I don’t know what you and your friends talk about when it’s serious conversation time (I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt and assume it’s global warming/ the possible European Federation and its impacts on the world economy), but when we really get into it — we talk about Divas. Capital D. And no, not Beyonce or Lady Gaga or whatever other pitiful facsimile of a Diva our generation has managed to scrounge up, I’m talking about real ones. Tina, Whitney, Barbra, Cher, and — in my opinion, most importantly, Celine. We’ve gone back and forth on what really makes a Diva, and we’ve generally come up with a three-pronged set of criteria.

1. Overcame some kind of struggle
2. Has A Phenomenal, Life-Changing Voice
3. Goes balls-to-the-wall on every song, no exceptions

Miss Dion clearly has all of these three in spades. She dealt gracefully with her incredibly public, early-teenage awkward phase in which she looked like a less delicate Sarah Jessica Parker (and, did she ever turn into the swan!), not to mention all that public stigma of marrying her (let’s be honest, incredibly creepy and so much older) manager who mortgaged his house when she was 12 to launch her career. That is, by all standards, almost Woody Allen unacceptable — but she didn’t let our wrinkled noses and furrowed brows get her down. Struggles=overcome. Let’s not even discuss her Hope Diamond of a voice, as we are frankly not even worthy to talk about it. And no one goes all out like Celine does. You hand her the sheet music to the Eensy Weensy Spider, she sings that thing like it’s her last five minutes on Earth and those will be her last words to the human race. Celine knows what it means to be a singer.

Listening to her songs is like God blowing you kisses and winking at you. I often consider breaking up with my boyfriend (whom I love dearly) simply to, two weeks later, passionately reunite with him as “It’s All Coming Back To Me Now” blasts at full volume out of the enormous speakers I’ve suddenly installed in my apartment. Her music is such that you create moments to appreciate it, to absorb it, to try in vain to rise up to its level. There is absolutely no song that Celine Dion has touched that she hasn’t made infinitely better — no exceptions. She drove all night, she’s alive, she has the power of love, she knows the way it is. What have you done with your live? Nothing. If Celine is the yardstick against which to measure yourself, consider your mere existence a perpetual failure.

If there could be one thing that could possibly enhance Dion’s God-like prowess, it would be when her work is combined with that of another Diva. Her work on VH1′s Divas spectacle makes your face melt off into a tiny puddle of admiration, and her cover of Tina Turner’s “River Deep, Mountain High” is like a thousand tiny orgasms going off in your ears. Dion needs no wall of sound; she is the wall of sound.

Not to mention that Celine is French-Canadian, God’s chosen people.

It’s time we all gave a little more thought to the deity in human form we’ve been graced with, it’s time we show more appreciation. With her dulcet tones beneath our wings, there is truly nothing we can’t accomplish in life — so long as we give the occasional human sacrifice and pray five times a day facing Montreal. It’s high time our Celine love go back to Titanic-era insanity, and she gets the attention she truly deserves. It’s the least we can do.

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The internet blew up last week when Madonna said in an interview that Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” felt reductive, which sparked a larger question, “Who’s the real HBIC? Madonna or Lady Gaga?” My answer is, of course, Madonna. Here’s why.

When Lady Gaga first came out with her pre-packaged made-for-the-gay-club dance tracks, I was a little more than underwhelmed. I mean, sure, they were fun to dance to while hooking up with someone on the dance floor or pre-gaming at your apartment but they didn’t excite me. They were, at best, solid pop songs. But to be an icon, you have to have more than a hot single. You must also cultivate an interesting image which, according to her millions of fans, Lady Gaga already had down in spades with her outfits made entirely out of meat and whatnot. Snooze. Trying to sell yourself as a performance art piece doesn’t interest me. True pop stars like Madonna work because they’re both relatable and untouchable. Of course, they rely on smoke and mirrors to get people talking but at the core, their personality and indescribable “it” quality is what people latch on to. By drowning herself in elaborate costumes, Lady Gaga seems to be distracting the public from the fact that she’s just not that interesting.

Have you read about Lady Gaga’s life before she was a star? It’s sort of amazing. She grew up on the Upper West Side and went to the same school as Paris Hilton (Which is fine actually. No shame in the wealthy game.), went to NYU, dropped out and reportedly became a L.E.S. Artistes/cokehead. Her retellings of her lost year in the Lower East Side is what really annoys me. Apparently she lived in “squalor” in a one bedroom apartment and spent all her time blowing lines and dreaming of being a big star. Okay, first of all, you’re not roughing it when you live in a one-bedroom apartment by yourself in the Lower East Side. If that’s known as the #darkest period of your life, you’ve got it pretty good. I mean, who hasn’t become a temporary cokehead when they moved to the Lower East Side after dropping out of NYU? You just described every trustafarian’s life path, Gaga.

