Let’s Talk Gaga
What does a pop star have to do with a love of good design, you ask? If it was any other pop star, then absolutely nothing. But when it comes to Lady Gaga, good design has a lot to do with her chart-topping success. Lady Gaga is a package. Her music is catchy, but alone they are only slightly better than most of what’s already been done. The beauty and genius of Gaga comes with her ability to take high fashion and merge it with pop music, a genre that’s supposedly catered to the masses and generally thought of as low brow.
Take her most recent video Bad Romance. The styling of each frame is, for lack of a better word, divine. She has taken haute couture, the likes of Alexander McQueen, and made it accessible to the general population. It’s like she was able to take high culture and aesthetics and deliver it to those who don’t normally experience such lavishes; which is more or less the reason why pop music fans are so dazzled by her and her vision. I, myself, have watched every single one of her videos and analyzed the design of each outfit, the set direction, the production values, and the overall concept. My evaluation of which is that she has produced high art in a medium never before associated with such refinements.
To Lady Gaga (and she even said this herself), pop music will never be low brow.
