“I think there are different kinds of fame. There’s a fame which is plastic and about money and then there’s a fame when no one knows who you are but everyone wants to know who you are.” – Stefani Germanotta (Lady Gaga)
“Nothing is permanent. So I’m very grateful every second that I get to be doing this at this level. My response to anything that happens, good or bad, is to keep making art.” – Taylor Swift
Unlike the deeply distressing confessional songwriting mode and music of such classic heart-on-their-sleeve singers as Marianne Faithfull and Joni Mitchell, or even the ultra-suffering effigy of the late, lamentable Amy Winehouse, Lady Gaga and Taylor Swift are self-curated performance artists whose homeopathic medicine doses are dolloped out to us in artfully crafted personas always on the verge of revealing their wounds but never quite arriving at divulging it all the way. They are practically tantric in this regard. Their massively popular primal therapy sessions, conducted in ritualized public spaces and thus akin to ancient Roman colosseum spectacles, and delivered in real-time diary entries of the most flamboyant sort since Madonna, have become a kind of cultish conceptual living theatre designed to permanently suspend gratification for worshipping audiences whose fervor almost approaches the stunned crowds gathered to writhe before the early Beatles.
Rather than fully revealing their wounds, which appear to be abundant and readily discernible through both lyrics and posture, they blow up their hearts to architectonic proportions for their adoring minions to munch on. Yes, they are the palpating embodiment of a certain polarity in our time, and yet I maintain they are also virtual mirror images of each other, despite the obvious surface distinctions between their styles. Primarily found in the both raunchy and subdued echo of Madonna in her prime, via the strike-a-pose mode of Vogue-ing which they both so stealthily deploy with each new tour, their recent and current feats of world domination, the Chromatica tour of Gaga and the Eras tour of Swift, demonstrate that when it comes to exposing emotional vulnerabilities concealed beneath the swaddled bandages of their bombastic stagecraft they are actually on the same tour. The cracked mirror tour.
Both artists share, in an equally boisterous manner, their private diary entries in a way that connects with mass audiences in a way that only truly primal pop stars can, with a frequency vibe (measured in terms of sales and concert attendance more than in musical styles) that has a curious if antiquated echo of Crosby, Sinatra, and Elvis. This, of course, is meant solely in terms of their impact on a global listening cohort that is often a paradoxical alchemy of sorts capable of exerting a huge influence on cultural discourse across the board, not merely in the music industry. They, like all cracked mirrors and primal pop stars who achieve an avant status, are emblems of an enigma that pop music always presents us with. In their mutual case, it is quite possible to ascertain an obvious, if subterranean, link among Bette Midler, Dolly Parton, Barbra Streisand and Diana Ross, a link which gives cross-over commercial success a whole new meaning in our postmodern era.
Given how drastically different their presentational styles are, it’s useful to remember that they were both part of the same millennials cohort, with Gaga being born in 1986 and Swift in 1989, and they thus share a quirky fin-de-siècle kind of zeitgeist feeling. They also share a spooky ultra-youthful prodigy-like arrival on their respective scenes, in Swift’s case country music during its shift in gears toward pop, and in Gaga’s case post-Madonna dance and rave shift towards a hard-to-define hybrid of hip-hop and stadium rock. That is a heady mix, to be sure, and also given the divergence of their presentations of self, again only on the surface in my estimation, it is an obscure one that weirdly encapsulates that familiar end-of-century mindset that appears to mix symbolism, decadence and aestheticism. This is the point at which it’s fair to remind ourselves of the idiom that history doesn’t really repeat itself but it often rhymes.
Likewise, both of these mega-stars are archetypal and need to be examined according to the synchronicity inherent in that rarefied status. For example, among their multiple precursors are Laura Nyro and Janis Ian, both confessors par excellence, as well as other polar celestial commerce generators such as Whitney Houston and Céline Dion, Adele and Miley Cyrus, Gwen Stefani and Christina Aguilera, Cher and Janet Jackson. But most importantly from my perspective, the singular talent who truly occupies that tight emotional space wedged in between Gaga and Swift is Annie Lennox. These three female pop deities rhyme big time, and the best way to understand one is to probe the others, not for similarities exactly but rather for the distinctions, the kind that can lead to rogue discoveries about our own listening habits. And when it comes to comprehending what is behind primal pop, habit is the key word to accept in this regard.
