not uncommon for world leaders of all stature to try to point fingers, because politics is in some instances about survival. And so I think that itâs not so surprising that it has become a political football. But I think that what we have to remember is that thereâs no second World Health Organisation. Thereâs only one.â BeyoncĂ© and Alicia Keys each highlighted how the disease was disproportionately affecting African Americans. Keys cited a study that found 33% of those hospitalised with the virus in the US were black, despite African Americans counting for 13% of the US population. âPre-existing health conditions and lack of access to information and affordable healthcare, and economic and societal circumstances, are some of the reasons why itâs most prevalent amongst communities of colour,â she said. BeyoncĂ©, who voiced support for, among others, essential workers across healthcare, sanitation, said: âBlack Americans disproportionately belong to these essential parts of the workforce that do not have the luxury of working from home, and African American communities at large have been severely affected by this crisis ⊠this virus is killing black people and in an alarmingly high rate here in America.â She cited a report that found 57% of fatal cases in her home city of Houston were African American. The show was well received, with Piers Morgan, who had previously criticised Lady Gagaâs involvement, apologising to her for his earlier comments. âThis was a great initiative that raised a fortune, entertained people, & will help save lives,â he tweeted. âIt was also a perfect illustration of a major star using their profile properly in this crisis. Congrats & sorry for originally questioning it.â Lady Gaga tweeted after the show: âThank you with all of my heart for watching #TogetherAtHome, sharing in a global moment of kindness with each other, and spreading positive and loving intentions. We love you.â
- Ben Beaumont-Thomas, reporting in The Guardian on Monday 20 April, 2020
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Post by petrolino on Aug 30, 2020 0:41:01 GMT
Lady Gaga : Top 10 Biographies [Ranked!]
With so many Lady Gaga books on the market, it's difficult for fans to know where to spend their money. Below, are a few examples of just how diverse the market is for Gaga-related books.
'Gaga Loco De Coco (Coco)' by Rodrigo Ribeiro (Colouring Book Series)
'Lady Gaga : Fame' by Dan Rafter & Kristoffer Smith (A Comic Book)
'Lady Gaga : Fame' by CW Cooke (A Graphic Novel)
'Lady Gaga Paper Doll : Yuyi The Mermaid' by Daniel Fernandez (Creative Cut-Out Fashions)
'Eh, Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say)' - Lady Gaga
I've read a few different books about Lady Gaga and would like to recommend some of these to little monsters everywhere. There are actually some interesting titles out there if you go looking. I bought all of these books either through Amazon sellers or on ebay. They were all listed as being second-hand but in very good condition ("as new"), so they were reasonably priced when I bought them.
- - -
10 Books
10) 'Lady Gaga : Me & You' (2010) by Posy Edwards
My copy of 'Lady Gaga : Me & You' originally came by mail order and has a number that might be exclusive to me? It's a number 68 ticket in the front of the book which I bought on e-bay. The book has just 45 pages and there's scant information, even for a 2010 publication. Most of the pictures make Gaga look like a drag queen on steroids and there aren't even that many. My edition is also quite small. So why does this make the list? Well, it does come with a large Lady Gaga foldout poster at the back of the book, so when you finish reading it, you can put a gigantic poster up of Gaga's face.
"During the writing of 'The Fame Monster', Gaga had also made friends with two pop icons - Beyonce and Kanye West. Gaga met Beyonce at an awards ceremony and the girls hit it off straight away - agreeing to collaborate on tracks that would feature on each of their forthcoming albums - 'Videophone' on Beyonce's album, and 'Telephone' on Gaga's."
'Beautiful, Dirty, Rich'
09) 'The World Of Lady Gaga - 100% Unofficial' (2012) by Mystery Man
'The World Of Lady Gaga - 100% Unofficial' promises "Gagalicious gossip, fierce fashion, cool quizzes ...", so does it deliver? Well, yes and no. It's 32 pages and my copy is pretty big (looks around A4 size). It does have quizzes and you can turn your copy upside down to find the answers. There's actually some nice trivia to learn and I like the quirkier inclusions. On the other hand, the pictures are really small and what's unforgivable is how many of them are cut in pieces by overlapping writing. So, a mixed bag, but good for quizzers.
"The time when ... Kermit the Frog gave Gaga a ride to the VMAs! She had previously made an outfit made entirely of Kermits (fake ones, of course!)"