It doesn’t really bother me that Lady Gaga grew up wealthy though. It doesn’t make her any less worthy of being a pop star but it does make her stories of struggling before she became famous less compelling. I think the real reason why I’m not Team Gaga is because I’m just not emotionally invested in her. When I hear her music or speak in interviews, all I see is a lot of noise that’s covering up a hollow center. She doesn’t seem real to me, so why should I care about her?

The moment where it all clicked for me, the moment I realized Gaga was just a big bore, was when I recently saw the Madonna documentary, Truth Or Dare. Watching Madonna circa the early ’90s, you just can’t keep your eyes off of her. She comes off as equal parts “I’m just like you!” to “I’m NOTHING like you!” which is a rare but necessary combo for a pop icon. I was glued to every frame, falling in love with her chic clothes, beautiful face, and brash yet vulnerable personality. Afterwards, I watched some Gaga interviews on YouTube for comparison and felt nothing. Everything felt forced and boring, like every word was supposed to mean SOMETHING but, in the end, it meant nothing. I saw how much she had borrowed from Madonna and it made me angry. I decided that whatever Gaga was selling, I was not buying it.

I’m not saying Madonna is perfect. Her last album and forays into films have certainly been LOLworthy but it saddens me that this is who my generation has chosen to gravitate to as their pop leader. I understand Lady Gaga being a gay icon — she had that in the bag before she even released her first single — but I don’t understand her appeal to such a mass audience. It makes me feel like I’m not “getting” some crucial part of Gaga’s message or listening to her songs closely enough. Is something wrong with ME? I honestly don’t think so. Like most other people, I like my pop stars to be a mélange of fantasy and realism. As it stands, Lady Gaga has perfected the art of fantasy but is failing to resonate on a deeper level. She certainly knows how to get my attention but hasn’t the slightest idea how to keep it.

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It’s that time of year again, when professional football enters its playoffs and becomes ‘relevant’ or whatever. We all know that being a fan of professional sports is conflated with a number of unhealthy conditions: obesity, low self-esteem, and the desire to wear another man’s name on your back while you kiss your wife and otherwise attempt to live a life not devoid of some modicum of human dignity, to name a few. But the reality is football is extremely popular in America, and in the weeks leading up to the Super Bowl it becomes something of a social norm to know how the various teams are doing, especially if you live in an area with an active team.

Below I have assembled a primer on the teams qualified for the NFL Playoffs. Having been raised in the South, I am obviously an expert when it comes to football, and so, armed with these reviews, you can march confidently into conversation now, knowing you won’t ‘fumble’ — heh, little football terminology there — when your friends and family broach the topic of sports. For the sake of clarity, I have compared each team to a famous person that most normal people are familiar with.

The Pittsburgh Steelers: a favorite for the Super Bowl this year — and most years — the Steelers are a bit like Kanye West in that at one point they were a scrappy team with lots to prove but now they go into every season anticipating success, head over heels in love with their own style. The Steelers hit harder than any team in the NFL but have a habit of going overboard, so that their behavior often draws the ire of the league. Also their quarterback is quite possibly an actual serial rapist, but the Kanye analogy kind of breaks down there. Celebrity Equivalent: Kanye West, apparently.

The Green Bay Packers: the Packers are a storybook team owned and beloved by a relatively small town in Wisconsin. They’re the Girl Next Door that you root for because she always gives her all. They’re fun (players jump into the crowd after scoring), they’re funny (their quarterback has a sense of humor), and it seems everyone wants to see them succeed. The problem, though, is that they did succeed. Last year. They won the Super Bowl. And now this year they’re finishing the season almost undefeated. And all the experts say they’re the best in the league. And they’re so gracious about it but now, like the Girl Next Door, you kind of hate them for their success. You want to see them fail. Nobody’s as good as they pretend to be — they’re fakers. They must be. And what’s a Packer, anyway? Screw them for being so effortlessly perfect. Celebrity Equivalent: Zooey Deschanel

The New England Patriots: I don’t think it’s out of line to say the Patriots are the league’s most prestigious team. They have a supportive owner who treats players with class. They have a mastermind of a coach who gameplans brilliantly and doesn’t have to pay for players because he can work with whatever you give him. At this point, he prefers raw recruits, because he can teach them up. Did I mention their quarterback is a genius male model who married a Victoria Secret supermodel after he got bored with impregnating non-VS supermodels? That happened. They give curt answers to the media and sometimes mess with them outright, by listing players as ‘injured’ seemingly at random. The Patriots get a ton of attention, know they get a ton of attention, and though they are always expected to win, it’s been a few years since they took home a major award. Celebrity Equivalent: Ryan Gosling.

