For most of my pre-high school life, the only music I knew much about was classical--as in Mozart, Bach, Beethoven. No, this isn't me trying my best to be a pretentious prick; it simply reflected my experience up to that point, having become a serious bass player in some local youth orchestras during middle school. When iPods became big with some of my friends back in 7th and 8th grade, I gained a little more exposure to artists like Green Day and Ludacris from listening to whatever music my friends were into while we hung out, but I was still pretty entrenched in Shostakovitch and Bartok.
So it may come as a surprise that I believe's Lady Gaga's Bad Romance to be one of the better music videos of late.
It seems cliche to highlight a video that already has so much publicity, but for me pop music is a world I'm still coming to grips with. I probably first heard of the pop culture queen at the 2009 GA Governor's Honors Program. We held weekly dances every Saturday night, and one of the songs that seemingly kept popping up at every dance was "Poker Face." At the time I pretty much didn't know anything about Lady Gaga or Poker Face, and though the song was fairly catchy I didn't give it much thought. Going into senior year, one of my friends would constantly listen to Lady Gaga (her answer when questioned about her adoration of the singer: "It's like she puts crack in her music!") and I assume it is from this friend's curiosity which led me to my first encounter with "Bad Romance." But it wasn't until someone sent me a Facebook link of an a cappella men's group singing the hit single months later before I internalized what Lady Gaga actually was.
The a cappella group, incidentally, is the University of Oregon's On the Rocks. They're really entertaining--this is the original video I saw back in May 2010 but they've since come out with a more polished video here--but I thought their dance movements were a bit, er, unusual to say the least. In trying to discover whether the moves were true to the choreography of the actual song, I was off to watch the Bad Romance music video.
Needless to say, I was blown away.
Now before we go any further, let me state that yes, it's no secret that Gaga takes many cues from Michael Jackson, Freddy Mercury, and no doubt Madonna, but in an age where most music videos are content to be a random hodgepodge of miscellaneous takes that'll hopefully look good as part of a montage, "Bad Romance" has a narrative, recurring motifs, and a visual spectacle worthy of a MTV video from the 80s. Granted, there is that random fashion bit, and the video doesn't quite mesh with the lyrics entirely. But when the opening lines are "I want your ugly, I want your disease," can you really expect the video to be a literal representation of lyrics that themselves don't always make perfect (apparent) sense? Besides, a good video should add to a song, not simply illustrate it.
In case you don't care to see it (or even if you do), the video starts with Gaga wearing razor blade glasses (?) surrounded by people (and a Great Dane) fresh from some costume party--or maybe this video's after party--with Bach, of all composers, dubbed over. Gaga then lifts her finger from the speakers (made by Parrot, if you'll notice) and the video proper starts: Gaga and some backup singers dressed in what is best described as white spandex leotards with funny hats and ski masks emerge from these pod things in the "Bath Haus of Gaga," followed by a literally wide-eyed Gaga who is kidnapped and drugged to perform in front of some menacing Russian guy who buys her and then is going to have his way with her, except he spontaneously combusts and Lady Gaga gets to wear a pyrotechnic bra by the end of it all. Oh, and there's a fashion runaway walk in there too.
Anyway, I promise the video is better than whatever I just wrote (this website does a better, wittier breakdown of the scenes). For me, one of the more curious motifs is the obvious and repeated product placement, such as the iPod classic, Nemiroff's vodka, the HP Envy laptop (with Dr. Dre's Beats logo, no less), and even the Wii's "nunchuck" controllers. Here's a better listing of the brands used if you're particularly into this, but more importantly is that most of the items are highly prominent and unlike many other placement promos, they're not even trying to pretend that it's not a blatant advertisement here. Of course, several critics have posited that maybe it's statement about capitalism or the music industry or materialism, especially given the video's narrative relating to human trafficking. Which it very well may be. But I'm sure it's still great money for both parties involved, even if its also a larger statement about whatever.
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