08) 'Lady Gaga : A Life In Pictures' (2012) by Marie Clayton
The first issue I have with 'Lady Gaga : A Life In Pictures' is it's published in 2012 and Lady Gaga was born on March 28, 1986. So, it's a bad title for starters. It fails to deliver on the theme of the pictures but there are some excellent ones included. I count 48 pages for this book which is of decent size and light to carry if you're travelling.
"Lady Gaga's own creative team, Haus of Gaga, is responsible for the sets, costumes and make-up for her tours, as well as for other one-off creations that represent the Gaga style."
'Dance In The Dark'
07) 'Lady Gaga : Style Bible' (2011) by David Foy
'Lady Gaga : Style Bible' is a nicely sized book with 127 pages to feast your eyes upon. The writing generally comes in captions that illustrate the picture on the same page and author David Foy wisely doesn't allow this small caption box to obscure aspects of the photography. So this is a simple and effective book that's quite entertaining in places. It's also a celebration of Gaga's sense of style.
One word of warning : the author seems to like pictures of Gaga in which her facial expressions make her look like she's anguished or constipated, which can make for uncomfortable reading at times. But I wouldn't let that deter you from purchasing it, as that's only about half the pictures included.
"Performance Provocateur. Day One of Lollapalooza sees Gaga in a green leotard with fire-cone bra. Although this look has been seen before, Gaga's enthusiasm and attention to detail rocketed it to a whole new level."
06) 'Lady Gaga - Queen Of Pop' (2010) by Emily Herbert
This is the first of Lady Gaga's unofficial biographies I've selected, the best of which seemed to be published in 2010 when Gaga was just getting started. This isn't necessarily a bad thing as it allows the author to really focus on the details without having to cover a lifetime of work. There's anecdotal evidence presented through the text that's attributed to journalists, musicians and beyond, some of which is playful and humorous. To her credit, principal writer Emily Herbert seems to appreciate her subject's strengths, yet isn't afraid to highlight what might be perceived as weaknesses. She also enjoys Gaga's sense of humour, like the time she spoke to a journalist about her "pussy's poker face" while rumours were swirling about her being a hermaphrodite.
I have this book in paperback and hardback as my used paperback is pocket-sized (if you wear a big coat), cost me about ÂŁ1:00 and has proven ideal for reading on public transport. The paperback edition is 265 pages. A talking book edition is also available that's read by Eloise Oxer.
"And she certainly proved capable of arousing strong emotions: the next to speak out was Alan Donohoe, lead singer with The Rakes. "I can't stand Lady Gaga," he declared. "She is basically selling crap to kids! I think she's terrible and really ugly, I hate her. Leona Lewis seems dull, but nice. She has standards, nice skin and can sing, whereas Lady Gaga is trash and dresses like a prostitute." So what brought that on?"
'Government Hooker'
05) 'Lady Gaga - Just Dance' (2010) by Helia Phoenix
'Lady Gaga - Just Dance' is anther unauthorised biography I'd recommend. It's extremely well-written by Helia Phoenix and seems to be authentic and well-researched, or at least it reads that way. Like Emily Herbert, Pheonix seems to genuinely like her subject and often quotes her sense of humour. It's 243 pages in its small hardback edition.
Phoenix also looks at how Gaga has explored female sexuality, from her days dancing go-go and burlesque locally, through her frequently outrageous stage antics, as well as her penchant for wearing skimpy underwear.
It's imperative that I add that I really love Phoenix's dedication to open this entertaining book : "For all the little monsters who understand that you can never love music enough."
"Sat at the old battered piano, dressed only in bra, panties, fishnets and white pumps, Gaga carried on playing. Every pair of eyes in the joint was on her. Suddenly people started listening to the music. She had found a way to make the world pay attention, and once she had got their attention, they were hooked on her.
From that moment, something awakened in Gaga. She felt a kind of artistic freedom she had never felt before. All those years of strict religious education and discipline had been great for her report card but had stifled her creatively."
04) 'The Rise And Rise Of Lady Gaga' (2010) by Maureen Callahan 'The Rise And Rise Of Lady Gaga' is another fine biography from 2010 and I could happily switch around my ranking of this with 'Lady Gaga - Queen Of Pop' and 'Lady Gaga - Just Dance' as there's little to choose between the three. This one is 238 pages and I have it in a paperback edition. The prologue introduces readers to my joint favourite city (with Cleveland, Ohio) and her great musical heritage, Manchester, which is located in north-west England.
