I'm not sure if there are two female singers that have been more popular over the last 6 months than Lady Gaga and Ke$ha. Their songs can really only be described as ubiquitous-it would be difficult to play a pop music channel for more than 20 minutes without hearing one of them sing. I would rate Lady Gaga ahead of Ke$ha in almost everything-from number of popular singles, originality, musical talent, and most importantly, outlandishness. When Lady Gaga does something, I feel mystified by it: her music videos, outfits, sunglasses, even her own sexuality-I'm baffled by it all. Still, even as I watch Lady Gaga do something I've never seen before (like, produce a video involving a women's prison for a song involving telephone reception in nightclubs) I can believe that I'm just watching the Madonna of the 2010's. She's an original, but she's still standing on the shoulders of giants. She's taken an old form, and made every facet of it spectacularly weird.
Now, like I said, I consider Lady Gaga a more original artist than Ke$ha-not even just a musical artist, but a performance artist as well. Every day when Lady Gaga walks around in public, she is performing. Which is why I think it's strange that Ke$ha seems weirder. In almost every way, Ke$ha is a contradiction-she is white Nashville native who raps. She is a woman whose main subject seems to be getting laid. Indeed, the whole point of "Blah Blah Blah" is finding love (and by love I mean dirty sex) in a bar with a random guy. The thing is-we haven't really seen this before. Excepting Lil Kim, whose rhymes from "Magic Stick" you really just have to look up on your own, Ke$ha has personified a slut in entertainment better than anyone. The whole persona of Ke$ha is a drunk mess: the first line of her album is "Maybe I need some rehab." What other female artist calls herself a "love crackhead?" Hell, she even starred in Katy Perry's music video for "I Kissed a Girl (and I liked it)" as the girl that Katy Perry wants to kiss! Lady Gaga's persona is weird, but we've seen weird before. And here's the ultimate contradiction regarding Ke$ha and Gaga: while Gaga's persona is, in the abstract, weirder (because honestly, which is harder to find-a girl whose a slut or a bisexual who stars in videos in just strategically placed tape and see through tights?), the fact that Ke$ha's persona is so honest makes her the one that is more strange.
I don't care how many times I watch the video where Gaga is captured by faceless dancers and sold into sex slavery to a Russian she later lights on fire. Or if she and Beyonce go on a killing spree in the Pussy Wagon from Kill Bill. Ke$ha is singing about relatively normal things, and her videos are even more normal than they should be: Tik Tok, the ultra popular song that has been talked about more than healthcare so far this year, has her waking up in a bath tub and progressing to a normal house party accompanied by a dude with a mullet. That's not what feeling like P. Diddy feels like! Sluts are normal; let's face it, they're all over the place. Wish there were more of them, too. But there aren't too many of them singing as honestly and explicitly as Ke$ha. Call it commentary on feminism in the 21st century, but it's still weird to hear a woman singing solely about getting banged in a car. Meanwhile, this is probably 25% of what men rap about. Flavor Flav never hid his desires. Neither does Ke$ha. There's no wordplay, subtext, or pretense. It's honest, and being honest about being a slut is still weird. Don't blame her though. Ke$ha just wants a little love in her glovebox.
No comments:
Post a Comment