The New York Giants: The Giants represent one of the largest, richest sports markets in the world. Their quarterback has literally, since the day he was born, been groomed to play the position. On account of who his dad was, he was given the best possible training and an automatic starting role at every school he ever played for. When he was drafted into the NFL, he threw a tempter tantrum and refused to play unless he was traded to a team that he liked. Now a seasoned NFL quarterback, there’s no reason why Eli Manning and the Giants can’t succeed. And so they do. Kind of. I mean, did you see them in the Super Bowl in 2008? That was pretty freaking good. But outside of that they… well, they’re not bad. They’re good. They’re consistently good. Not great, like Eli’s father, but, you know, they produce a reliably enjoyable football product. Sometimes I think the Giants can be a little boring to watch, but, I don’t know — forget it, they’re good. They’re good. Celebrity Equivalent: Sofia Coppola

The Houston Texans: you all get tickets to this great show, but when you get there you realize that your most reliable friend wasn’t feeling good so she gave her ticket to her weird younger sister who’s extremely awkward and you don’t know her that well and, honestly, you don’t really even think she’s that into the show so she’ll probably leave early. Hall of Fame quarterback Peyton Manning is your friend. The Texans are the awkward younger sister. Another perfect analogy complete. Celebrity Equivalent: Ashlee Simpson

The San Francisco Forty-Niners: the last fifteen years or so have been tough for the Niners. They went from a Hall of Fame quarterback throwing to a Hall of Fame receiver, to years upon years of mediocrity. The only thing they really had going for them was that nobody around them was succeeding either — last year their division was so bad it had to send a team with a losing record to represent it in the playoffs. But the team hired a new coach this year, one which, unlike the previous coach, consistently wears pants while addressing his players. And things have been looking up. The Niners finished 13-3 this season, behind the strong play of quarterback Alex Smith, who got a bad eyebrow waxing the day he was drafted and tried to cover it with makeup, and Frank Gore, a punishing running back who literally has the IQ of a small, sweet child. It’s like a movie! Celebrity Equivalent: non-nude Jason Segel.

The Detroit Lions: much like the Niners, it’s been a long time (13 years) since the Lions have been relevant. They’ve spent the last decade losing and losing spectacularly, mostly due to General Manager Matt Millen’s insistence on drafting nothing but wide receivers. Millen’s vision of an offense which featured ten receivers and a quarterback would have been revolutionary had it succeeded, but it didn’t. It totally didn’t. So the Lions finally being in the playoffs might sound like a major feel-good underdog story. And it was. Until people realized their star defensive player was actively trying to injure other players. Then, on Thanksgiving, with millions watching, he took his cleats and tried to stomp out a downed player on the other team. That evaporated most of the remaining goodwill. Celebrity Equivalent: Mel Gibson

The Denver Broncos: this is the team with Tim Tebow, so you’ve probably already heard about them. The Broncos have lost the last three games in a row — including a final, potentially playoff-clinching game in which they failed to score a single touchdown – but thanks to the incessant soulful appeals of Tebow, every other team lost and the Broncos are now in the playoffs by default. Some consider the Broncos revolutionary for experimenting with a college-style ‘option’ offense, other see it as an absolutely unpredictable sh-tshow simulacra of football. Some see Tebow as a hero standing up for what is right and noble and succeeding despite his detractors, others see him as a totally unrefined mess valued far more for his entertainment value than whatever talent he might possess. I don’t know, but I’m going to watch. Celebrity Equivalent: Lady Gaga

The Cincinnati Bengals: Wait, the Bengals are in the playoffs? How? Okay so, according to this blog, the Bengals drafted a brand new quarterback and a brand new receiver, and they’ve been playing great since Day One. I had no idea. I don’t think I’ve watched a single Bengals game all year, but people are saying they have an outside shot at success? But then other people think they’ve lucked their way into the playoffs and don’t deserve the attention they’re getting? I don’t know. Celebrity Equivalent: Lana Del Rey

The Baltimore Ravens: the Ravens exist as kind of a Bizarro Steelers — albeit led by a murdering linebacker rather than a rapist quarterback — and while that’s not a comparison they’re likely to enjoy, I know it’s one they recognize. It’s why the Steelers/Ravens games are so enjoyable. It’s why Ravens fans are hoping to meet the Steelers in the playoffs. Both teams play tough defense, hit hard, and feature future Hall of Famers on defense. Despite the Ravens quarterback leading the league in BPA (boring passes attempted), the rest of the team seems smart, talented, and exciting to watch. Also, the murder happened in Baltimore, so water under the bridge, right? Celebrity Equivalent: Omar from The Wire

The New Orleans Saints: I don’t know if you heard of a little thing called Hurricane Katrina? Basically it was this disaster that made it so anyone rooting against the Saints is a horrible monster. Which would be a problem if the Saints weren’t one of the most likable teams in the league. Their coach prefers a high-risk, flashy offensive style, and this year their Hall of Fame quarterback, Drew Brees, threw for more yards than any player in history. No big deal. Brees stays grounded. He lives in the heart of New Orleans in a house with no fence and folks wave to him on their morning commute. Sometimes he gets drunk in the local bars. Speaking of drunk, the official theme song of the Saints last Super Bowl season was “Stand Up and Get Crunk” by the Ying Yang Twins. As in, government holidays were announced and parades were held and old women and tiny children commanded each other to get crunk for their team. The mayor even invited the rappers to perform, despite his assertion that “y’all ain’t ready.” As the Saints push into the playoffs, local radio stations convert to an All Saints schedule of programming, in which the standard fare is replaced by Saints remixes put together by locals, which are then played twenty-four hours a day. New Orleans embraces football fandom with European levels of enthusiasm, a reality as fun for the participant as it is destructive to civic productivity. Celebrity Equivalent: Beyoncé