The book's author Maureen Callahan places more of an accent on Gaga's artistry and emerging philosophy, which is why I've put this book at number 4 in my list. Back in 2010, too few people were giving Gaga credit for her style and musicianship as journalists gleefully took up the politics of outrage. The fact they couldn't look past her provocative image was their problem, not hers, and sadly it led to many demeaning comments in the press, especially when stories emerged of Gaga having dressed as a schoolgirl hooker on the streets of New York.
Fortunately, Callahan recognises Gaga for the (extremely) hard-working, consummate professional she so obviously is, and this acknowledgement comes a decade before Gaga started gaining even a modicum of respect (the release of 'A Star Is Born' in 2018), which earns my unequivocal respect. I think her talent's always been there to see but some people will never credit provocative pop artists with anything.
"Stefani has spoken of her father's approval meaning so much to her that, even if his is the lone voice, it's enough to cause dramatic shifts in her behavior. She's famously said that the only comment he ever made about her partying - "You're fucking up, kid" - was the catalyst for her to stop using cocaine. "He is my hero," she told the journalist Toure (Neblett) during an interview with 'Fuse' in 2009. Her mother, Cynthia, is described by those who know her as a beautiful, cultured, kind woman. She is short and a natural brunette like her daughter. She was a huge influence on the young Stefani's tastes. "My mom would have fashion-fun with me," Gaga has said. "She'd dress me in neon leggings and oversized shirts. I had this killer visor - like a casino-green vinyl visor - with lights that would flash. I wore it to a roller-skating party once."
'Fashion!'
03) 'Lady Gaga : Extreme Style' (2010) by Lizzy Goodman
Here's a book from a music journalist whose lived and breathed the culture of New York this century. Lizzy Goodman's breakthrough book is a work of art in itself. She creates collages with pictures and text and drops them into an exciting paper format. My book is nice and big so the pictures are beautiful to look at and she's found some great candids of Gaga in musical outfits. This book has character and it's imbued with the spirit of experimental art, working from the pop art movement through punk and on to the city's explosive arts scene of the early 2000s.
"The first time Lady Gaga stripped on stage was during a small club gig at the Bitter End in New York City. "The bar was packed, and the crowd was full of fratty, drunk NYU students," she has recalled. "They wouldn't shut up, and I couldn't play until everybody got quiet. So I took my clothes off. Then everybody shut up."
02) 'Gaga' (2010) by Johnny Morgan
The epic literary tome 'Gaga' comes at a hefty recommended retail price but it's a veritable goldmine for Lady Gaga fans. I have a large hardback edition that's 160 pages and beautifully mounted. There are some extremely rare and unusual pictures here, rather than the usual ones you can find within a minute of google imaging. If, like me, you find Gaga attractive as well as loving her creative work, then this is the best book I've come across as I feel she looks totally amazing across a range of quality photographs that have been carefully collated by analysing different points in her mid-2000s to late-2000s artistic career. The written articles are exactly what I look for as they concentrate on Gaga, the artist. They are nicely written by Johnny Morgan who has a strong writing style and they're informative. He also ties together musical and artistic influences which I find interesting. What can I say, other than, I recommend this book to all you little monsters out there (I got it at a reasonable price, second-hand, on ebay).
"Gaga was always different, though; the cross-dressers, drag queens, art students, and artists who traveled through tunnels and over bridges from Queens and Brooklyn for a truly special night out in the Lower East Side felt like her kind of people. As with most things, she was absolutely right and meeting someone who was a soulmate, an innovator, mover, shaker, and trend-setting glam-girl DJ proved that. Her name was Lady Starlight and the first night that they met, Gaga put a ten dollar note into Starlight's bra, with her teeth."
'Hey Girl'
01) 'Rivington St. Was Ours : Lady Gaga, The Lower East Side, And The Prime Of Our Lives' (2013) by Brendan Jay Sullivan
'Rivington St. Was Ours : Lady Gaga, The Lower East Side, And The Prime Of Our Lives' is a personal memoir that was published to critical acclaim. DJ Brendan Sullivan met Stefani Germanotta in 2006, just a couple of years before she broke through on the national stage. Here, he documents life in New York and achieves a level of literary intimacy in his writing. This is the book to read if you want to feel like you're right there working and partying with Lady Gaga who was fast-becoming a prolific songwriter. It offers 346 pages of riveting recollections that reveal Gaga to be a natural-born entertainer.
"Most barstools came up to Gaga's exposed belly button. Watching her crawl up them was sometimes the cutest thing ever because you knew other girls who would do a little hop or get some leverage off the concrete bar, like a swimmer coming out of the pool. Gaga crawled up the rungs like a burlesque dancer. Frequently, she put a knee down on the seat and sat her a*s right on the bar.
