POP PSYCHOLOGY: _Compared to Radiohead’s less-hyped career, Lady Gaga’s too-bright star may burn out quickly_
By Alex Goodman
Feb. 28, 2011 1:59 a.m.
In 1968, Andy Warhol predicted that, “in the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes.” The quote spoke knowingly to the ephemeral nature of celebrity in this culture, its fickleness and its shallowness. If only he were around to see us now.
At the very least, he should see Lady Gaga. One moment she was Stefani Germanotta, a nobody; the next, she had an album called “The Fame,” as if she knew beforehand that its first two singles would make her an international superstar.
A year later, she was already disillusioned enough to release an EP called “The Fame Monster.” If she didn’t like the attention she got from the first album, though, she shouldn’t have unleashed the three-headed hydra of “Bad Romance,” “Telephone” and “Alejandro.”
Clearly she had no problems feeding the monster when she released her new single, “Born This Way,” earlier this month. It’s guaranteed to make her even more famous, if only because the same melody was already a huge hit once before, in the chorus of Madonna’s 1989 single “Express Yourself.”
Gaga’s career is one based on speed, with fast-paced dance songs catapulting her toward stardom like a human cannonball in a meat dress. She’s set herself apart not by being original, but by taking pre-existing ideas ““ even fame itself ““ and amplifying them. If she’s not already our most maximalist celebrity, she will be soon.
At this point, there may be no one who can get the music world talking more than Gaga, but if there is, it’s Radiohead.
Incidentally, these two artists cannot be more different.
On Feb. 18, Radiohead unveiled its new album, “The King of Limbs,” with whatever is the opposite of fanfare. There had been no prerelease promotional tours, no buzz-building single.
There was just an announcement on its website, indicating that they had finished, and less than a week later, but a day before they’d said it would be, the album was available for download. There was a gorgeously simple black-and-white music video for the song “Lotus Flower,” uploaded around the same time, that showed its lead singer, Thom Yorke, doing a dance made of sways and convulsions.
Unlike Gaga, Radiohead’s career has never been about speed. Its songs have always been on the slower end, progressively more so as it indulges its mellow and introspective electronic tendencies.
Its rise to fame has been gradual as well. Its first album, “Pablo Honey,” produced the novelty single “Creep,” and the follow-up, “The Bends,” distilled rumors that it would become a one-hit-wonder. “OK Computer” was Radiohead’s first masterpiece, and its fan base steadily grew in the 14 years since.
And while Gaga flaunts and copies her influences, Radiohead has made a habit of ignoring whatever was going on around it. As Coldplay and its other imitators created a whole sub-genre based on Radiohead’s early music, Yorke and his bandmates forged ahead into new territory.
They not only prioritized the album format in an industry obsessed with singles, they even dared to make “difficult” albums ““ dense collections like “Kid A” and “Hail to the Thief” that revealed their brilliance only after multiple concentrated listens.
With the release of “The King of Limbs,” that’s now truer than ever. Seemingly influenced by the freer forms of jazz, the album at first seems full of nothing at all, just mellow arrangements of musical atmosphere.
But after a few times through, the structures and the melodies begin to emerge, followed by beauty and something like transcendence.
It’s hard to imagine Lady Gaga’s followers, her “little monsters,” waiting so patiently to pass judgment. There is already an official YouTube video for “Born This Way,” though there isn’t an actual video to fill the screen; more than 20 million people have already “watched” it.
Gaga’s star ignited three years ago, and it seems impossible that it could perpetually continue to burn so brightly. Those little monsters will grow restless and bored, and she’ll soon become a supernova.
Radiohead, meanwhile, will keep quietly releasing an album every few years, and it won’t notice a thing.
If you think Lady Gaga should fear the fame monster, e-mail Goodman at [email protected].