The Atlanta Falcons: Honey, if you go to the store and they’re out of New Orleans Saints, just… pick up a few bags of Atlanta Falcons, I guess. We can always donate what we don’t use. Celebrity Equivalent: Kelly Rowland

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Is Lana Del Rey a ‘product’ that has been put together by larger forces in the music industry to cater to the increased demand for indie-yet-easy-to-consume artists? Or is she an overly dramatic young woman expressing her saccharine emotions?

I remember fervently listening to MIA four years ago, during her Arular period and enjoying her music for its pleasant Diplo-matic beats and what I considered to be a political element. But after seeing her perform live three times my respect of the political paragon of her lyrics dwindled progressively. I ultimately decided that what I was proudly consuming as indie music was pop, and I felt sour or tricked. Today, it is funny to me that I thought MIA was a political activist that would in any capacity be a catalyst for change in Sri Lanka.

I came to accept that there was a legitimate validity in the critical 2010 Lynn Hirschberg profile in the Times. The fact that the profile was accompanied by pictures taken by Ryan McGinley did not ameliorate my view of the musician. Additionally, having arrived briefly after Maya’s NME daring cover statement, “Lady Gaga sounds more like me than I f-cking do,” I felt less inclined to dance to “Paper Planes” than ever before.

The reason Maya’s attack on Lady Gaga was a turnoff for me was abstract — I was agitated that while I loved MIA’s music she did not possess adequate intellect to be perceived as an artist or an intelligent individual. This was the direct opposite of my opinion of Lady Gaga, whose music I did not consider as anything more profound than pop, but who was capable of, time and time again, demonstrating a rather insightful and thought-provoking presence in the media.

This particular moment in mainstream music is significant: mainstream musicians are for the first time facing the growing expectations of an audience that expects them to be well-rounded, intellectually curious and opinionated. Certainly that has yet to become a universal rule, as pop singers who lack any interest in ‘educated’ matters have not ceased to exist. However, a trend began in the past decade, with the younger consumers of music expecting more from their singers than a “Baby One More Time.”

Maybe the Internet, which spawned the ostensible beginning of her career, is the reason Lana Del Rey has been the recipient of such harsh criticism. It is undeniable that Lana Del Rey has become an overnight fixation, spurring much debate over whether she deserves her success. Many feel deceived: they thought they had discovered a girl with retro style, but it turned out to she’s a signed artist with a record in the works.

Lana Del Rey’s beauty is unquestionable: her gestures, movements and body language imply that she is cognizant of it, or at least performing that she is aware of it exceptionally. Questions regarding her ‘natural’ beauty arise, questions that do seem malevolent if we remember the myriad stars of the past and present who have foregone plastic surgery procedures to enhance their appearance. All of a sudden, consumers feel the need to express their desire for organic beauty and excellence.

Changing her name from Lizzy Grant to Lana Del Rey may have been an unwise move, providing an argument for her critics to say: ‘She is completely manufactured from her sound to her name’ in a vitriolic manner. Others insist she is appropriating an aesthetic: she is doing the white trashy, tattooed up, gangsta thing. And naturally, Lana Del Rey is not worthy of their respect due to her affluent roots: they nullify her street cred.

Remember that Del Rey did not enter our world promising to change it or alter our system of order. She did make music and did find an audience. Our fixation on her may be short-lived or it may be the beginning of a lasting career. She does not have to be an opinionated intellectual to be a successful musician, and having such expectations from all pop stars might be unfair.

Not everyone needs to, nor can, be Patti Smith. If we remind ourselves that Del Rey’s music is indeed pop music — and not an indie product that came to fruition sans the support of producers — it will be harder to be offended by it. Especially with lips like that.

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I’m a fan of Stevie Nicks. And that hasn’t always been an easy thing to admit, at least not publicly.

But, today, with many of her songs (“Landslide,” “Leather and Lace”) rightfully acknowledged as modern pop standards, and as a member of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Ms. Nicks is being more and more recognized as a true rock legend. But for many years, as she airily floated about, she was far too close to punchline and parody for even the most die-hard of fans to ably defend her fully. Hence, our frequent silence. Even the truly devoted among us, who secretly worshiped every aspect of her gothic crystal vision, often had to wonder if she wouldn’t be taken a bit more seriously, by audiences and critics alike, if just once she’d toned down some of her Enchanted Forest fever.

