Gaga is good. Sort of.

It may be because I'm a touch pissed at the time of writing this and it was playing in the bar I was in earlier, but I've been thinking about Lady Gaga. I'm kind of surprised that more people haven't seemed to have got the point of her. There are a lot of people that love her to ridiculous extremes, there are people that consider her another pop clone showing tits and ass to get records sold, and there are people that consider her to be a dude. All of these viewpoints (except possibly the last one) miss the whole point of Gaga.

First off, she's a writer, and regardless of whether you like the singles or not (I for one could frankly do without them, but can't seem to get them out of my head for ages after hearing them), the fact that she penned them immediately puts her in a category above Britney et al. Infuriatingly catchy choruses married to the smoothest production possible, they are shining examples of everything great or hideous about pop, depending on your point of view.

But the point is, Gaga herself knows this. There are many insidious touches that hint of the skewed double meaning, not least of which is the way she goes completely out of her way to make herself look as hideously freakish as possible, while being a genuinely beautiful woman. The point is that pop music is so driven by image and sex that most 'artists' in the genre are ugly talentless caricatures of beauty and sex appeal - the difference is Gaga chooses to be this way. The concept is never clearer than in the video for 'Bad Romance' - the single that cemented her place as world leading pop icon, with a chorus so catchy the only way it will ever leave your head is if you skewer it out with a screwdriver. She appears freakishly distorted to the point where she is so skinny she would be dead from starvation, and is shown being pretty much whored out to an emotionless onlooker. There was the MTV performance in which she essentially died in a pool of her own blood to attempt to sate the appetite of the ravenous masses.

She is clearly much, much more intelligent than she is often given credit for, using her not inconsiderable talent to subvert the very genre she has conquered so effortlessly. For that, she deserves more than to be written off as another soulless pop bimbo - whether you like her records or not, she deserves your respect, however grudgingly given it may be.