She had on her new uniform: unitard, fishnets, heels. Adding or removing a slightly oversized leather jacket (aka. "the boyfriend jacket"). Strangers kept coming up to her. "I love your jacket." "Thank you," she said, smiling. "I don't like wearing clothes."
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BIN IT) 'Lady Gaga : A Monster Romance - UNOFFICIAL' (2012) by Hugh FielderMy copy of 'Lady Gaga : A Monster Romance - UNOFFICIAL' is 128 pages, and as far as I'm concerned, it serves as a textbook example of how to get everything wrong. It's an odd shape for some reason, quite big but not standard A4 size. The author talks about being a top pop journalist yet he makes sideswipes at pop artists in the book. Some of the pictures are spread across two pages with Gaga's face suffering a crease right down the middle. The forced stretch format doesn't help matters either. Hugh Fielder appears to like pictures where Gaga looks like she's sucking on a lemon. The use of different fonts here is attractive but there's a lot of wasted paper because of it. It's also written like a press release and the author show's no real passion for his subject (has he listened to her music?). I've retained my copy but this easily ranks for me as the worst of my Lady Gaga book collection.
"Television brought Lady Gaga's wacky image into sitting rooms across the world. During 2009, as 'The Fame' and singles increasingly dominated the charts, she made over 60 TV appearances in the US, UK, Japan, Australia, Germany, France, Italy, Spain and even Malta."
Lady Gaga - 'Plastic Doll'
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Post by petrolino on May 15, 2021 19:44:52 GMT
'House Robot' ft. Madeon & Shinichiro Yokota
"The Grammys had an unexpected performer this week. All eyes were on Lady Gaga, as she took to the stage at Staples Center for her tribute to David Bowie. But a minute and a half into her performance, a dancing piano made its debut. As Gaga walked over to the rose-gold keyboard that was planked atop two robotic arms, the piano moved up to meet her hands as she started to play. The setup swayed as Gaga belted out Bowie's "Suffragette City." The mechanical arms moved in and out to the rhythm of the song, all while keeping the keyboard steady enough for the singer to control the keys. To pull off that choreographed piano, team Gaga enlisted the help of Andy Robot, a Las Vegas-based roboticist and computer animator working with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Robot (yes, that's his name) repurposed some software he had built to program and animate two industrial bots for the performance. He followed Gaga's vision for an instrument that had a new dimension â- it was alive. But the process that made it possible hadn't been tried in this context before. So when the robotic team ran into a problem during rehearsals, Robot's association with Brian Lim, head of JPL's Planetary Landing Testbed initiative, led to a solution that involved a small piece of rubber.
- M. Lalwani writing in 2016, Engadget
Little Boots on deck
'Space Station (Space Mix)' - Shinichiro Yokota ft. Little Boots
{ - - - - - - - - }
Retro Remixes [~ Courtesy of Haus of Afrodita]
âI have been addicted to it and itâs ultimately related to anxiety coping and itâs a form of self-medication and I was smoking up to 15-20 marijuana cigarettes a day with no tobacco I was living on a totally other psychedelic plane, numbing myself completely, and looking back I do see now that some of it had to do with my hip pain ⊠I didnât know where the pain was coming from so I was just in a lot of pain and very depressed all the time and not really sure why. Iâve been addicted to various things since I was young. Most heavily over the past seven years ⊠but, the truth is that it is very hard to be famous. Itâs wonderful to be famous because I have amazing fans. But it is very, very hard to go out into the world when you are not feeling happy and act like you are because I am a human being too and I break, and I think there is an assumption ⊠that I cannot break because I am an alien woman and I am unstoppable.â
- Lady Gaga, Z100
'Venus' - Lady Gaga & Madeon [Synthwave Mix]
'911' - Lady Gaga & Madeon [A.I. Mix]
"For longtime fans, Chromatica is as familiar as it is fresh. Itâs electro-pop Gaga, an update from the girl who gave the world âPoker Faceâ and âJust Dance,â that digs deeper into the classic house music scene that has always informed her music. To make the album, she found a partner in Michael Tucker, known as BloodPop, who had previously helped produce Joanne alongside its executive producers Mark Ronson and Gaga. âIt actually [began] around the same time Gaga was working on A Star is Born,â Tucker tells Rolling Stone. Following the release of Joanne in late 2016, Gaga sunk her teeth into the film soon after, writing and recording the soundtrack just before shooting that following spring. Her Joanne World Tour would begin that summer. For ASIB, Tucker and the pop star would write ideas at her home. While none of their collaborations during this time would make the soundtrack, one idea did stand out: âStupid Love.