The cover art of her third solo album, Rock A Little from 1985, at first glance gave us a glimmer of hope. Despite the presence a crystal ball located in the lower right hand corner, Stevie’s cover photo, a full body shot of Stevie encased in a simple (for her) solid black dress, seemed to bode well for a new, more reserved, mainstream style. But then, back when albums had back covers (and back when there were albums), the photo of our beloved Ms. Nicks shown there fully squashed our delusions of Stevie ever abandoning any of her “Rhiannon”/ ”Sara”/ white wing ways. I mean there she was, superimposed over a tapestry background, in a hand-tinted photo, made up like a Renaissance maiden with a black fringed shawl wrapped around her shoulders and soft blond waves framing her face. The heavy eye make-up and black lipstick she also wore in the photo completed the Coming of Arthur vibe. Immediately we realized it: no, this Welsh Witch wasn’t going anywhere.

Since then, through her various solo efforts and her work with the occasionally reconfigured Fleetwood Mac, Nicks has fiercely hung onto her Dickens meets Earth Goddess meets Goth Chick vibe. In her latest album, In Your Dreams, she’s depicted on its cover black clad and in the woods, standing next to a white horse, an angelic starburst circling her form. Inside are photos of Stevie in one of her trademark top hats or, sometimes, with a Hogwarts-worthy owl perched on her arm.

But, now, it seems her look has outlasted her critics. In fact, her singular devotion to one style–one persona–is at present, a refreshing contrast to the disposable images that seem to dominate so much of the pop and rock landscape, especially among other female artists.

Madonna always gets a lot of credit for constantly ‘re-inventing’ herself, though her progression from Material Girl to cowgirl (for her Music LP era), has always seemed more calculated than organic. She seems no more devoted to one persona than any other; they are all just surface deep and she’s always just too ready to dump her current incarnation for the next big thing.

Madonna’s most successful descendent, Lady Gaga, meanwhile, is rushing through her own panoply of outrageous styles without really ever really finding one of her own. In some ways, that is Gaga’s fame game, but (at the risk of angering all the Gaga-heads of the world) her inconsistency creates a scatter-shot personage, undermining her art and message as she attempts instead to just one up the perpetual sideshow shock factor of her work.

More importantly, for the sake of comparison, you never saw Steve Nicks resort to adopting an alternate persona to achieve, well, whatever it is these ‘alters’ are supposed to achieve. No Jo Calderone or Sasha Fierce for her. There have been no other identities to try on just to see if it will fly.

Furthermore, except for the infamous nearly nude photo of Nicks on her and Lindsey Buckingham’s Buckingham-Nicks album from 1973, Stevie has remained modest, covered up in her layers of chiffon and silk scarves. Latter-day rock stars and some of her contemporaries (Cher comes to mind) certainly can’t say the same, as they have built much of their fame as much on getting naked as on making good music. Where would Britney be without her body stocking and songs about being slutty (“Seek Amy,” anyone)? Where would Christina be if she wasn’t always so willing to get “Dirrrty”? Even Mariah, who at least has the voice for musical magic, has seldom missed a chance to bare her midriff.

In contrast, throughout her 40-plus year career, Stevie Nicks has not only not traded on her sexuality, but she has remained true to her muse. Long before Glee gave us all permission to just be, Nicks, through word and action, has always just been herself no matter what the record-buying public thought or a music exec suggested. And in a world, and especially in rock and roll, where everyone it seems is flaying about always trying to fit into a shifting, ever shrinking niche, her true individualism is a trait certainly worthy of respect.

Long may she twirl.

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The first time I ever saw Lady Gaga was when she performed at the 2008 Miss Universe competition, and I remember immediately assuming that she was some wacky overseas act that would fade into oblivion soon because people just wouldn’t get her. And so, I changed the channel. But something about her intrigued me, so I switched back and upon further observation, noted a few things: her style was a little different and she was certainly no dancer, but her voice was strong and she seemed really passionate about performing.

She blew up soon after with ‘Just Dance’ and as soon as I put two and two together and figured out it was the same girl, I found myself very pleasantly surprised. And as I got to know her, I grew to adore her; she shared my love of double entendres and blunt conversation (watch some of her earlier interviews). Imagine my delight when I found that not only does she hail from New York, the place I too call home, but was young, smart and sexy. She had this coy but whip smart talent of luring the world in that other pop stars of this generation lacked.

But Gaga has changed. In the few years since her debut she has morphed from this tough, sexed up, intellectual kitten to some sort of spiritual enlightenment devotee and a “rejects of society” savior. I remember when she first came out, she reminded me of the Paris Hilton party girl type except with actual brains and space-age sartorial ensembles. She was the girl you could dance all night with and have intellectual conversations with the morning after.

She’s still as smart as ever; judging by her album sales, award winning streak and ever increasing popularity. But her steez has changed, morphed if you will, into something far different from who or what she started as.

