Yeah, I don’t usually review the Super Bowl Halftime Show,
but I’m making an exception here because I think this was the best one I’ve
ever seen. Of course, as a fan of Lady Gaga, of course I would like it.
But the thing is, I am a punk and metal fan, and I don’t
generally like pop music or pop divas. But Lady Gaga is different because it
seems to me she’s not so much a pop diva (I mean, she is a pop diva, but…) as
she is a performance artist using pop diva music as her medium. And as such,
she totally reminds me of Wendy O. Williams of the Plasmatics. Her voice is
better, but the attitude is the same, or at least I think so.
And as a native New Yorker from NYC she had to have grown up
on stuff like the Plasmatics and the Ramones and White Zombie and stuff like
Deee-Lite and the Village People and KISS and all that great New York City
stuff that is so image crazy and fun and artsy. And she synthesized her whole
aesthetic out of this prism of New York glam rock and club image stuff, and
wow, what a result!
And I thought her voice sounded better during the Haltime
Show than it does on her records, and that’s saying something.
And even if she wasn’t great musically or at singing, I
would still love her for how she stands up for bullied teens and people without
a lot of friends and LGBT rights and stuff like that. Most pop stars don’t do
that, because they’re in that egotistical popular crowd mentality. But not her,
and I think while that may have disenfranchised her from the “cool” crowd in
some places, it gave her an even bigger rabid fan base with lots of people pop
music stars often don’t appreciate.
So, yeah, I love Lady Gaga, and this was my favorite thing I
have seen her do so far. The only thing I’d rather see than her Halftime Show
would be a Ramones concert or a 1989-1993 White Zombie concert in a NYC club
like the Cat Club. Or maybe a Zeke or Fu Manchu concert from 1997-2000.
