Here we go gaga, again

Here it comes. Lady Gaga just released the leading single off her upcoming album (no video yet), and we are once again going to be subjected to a blitz of sounds and visions from out of this world.

It is also the title track of the album: 'Born this Way'. Some call it a gay anthem, as the lady has become a loud advocate of gay rights in the past year and a half. But it isn't, it's broader than that. It is an anthem for anyone who feels different and weird (and who doesn't when they're young?), encouraging them to be proud of who they are. And of course, it will surely become one of Gaga's biggest personal anthems.

Judging by initial listening, it isn't genius, but it is a massive hit. It some place it invokes Madonna's 'Express Yourself', and this could be intentional, since both records carry a similar message. And "Don't be a drag, just be a queen" is one of her best lines.

And I LOVE this photo. Did she pull a Peter Gabriel, and shaved her forehead? If so, it is going to be her most bizarre look to date.

71. Lady Gaga – Paparazzi (2009)

After 2006, there was a vacuum in female pop. Britney went into a tailspin, Kylie was slowly recovering from breast-cancer treatment, Christina took time out for pregnancy, Beyonce couldn't really regenerate the thrill of her first album. Trying to fill the void were Gwen Stefani, Fergie and Pink, who made playful and eclectic white pop, but failed to offer anything truly new; Rihana, r'n'b's new star, which made updated but uninspired music; and Katy Perry, a cheeky young Californian girl who infused some humor and surrealism, but musically didn't offer anything too special. Female pop needs a revolution to take it in a new direction, and that should come from a new generation, which hasn't fully arrived yet. In the meantime, the woman who managed to inject a big dose of fun into it is Lady Gaga, who broke in 2008 and takes a cabaret approach to contemporary pop. Gaga plays the pop game and crafts hit records, but she does it in a theatrical and ironic way, which exposes its dark and grotesque sides as well. With bizarre outfits, surreal videos and provocative behavior, and with catchy electro-based music, she's the most interesting star of the last two years of the decade.

Here, she deals with one of the most repulsive side effects of the glamour world. In his movie La Dolce Vita from 1960, Federico Fellini shows how the culture of the old world succumbs to pop culture, through the eyes of an Italian journalist who runs around Rome to report on the shallow lives of the glitterati, accompanied by a nosy photographer called Paparazzo, who is constantly trying to get their photos. Fellini couldn't have known that he just coined a new term for pop culture's use, and that his Paparazzo would multiply and become numerous paparazzi, who satisfy the public's unquenchable thirst for any piece of info about its stars. And in our age, we have all become paparazzi, walking around with cameras in our pockets, and belonging to a web that allows us to show our photos all over the world. Furthermore, we have become used to being constantly under the surveillance of cameras, with any of our deeds liable to be caught and uploaded on the web. This reality will only become more pervasive in years to come, and today's pop stars are preparing us for it. Britney Spears was the one who developed the deepest relationship with her paparazzi tails, a relationship which found its way into her songs as well, but it was an unhealthy relationship that only aided her deterioration. Lady Gaga penetrates this sickness and presents it to our judgment, in abstract words that string together all the phenomena related to it: voyeurism, obsession, identification with someone else to the point of self-annulment, lust for fame. When she sings about the love between her and her "papa-paparazzi", we get an uncanny, and probably intentional, sense of incest. The video does the job as well, exposing the twisted relationship between the press, the public and the star. Welcome to cabaret.