This is probably because when it comes to what motivates our appetites (and contra dear old Marx), it isn’t just religion that is the opium of the masses, it’s pop. In discussions with both other professional listeners, friends and fans of the two divas, I’ve been struck by the drastic divergence, not just between their takes on this pair of artists but also between those who like or dislike the before or after stages of the mega-fame. One good example is an acquaintance who has the perspicacity to be part of the contemporary art world at the same time as cultivating a fondness for and understanding of the seriousness and importance of pop. He reminds me often that both women are practitioners of what I’ve already referred to, echoing Ian Anderson, as art pop. And indeed, both singer-songwriters consider themselves to be artists first and entertainers second, despite the monolithic nature of their fan base.
Hence, Gaga claims to prefer the kind of fame where no one really knows her but desperately wants to, thus her perpetual shape-shifting in full Madonna-mode, but even more dramatically (including her recent forays in serious acting endeavors in seriously considered cinematic ventures) across a spectrum that, while not necessarily of what she calls the plastic sort involving money, nonetheless results in massive wealth. And Swift, who though she doesn’t that regularly shift her shape like Gaga, does seem to have the degree of self-awareness required to realize that this whole roller-coaster ride she’s on could easily end at any moment, that perilous moment when she is no longer the flavour of the week, month, or even year. Thus she is either devoted to Janis Joplin’s ethos of “get it while you can” or else is more methodical in morphing into a corporate entity via the rest of the oomph she brings to bear on what this generation calls an “influencer.” Along the way, her sole concern, as she expresses it anyway, is to “keep making art.”
My focus group, for lack of another word, did emphasize to me that a musical artist like the 39-year old Gaga, who often strikes me as more conceptual performance artist than entertainer per se, never had that much hope of remaining a pop star once she became one, since they identify her as the kind of artist who is compelled to disrupt expectations and subvert, if not downright bite, the industry that feeds her. She just seems to be able to do that while still convincingly masquerading as a pop star. The energetic 36-year old Miss Swift, on the other hand, doesn’t seem to have a subversive bone in her wholesome body, and, according to the reasoning of my focus group at least, has way more potential for staying power, and an enhanced opportunity to stay at the top of the pops, because she’s far less likely to stir the pot or ruffle either her bosses’ or her fans’ feathers. Unless she surprises us all by suddenly donning a series of Bowie mime personas and shedding her old skin live on stage.
It does seem plausible that I’d really put Gaga in, if not in a category all her own, then at least in one personified by Madonna and Prince, Elton John and to some degree Bowie. Whereas, it might stand to reason, Swift is more comfy in a cozy realm exemplified by Rhianna and Katy Perry, Britney Spears and Ariana Grande. My interlocutors were quick to point out that both camps are equally pop-rock stars of considerable talent and magnitude, however, one side of the spectrum is more that of being slaves to risk and are therefore more likely to alter the standard landscape by creating new style trends. The other spectrum go-round is more dependably consistent in the product they deliver, while also being cannily skilled at anticipating the next trend before it arrives, thus seeming to be the cause of it rather than merely surfing whatever wave it might be. The other group is more consistent, good at anticipating and riding trends, never rocking the boat too hard but changing it up just enough to stay relevant and not boring.
This brings us to a crossroads where one might well consider whether the talents of either, or both, are commensurate with their amazing popularity, whether or not their careers wax and wane and possibly lead them into different kinds of product endorsements, if you will. The fan base that both occupy, or perhaps colonize is a more accurate word, are seemingly equally fanatical, even obsessive, and just as diverse in their social cross-sections and demographic identities. Few purveyors of pop music since the Beatles have been able to command quite the rapt attention of such a huge swathe of global culture, and likewise to use their celebrity (rather being a mask that eats into the face, as with Beatles) in order to bring more awareness to whatever specific causes interest them. LGBT tolerance in Gaga’s case, for instance (having been born this way and demanding acceptance) or Democratic liberal values in Swift’s case (I endorse this candidate and so should you). In both cases a star is born, not made.