She’s become a martyr for human rights and a mouthpiece for the lost, disenfranchised generation. Although I think many of her fans can relate to that and wholeheartedly appreciate it, she is alienating her fans who cannot relate to such musings – she alienated them with the title track of her new album, the lackluster and Express Yourself pt. II jingle ‘Born This Way.’ ‘Born This Way’ was surely no ‘Bad Romance,’ and the video didn’t even help sell the package.

In the beginning I realized that Gaga had fans of all types: Marilyn Manson once professed his perverted thoughts of her, Snoop Dogg filmed a short video expressing interest in collaborating with her, and even at her concert, I observed revelers of all types. She was pop royalty and appealed to so many of the masses.

Even her music has changed: songs like ‘Starstruck’ and ‘So Happy I Could Die’ were true pop, with danceable beats and lollipop lyrics, all expertly hemmed together. Now she’s singing about Judas and Jesus, and as an Agnostic, I have to say, she lost me. I mean I like ‘Bloody Mary’ but do I feel weird as hell singing along? Yes.

In my eyes, ‘Bad Romance’ was Gaga’s creative peak. She looked her best, she danced her best, and although the song was not a personal favorite, the fact remains that it was a perfect blend of radio friendly pop and the dark gloom and boom of a Euro dance track that she was so intent on trying to merge. And with the glamorous video attached to the tune, her goal was achieved.

But after that it was downhill; ‘Telephone’ was a weak song with a Looney Tunes-tinged video, ‘Alejandro’ never quite stuck with me and I found the video to be all-out spooky… and it just got worse from there. In many ways it seems as if the Born This Way album is just a mish-mash of scraps left over after the creation of ‘Bad Romance,’ it has much of the dark gloom and boom but little of the fun pop. Unless you want to count ’80s pop, her rendition of which I find lackluster and mostly cringe worthy. It probably didn’t help that she recorded most of it while on tour, it seems to me that a short break would have provided better material. Too many of her songs sound like they’re recycled from other artists’ catalogs, or even remixes of her own songs… ever notice how the “OoOoOoOo” that she sings in beginning of ‘Judas’ sounds very similar to the “OoOoOoOo” she sings at the beginning of ‘Bad Romance’?

Yeah. Gaga, take a break, doll. Your interviews are repetitive, your music is sucking and I’m afraid that you’re actually losing your mind.

See you on the come up baby. We miss you.

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My parents have really bad taste in music. And no, not the typical six-hour-marathon-of-the-Bee-Gees-really-appreciate-Brian-Wilson’s-solo-stuff type of bad taste. No, they had to get all trans-generational with regards to shitty music. As I write this, my dad is singing wistfully to Ani DiFranco. And I am thankful. Do you know why? Because it’s not The Black Eyed Peas, Lady Gaga, or Pink.

I rue the day my mother first walked in to Work Out World. She entered not only a giant gym, but a giant cesspool filled with the dregs of the Top 40. Day after day, I heard her come home and tunelessly warble ‘Bad Romance’ or ‘Where is the Love?’. I’ll be perfectly honest—I love my mother, and she has a lovely singing voice. For church. If you like that sort of thing. The problem was not helped by my father, who has an online shopping addiction and depends on the UPS man for social interaction. Ostensibly to please my mother, but most likely because he couldn’t fit any more golf shirts in his closet and needed a fix, he bought the entire discography of Lady Gaga, The Black Eyed Peas, and Pink, along with the DVD of Pink’s Funhouse Tour (I had, to my peril, deleted this off the DVR as the recording was five months old. Little did I know, my mother listened to it every single time the cleaned the house).

From the Amazon.com box, the contagion spread. I would get into my car, turn it on, and be assaulted with, volume and bass maxed, the pseudo-defiant strains of “..so what?! I’m still a rockstar, I got m-“ until I quickly turned the CD player off. This would, of course, be followed by my furtive glances around to see if anyone had heard. Eventually, my father was infected, and his symptoms were frightening. I remember walking downstairs to see him, legs crossed, staring thoughtfully into the Windows Media Player visualization of “Tonight’s Gonna Be a Good Night” while washing down his Vicodin with a Bloody Mary and doing a fairly good impersonation of being zonked out on Quaaludes. His empty-eyed stare as he looked at me and contemplatively said “Mazel Tov,” in time Will.i.am is etched in my brain forever. Add to this my mother’s occasional attempts to rap through “I’mma Be” and you have one nasty outbreak of shitty pop music jumping past its usual hosts. Someone once tried to defend the Black Eyed Peas to me, saying that they were a good indicator of what was going on in the current musical underground. Really? Because if that’s the case, the musical underground is full of sixty year olds with Windows Media Player. What horror have you wrought, Fergie?