â âI worked on that demo for a while but it was missing something I couldnât quite put my finger on. When I played it for Max Martin, he had some fantastic ideas that really elevated it,â Tucker explains. When Gagaâs Joanne World Tour arrived in Kansas City, his hometown, in November 2017, he flew out to play her the new version of what would become Chromaticaâs lead single. âI played it on her bluetooth speaker in her dressing room with my family and friends present. I would definitely consider that the moment Chromatica was started.â Gaga, of course, couldnât give her full attention to her sixth album until the following year. A Star Is Born would be released in late 2018 and she launched a pair of Las Vegas residencies just two months later: a full pop show called Enigma and the lounge-y Jazz & Piano show. In January 2019, she began working with producer Burns (Charli XCX, Little Mix, PartyNextDoor), who would become integral to the album-making process as well, producing almost every song alongside Gaga and BloodPop. Burns brought some ideas for âEnigma,â the piano house number on Chromatica. At the time, Gaga and Tucker had âso many spinning plates,â as he describes it, with just-budding tracks beginning to come alive. They decided to solidify an album once five songs were completed: âStupid Love,â âEnigma,â âRain on Me,â âAliceâ and âFree Woman.â â[Gaga] just knew she wanted to dance,â Tucker adds. The decision to make an album rooted in house music would come some months later. âSome of those days were very long and hard emotionally. No matter how hard they would be, by 9 or 10pm she would be dancing and smiling. You could physically see dance music healing this person in real time so it just became obvious very quickly that thatâs what we had to do.â âIt felt like the world was ready to dance again in general,â Burns tells RS. Coming from the UK, much of his sound had been rooted in the acid house scene, which he brought to his sessions with Gaga and Tucker. âWhen we sat with Gaga, we all talked about how it should feel. There was this general consensus that the music should feel classic and familiar, but also fresh and new at the same time. Something I thought about a lot when finishing these records: What sound would work here to make the listener almost feel comfortable, like theyâve experienced it before?â All three of the collaborators immersed themselves in Nineties house culture. They covered the studio in acid house posters and Burns would send Gaga and Tucker Spotify playlists of classic house music to further educate them. The trio took the tribute to house so seriously that they even had the albumâs mixer Tom Norris avoid using technology or mixing trends that were too modern. âI was told not to use any sidechains throughout the album,â Norris explains. âSidechains are a way of ducking one instrument out to make room for another, and itâs a really common thing in EDM. It wasnât even possible to do when these classic Nineties house records were made. So I tried to steer clear from those to be true to that sound.â Norris, a friend of BloodPop, had been brought on to help with âFun Tonight,â a moody break-up song about a partner more obsessed with Gagaâs fame than her. The song had been âconsiderably slower,â as Norris describes, with a different arrangement before the BPM was turned up to match the rest of the LP. He was eventually brought on to mix the rest of the album, working closely with the vocal producer Ben Rice in Los Angelesâ Henson Studios. â[Ben] added interested vocal effects, delays and reverb, which felt era-appropriate,â Norris says. The albumâs also thought hard about the gear that they used, with Norris investing in a $50 âcheapo compressorâ in tribute to Daft Punk who used a similarly low-budget compressor on their first two albums. It was used on âRain on Me.â âI would reverse engineer some Daft Punk songs to figure out what went into the making of that. Some of that didnât make it on to the final record, but it helped us figure out how we evoke that French Touch sound in a 2020 way.â Once Chromatica began to really take shape, Gaga and Tucker decided to pull in some real dance music heavyweights to help the star further conquer the dance floor she fought for: Skrillex, Axwell, Tchami, Madeon, Johannes Klahr and Boys Noize were among the EDM giants that were called upon for additional ideas and production. âThey were going through the history of dance music, and I play a little bit of a part in that history,â Axwell tells RS, calling from his home in Sweden. He was brought in this past winter to help amp up âAliceâ and âFree Woman.â Axwell admired their dedication to making more âproper dance music,â leaning on house and garage scenes instead of just EDM. He even dug up and dusted off an old track he had worked on when he performed with Sebastian Ingrosso as Axwell and Ingrosso: âSine From Above.â âI had this old song we worked on, like, seven years ago with Elton John,â Axwell explains. âSine From Above,â which was also co-written with Ryan Tedder, was meant to be a collaboration between the house duo and the legendary piano man. âWe tried working on it and we couldnât really get it where we wanted it,â he says. âIt was also kind of hard to get ahold of Elton John. I had this on my computer and was like, âWait a minute. Lady Gaga and Elton John are buddies.ââ Axwell sent the demo to Gaga and Tucker, who loved the track. Plus, Gaga had an easier time getting ahold of John, as a longtime friend of the singer and the godmother to his son. âIt was pretty cool how that song finally left my computer,â he laughs."