For those who may have been residing on a desert island for the past decade or so, or maybe enrolled in studying classical violin at some Royal Conservatory, the head rise and rise of our two diva samples has been quite the exercise in contrasting ambitions. But mostly it’s a cautionary tale of how to arrive at your cherished destination in two totally different ways, and also of the vagaries of fulfilled-dream syndrome. The elder of our young champions of the hit parade, Stefani Angelina Germanotta, aka Lady Gaga, was a prodigy who expressed a primitive and natural interest in playing piano at the age of four, albeit not in the manner that Mozart would recognize. Her ascent seemed not only relentless but also somehow inevitable, despite a life infused with early traumas that invariably found their way into her work.
Early on she embraced the exotic idea that her life as she lived it was in fact a work of art, as later characterized by Kelefa Sanneh in a New Yorker profile: “Lady Gaga blazed a trail for truculent pop stars by treating her own celebrity as an evolving art project.” Which indeed it definitely was, and still is. Rolling Stone Magazine’s Rob Sheffield described our current cultural climate as one where “it’s hard to remember a world when we didn’t have Gaga, although we’re pretty sure it was a lot more boring.” That could be largely because, in Time’s estimation, “she had practically invented the current era of pop music as spectacle.” In other words, she created the operational and theatrical stage that her younger cohort Swift confidently stands on, with quite different intentions but identical impact. Both are among the first musical artists of what we now quaintly call the Internet Age.
From the age of eleven she attended the Convent of the Sacred Heart, a private all-girls’ Roman Catholic school on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Having rapidly mastered an almost intuitive approach to the piano, as a teenager she was already appearing at open microphone nights in her neighborhood. Having always considered herself a misfit, she was constantly mocked for being either too provocative or just too eccentric. In 2003, by age 17, she had gained early admission to a music school at New York University called the Collaborative Arts Project, where she lived in the dorm while writing a thesis on postmodern pop artists Spencer Tunick and Damien Hurst, but she left college to pursue her music career. At age 19, so her origin myth tells us, she was raped by her record producer and later underwent mental and physical therapy for her ensuing post-traumatic stress syndrome, after her rapist dropped her off pregnant at a street corner near her parents’ house, subsequent to what she has described as being abused and locked away in a studio for months. Is such a being, talented yet hyper-vulnerable, very likely to commence singing silly love songs to assuage the heartache of total strangers? I don’t think so. Signed in 2007 to Streamline Records, she collaborated with producer RedOne and released a debut album in 2008 called The Fame which scared the pants off radio executives.
Like Gaga, Taylor Swift was, and maybe still is, a Catholic girl (named after folk singer James Taylor, of all people) who was raised in rural Pennsylvania on a Christmas tree farm, and studied at a Montessori school run by Bernardine Sisters of St. Francis. As a youngster she performed in youth theatre productions and traveled to New York regularly for acting and vocal lessons, a period in which she developed a love of country music under the influence of Shania Twain (certainly a stylistic role model from what I can see and hear) and The Dixie Chicks. After performing a few songs at an RCA Records showcase, the 13-year-old Swift was given an artist development deal and began to invade Nashville, where she was given the benefit of mentorship by Liz Rose.
Rose, who described her mentee as already writing songs about what had happened to her at school that day, brought her to the attention of Scott Borchetta, an executive who was about to launch the aptly named Big Machine Records, and made her one of his first signings. She developed her style working on her eponymously named debut album, released in 2006, which peaked at number five on the U.S. Billboard 200, where it stayed for 157 weeks. She swiftly – pun intended, of course – became the first female country music artist to co-write every track on a U.S. platinum-certified debut album. The awards started tumbling, including Best New Artist at the 50th Annual Grammy Awards.
Friends and cohorts often seem to stare with a stunned expression whenever I not only compare and contrast Gaga and Swift but also maintain that they are so parallel as to be mutual in their aura, affect, agency and impact. But sir, some venture, “I thought you listened to Frank Zappa and John Coltrane,” to which I hasten to explain that yes, I do, but I also listen to whoever embodies the meaning of the moment via the commerce of duration, aka music. But “how can you say,” they insist, “that Gaga and Swift are in any way similar when they are so distinctively different?” But you see, I don’t say they are similar; that would be silly. I say they are identical, which is quite another matter. I tell them these artists are both archetypes of what Jung called the collective unconscious arising as a result of synchronicity, which is usually when my friends start heading for the door.
I don’t know why, but the mere mention of something as harmless as synchronicity seems to make these friends nervous, especially since the collision course of two huge archetypes such as Gaga and Swift is a virtual embodiment of the manifestation of the sort of mythical symbols so prevalent in contemporary pop music. This is particularly the case in that somewhat privileged zone of activity carried out in a blinding public spotlight by cracked mirrors whom fate or fortune has smiled upon, however briefly, enabling them to procure the sanction of audience attention supremacy that I’ve been so cavalierly calling both primal pop and avant-pop.