Of course, all this pales in comparison to how they’ve bought, probably in bulk, into the Gaga zeitgeist that pervades gyms, shopping malls, and gay clubs across the continental US. Did you know my mother was on the pre-order list for the deluxe edition of Born This Way? I didn’t – at least, not until I woke up one morning to my mother pounding on my door screaming “government hooker!” at me. Needless to say, I was incredibly confused. My dad seems to be an ardent Gaga devotee as well. I’m sure he was initially drawn in by the numerous sax-solos, being a gigantic fan of Kenny G, Michael Bolton and elevator music in general. When I exasperatedly asked him “Why do you even like this shit?” over Gaga’s droning pseudo-manifesto bit in “Born This Way” he replied with “Well… it’s a nice song! About how much mothers love their daughters!” Hm. Now, I’m of the school of people that think Stefani Germanotta is not in possession of one single clue about what her songs mean until she improvises their meaning when questioned by Matt Lauer or Barbara Walters. However, I don’t think even she would go for that description—it’s a little too pat, and doesn’t leave much room for inverted crosses and bondage gear. But I guess she’s a great canvas for whatever people want her meat dresses and fake-German to mean, and that’s probably what appealed to my mother (and just about everyone else that styles themselves as some kind of monster) in the first place.

This isn’t to say that parents don’t occasionally pull out some great music. Pretty much the opposite, actually—they introduced me to both Three Dog Night and The Band, and I was almost named Rhiannon after the Fleetwood Mac song.  Sometimes, though, when I wake up at seven in the morning to the opening strains of “My Humps” with my mother and father ardently singing along, I question: Are two bands and my almost-name enough?

Probably. At least until they discover Rebecca Black or Brokencyde.

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We’re not all blessed with the aptitude for curving our feet into the artificial S pose, the talent of balancing the tips of our heels onto a slither of a wedge. It’s not every young woman’s calling, yet the majority of us respond to society’s appeal for the long, lustrous sexy legs attained by the elevated shoe.

I can’t walk in heels… I just can’t. Save for the times I’m slightly inebriated, which for some reason whisks with it the magical capability of maintaining the composure of my usually testy feet. Or if the shoe features a thick wedge and a front platform. But for the most part, I’m the waddling penguin who seems to have grabbed a pair of shoes from her mother’s closet.

So when a male friend commented that, someday, I’d have to learn to love the heel (“That’s what all women wear in the workplace”) my eyes rolled upwards and I let out a heavy, disheartened sigh.

Really, where does a man who never faces the challenge of pulling the pencil skirt over ‘child bearing hips’ and who, last time I checked, saunters comfortably into work, feet clad in the one inch, thick, large heels that don’t even count as heels, possibly begin to think he has a say in what type of shoe a woman should wear? When did society decide pain is beauty and that foot binding is cruel but heel wearing is acceptable, required? Why is it that I am expected to don heels on a night out and soak pained feet in a bath of warm water the morning after?

And why is it that I still wish I could pull off the four-inch pumps laying in my closet because I happen to love the look they leave me with?

I hold the 1500s responsible – the barely five-foot, 14-year-old Catherine de Medici, to be precise. To compensate for her lack in height (and apparently self- esteem), little Medici fashioned a pair of heels for her wedding day, in an attempt to temporarily grow two inches. (I would be perfectly comfortable, mind you, if heels had stopped at the two-inch mark. Now those I can strut about in.) Medici’s heels revolutionized generations of women’s shoe closets to come, from the iconic Marilyn Monroe’s The Seven Year Itch stilettos to Gaga’s modern shoes-gone-art.

Regardless of what my male friend believes; I’ll forever be the employee in the cute flats, hidden among the wedge enhanced, 5’8 women of my workplace. But every once in a while, I’ll also be the one waddling along, giving into society’s pressure to curve up on the balancing act we call ‘wearing high heels.’ Just look for the penguin with the sexy long legs.

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In the world of pop tunes, presentation is–arguably–much more the “product” than the music. In that respect, there’s almost no question that Lady Gaga is pushing boundaries. Unless of course you count Marilyn Manson as a pop star. But as you know, he doesn’t make pop music, he makes industrial goth. What Gaga lacks in doing it first, she makes up for with doing it in a far less adventure-ready arena. And whatever “it” is, she ain’t bad at it. I’ll bet it’s with no fully dissolved solution of respect and envy that Manson watches the video for “Bad Romance” with a twisted grin on his face.

But courageousness aside, can we really call Lady Gaga a member of the avant-garde?

TheFreeDictionary.com defines the avant-garde as “A group active in the invention and application of new techniques in a given field, especially in the arts.”

Okay, if the given field is pop music, which we’re defining–cynically–as the packaging of a singer for mass consumption… Then yes, we can say that at least part of what Lady Gaga does is completely new.

But is it actually a technique? Or is it just the glorification of flinging stuff at the wall because the market is ready for it? Let’s look at the definition of “technique.”

technique (n): “The systematic procedure by which a complex or scientific task is accomplished.”

I don’t know whether Gaga’s procedure can be called systematic. Hell, I don’t even know if we can call it a procedure. This ain’t Claude Monet developing more exaggerated brush-strokes of light and shadow to render a stylized impression of landscapes. If anything, the Gaga schtick seems to flourish by virtue of it’s sharply asystematic, “WTF”-appeal.

