Generation Gaga: Lady Gaga's Year

In an age where we are consumed with technocracy, lives a girl who sings in a flat tone, with eye sockets where vacant expressions reside. Hidden under layers of bizarre outfits, heavy wigs and eye make-up, she now seems to represent the lives of the eccentric rebels, the misfits and the marginalized.

Her life though, was nothing of the above. She learnt to play the piano when she was four, went to Tisch School of Arts when she was 17 and soon recorded her first single “Boys, Boys, Boys”.

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It all happened one day when Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta entered a recording studio when she received a text from her producer Rob Fusari addressing her as “Lady Gaga”. Miswritten for “Radio Ga Ga” (which happened to Stefani’s favourite song), this typo became the synonym to a star.

Be it borrowed, inspired or sometimes stolen from those she admires (The list includes Madonna, Christina Aguilera, Michael Jackson, Queen, Donatella Versace), the focus of her identity remains secure even when Gaga’s image is considered to have more of patches than a quilt.

But we guess she is the apt icon for those we call Generation Gaga- those who draw three emoticons’ in a tweet. Ask her 7 million “little monsters” on Twitter or those who added up to 1 million hits on her single’s video on YouTube.

After bagging numerable awards and a blood spurt theme performance in ‘Paparazzi’ and the ‘Monster Ball Tour’ last year, we wondered what was to come.

This year, she rebelled against “Don’t ask, don’t tell” policy of the American armed forces towards homosexuals. How? By wearing a meat costume at the MTV Video Music Awards in LA. She bagged several awards, of course. She also did something we never expected her to do- She repeated one of her outfits made by the late Alexander McQueen on the red carpet.

She doesn’t let her hair or head-dress down even while she goes to a yoga class. But she strips down to studded underwear and stiletto heels when she goes to a Mets game.

After enabling fireworks in her breasts, (or looking at herself before hitting the stage) you’d think she wouldn’t be scared of anything. But she calls in Ghostbusters before her Monster’s Ball gig in London- convinced of “evil spirits haunting her”. She too, is freaked about her fan, Anastasia Obukhova, who wants to “die with her”.

But on other occasions, she is the embodiment of anything but usual. It seems Gaga has really understood the freakonomics of theatrics. And for those who haven’t, enrol in University of South Caroline which now has a course on “Lady Gaga & the Sociology of Fame”.

We don’t blame them- she has such an exterior that sometimes we find it difficult to imagine a real person living beneath. But what Gaga wants is to create a “strong image”… she wanted to the “bring back the super fan who’d want to eat and taste and lick every part of me.”

She doesn’t sit back after accolades, but goes and records her upcoming album, ‘Born This Way’ which is her “opus of universal identity embracing fans’ liberations & future.”

Sounds deep- unlike the time she called herself “more of a man than Justin Bieber” and claimed to have a problem with Le Bron James even being nominated for Time Person of the Year.

Making it consistently to Forbes List of 100 Most Influential People, this starlet was the fourth largest earner with $62 million this year.

In between making her signature scent “Monster” and a cameo in Muppets, she finds time to address a rally on irrational policies framed for the US Armed Forces.

With mortals thankful to be immortalized in wax just once, Gaga will have seven wax statues unveiled before the end of 2010.

And in between it all, she never forgets to tell her fans that they are “superstars” but she also adds “Gaga is a lie”.

And you thought you figured her out.

From the December 2010 issue of FHM India.