- Brittany Spanos, 'Welcome to âChromaticaâ : Inside Lady Gagaâs Triumphant Dance Floor Return' (article published at 'Rolling Stone' on 30th May, 2020)
Lady Gaga in Las Vegas
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Post by petrolino on Aug 8, 2021 0:24:37 GMT
Lady Gaga Workout : Leotards, Lycra & Linoleum
'Who's that girl? Running 'round with no clothes on Heels in the ground Almost famous on the scene She looks like a celebrity Who's that girl? She's so shiny Ain't no way her waist that tiny Sequins in her hair Homegirl doesn't care
Baby shake your fanny, fanny Let me see them pretty panties
Uh-oh, I lost my clothes but everybody knows We get naughty at the panty party It's time to get undressed and make it glamorous Let's get naughty at the panty party
Oh-woah-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh-oh-oh Oh-woah-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh-oh-oh
What are you doing over there? We're gonna play in underwear Spanky pants, curious Bubble wrapper, furious Who's that girl? She's so pretty Bet you she's from New York City Sequins in her hair Homegirl doesn't care
Baby shake your fanny, fanny Let me see them pretty panties
Uh-oh, I lost my clothes but everybody knows We get naughty at the panty party It's time to get undressed and make it glamorous Let's get naughty at the panty party
Oh-woah-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh-oh-oh Oh-woah-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh-oh-oh Oh-woah-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh-oh-oh Oh-woah-oh-oh, oh-oh-oh-oh-oh ...
- Lady Gaga's Panty Party
'Retro Physical'
âYou see, if I was a guy, and I was sitting here with a cigarette in my hand grabbing my crotch and talking about how I make music because I love fast cars and fucking girls, youâd call me a rock star. But when I do it in my music and in my videos, because Iâm a female, because I make pop, youâre judgemental and you say that it is distracting. Iâm just a rock star.â
- Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga speaks with Nicolas Titley in 2008 (Infoplus)
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Post by petrolino on Jan 2, 2022 4:00:47 GMT
Happy New Year, Little Mons-teeeers!!
As we enter in to 2022, I'm sure there's many of us in society whose thoughts are primarily with those worst-affected by the global pandemic, as well as the usual horrors like repression, intolerance, persecution, famine, disease and war.
This was my first Christmas in the U K where being a Little Monster was celebrated across the board. The subscription channel Sky Arts led the way by screening a concert film of Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett at the Rose Theater in New York, 'Tony Bennett And Lady Gaga : Cheek To Cheek Live!' (2015).
MTV Europe saw in the new year with a Gaga special consisting of the music videos for all her U K number 1 singles.
Most surprising of all, the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) lay down their knives and celebrated Gaga with a compilation of performances annotated with some glowing (and true) production notes - this was amazing to see when considering this woman's hazardous journey to today.
Lady Gaga with a message for the Haterz
Lady Gaga performs 'Just Dance' for the Radio 1 'Big Weekend' music bash where she thanked all her fans in the U K for their enduring support ...
As for Little Boots, she's wished everyone a happy new year online and has been hard at work on stage and inside the studio with ths year's comeback kids ABBA. Great musicians will always recognise talent, even when the haters and the critics do not.
Little Boots defies the critics
'Silver Balloons' - Little Boots
Happy New Year!!
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Post by petrolino on Jan 24, 2022 4:12:55 GMT
Victoria Hesketh & Marina Diamandis
'Mermaid Vs Sailor EP' - Marina And The Diamonds
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Post by petrolino on Mar 13, 2023 2:45:21 GMT
An Enduring Friendship : Lady Gaga & Diane Warren
Lady Gaga's friend, collaborator and mentor Diane Warren has been awarded an Honorary Academy Award in 2023 having been nominated 14 times in the Best Song Oscar category. Warren received her award from Cher at the Governors Awards ceremony which was held in 2022.
I know this means a lot to Gaga ...
âFor her genius, generosity and passionate commitment to the power of song in film.â
- The Academy Of Motion Picture Arts And Sciences (AMPAS) honours songwriter Diane Warren
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