Is it rebellion that Germanotta taps into? If so, then why does she keep the music so effortless to hear? Remember, the music is still part of the equation, and if she wanted to be really rebellious, she would have stayed with her earlier rock or hip-hop songwriting instead of re-tooling Madonna and Michael Jackson for an easy swallow by the millions.

I guess that “m” word really explains it. Lady Gaga knows how to feed the machine with the tunes necessary for pop universality. She knows that fashion, photography and music video are far more avant-ready mediums for the bizarre or unusual. Music, not so much. That’s the key to pop-song success: instant familiarity. It’s why the same four-chord structure comprises half of the songs you hear on the radio. The ear and the eye are such different animals. The eye is hungry for more data. The ear wants to maintain the status quo. Why do you think alarms are so… alarming? Evolutionarily, the ear “stood watch”, protecting us from predators and rival tribes. The eye worked on hunting, learning and reproducing. Advancement. The eye is the offensive squad, and the ear is the defense. Ever hear someone listening to really weird music and then joke that they’re on drugs? The phrase, “you have to be high to enjoy Phish” is not entirely un-scientific. When music has too much color, complexity and other variables, our primal ear turns off from it. Illicit substances, for better or worse, are known to boost the visual qualities of our other senses. By the same token, have you ever honestly been thrilled by looking at a picture of a tree in a field? BORING! I’ve seen that like a thousand times by now! Show me something interesting, like melting clocks drooping off the side of a mesa!

Does this mean anything?

Does this mean anything?

But I digress. Lady Gaga is not an avant-garde artist, she’s a marketer. She certainly meets the standard of an “artist”–she’s definitely expressing herself in a way that could change how you look at the world. But her strategy of connecting unusual sights to the same old sounds are nothing short of a marketing strategy. She’s a shrewd businesswoman, a supposedly postmodern creatrix whose craft is the attachment of contrasting packages to each other, in order to increase demand for the “product”.

I tell you what though, she IS “active in the invention and application of new techniques in a given field”, but that field is making millions, not shedding light on the inner-life of the world.

Unless of course marketing is an elaborate–and coincidentally profitable–performance piece about modern humanity…

For the record, I love Lady Gaga.

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Oh, so this is a funny guy. His tweets are all jokes. I respect that. Whoa, he has 70,000 followers? Jesus. Stand-up comedians are like golden gods on Twitter. After spending their whole life getting shit on, they finally get to be one of the popular kids. Wow, his tweets are pretty hysterical. I’ll follow him.

Who is "mRsSunLuvr" and why is she following me? She has 35 followers and she's following 482. Jeez, desperado! She tweets to Lady Gaga, talks about the weather and tweets her horoscope. I'll C U in virtual hell, misssy!

I'm sitting at home reading the live-tweets of an acquaintance's night out. They were eating sushi but now they're headed to a bar named Black & White with three of their friends. Now, they're trying to meet up with their other friend to go to some diner. Gee, it's like I'm right there with them instead of in bed wearing a nightgown. Why does it feel so thrilling?

Oh, this is person is so good at Twiter. I feel like we'd be really good friends IRL, you know? His tweets are just so me. Get out of my head and come hang out with me!

How does Kim Zolciak's daughter have 15,000 followers on Twitter? The internet is so weird.

This person is a tweeting minimalist. She deletes most of her tweets because it disrupts the flow of her Twitter. She's clearly treating it like a weird art project, a collection of her best thoughts. She gets rid of most of her @ tweets probably because it creates clutter and chaos. Everything that stays on there is intended to be a part of a larger narrative. So pomo.

This person likes to tweet on Ambien. Therefore, I'm going to follow them.

OMG, why won't my ex follow me back on Twitter? I gave you my heart, body, and so much drama, and this is how you repay me? I'm serious, follow me back!!!!

Why did "NastyGurl' Follow Friday me when she doesn't actually follow me? Sigh, the mysteries of Twitter.

This person is old. Game over.

Everyone tries to be the best version of themselves on Twitter. It's sort of like a virtual cool kid cafeteria. Which lunch table will you get invited to sit at? It's so cliquey and you have the opportunity to get rejected daily, whether it be by an ignored @ tweet or when someone chooses not to follow you back. But you know what? It's better than Facebook. Because at least you don't have to see photo albums of fat people from your high school getting married. And you get to choose who ends up in your feed. You are not allowed to deny a Facebook friend request. It's practically illegal. However, you can easily not follow someone back. That's totally socially acceptable. People want to keep the ratios uneven and you can't hold it against them! Sure, you'll be hurt, but you must keep it to yourself. If someone doesn't accept your Facebook friend request, then they're an asshole who deserves to get called out. With Twitter, the stakes are higher and you can't say shit. Twitter is essentially Facebook but with a smaller and smarter brain.

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