And Lady Gaga, along with her peculiarly normal-seeming goddess consort Taylor Swift, are certainly the most obvious candidates for the office to date. To help my stressed-out friends, whether of the music profession sort or the regular mortal sort, to arrive at a place where my assertions are less startling, I often invite them to do a taste test of sorts, the same one I forced myself to engage in as a means of trying to deduce the secret message that such polar pop stars share, the one that renders them superimposed in the menu of our desires: reinforcement or rebellion. The test involves watching footage from both their concerts, wearing headphones, of course, and allowing the avalanche of conflicting emotions the experience unleashes to come crashing down upon them. But with eyes closed, preferably while wearing a nice, comfy sleeping mask. First up, the appetizer of Gaga’s Chromatica tour, followed as quickly as possible by the dessert of Swift’s Eras tour.
The sheer bombast of both will become immediately salient, as will the skillful manner in which both primal divas, each in her own distinctive way, inserts herself into the folds of your cerebellum until your skull itself feels like it might burst. But the key here, apart from freeing yourself from the distractions of Gaga’s Metropolis-like science-fiction costumes and Swift’s majorette-swooping lope, is to simply let your skull burst. Because that is what both these primal pop divas are all about: letting you read their private diary entries (or rather letting them read them to you) and arranging for the suitable condition of nearly skull-bursting gratification. And the number of people who want to share in the personal stores being sung by these two artists is undeniably impressive.
Since leaping out of the Hit Parade starting gate, Gaga with Fame in 2007 and Swift with Fearless in 2008, they have more or less owned that heady era and they have remained neck and neck, almost, as they eclipsed quite a few earnest contenders for their crown. Swift, having sold over 200 million albums, then eclipsed even Gaga, having become a billionaire and won fourteen Grammy Awards, an Emmy Award, forty American Music Awards, thirty-nine Billboard Music Awards, a hundred and eighteen Guinness World Records, twenty-three MTV Video Awards, twelve Country Music Awards and two Brit Awards, all of which was backed up by over fifty million in albums sales and a hundred and fifty million in single sales. Plus she was honoured by the Nashville Songwriters Association, the Songwriters’ Hall of Fame and the National Music Publishers Association and was the youngest person on Rolling Stone’s 100 Greatest Songwriters of All Time.
Lady Gaga has not exactly been lagging, however. An estimated 170 million albums sold. Five successive albums all debuted atop the U.S. Billboard 200, and her second full-length album Born This Way (2011), which plunged her headlong into electronic rock and techno-pop, sold more than a million copies in the first week. Shifting gears dramatically, she released a duet album with crooner Tony Bennett and launched her acting career. Much to many people’s surprise, my own included, she could and can actually act up a storm, winning awards for her roles in A Star is Born (2018) and House of Gucci (2021). Finally, she became the first woman to win an Academy Award, BAFTA Award, Golden Globe Award and Grammy Award in one year. So when I ask, Why are both of these acclaimed singer-songwriter/actresses/corporate entities and socio-political phenomena so popular?,” I am not questioning the provable reason.
Far from it, in fact. I am much more interested in examining what lies beneath the surface of their obvious achievements and by what means they so clearly came to exemplify primal pop at its highest avant levels. Taylor wasn’t the first big country star to cross over and deliberately embrace pop with a fulsome vim, vigor and verve; Shania Twain had done that, and to very successful effect, especially in her music videos. Likewise, Stefani wasn’t the first rock star to cross over into Hollywood’s domain; Madonna had attempted that, although with considerably less success, for the simple reason that Ms. Germanotta can really act, big time. But both Gaga and Swift commenced their rise to the top of the pops, first by an idiosyncratic program of genre transition followed by a persistent self-curating mode of complete genre erasure altogether.
Each in her own way is a kind of conceptual artist utilizing the presentation of self in everyday life as both their medium and their message, their paint and their canvas, in a way that the late Amy Winehouse did, though she was so bedeviled by personal demons that she failed to transmute what was obviously a primitive genius for suffering into the kind of career that Billie Holiday managed to sustain. Instead she became a sorrowful caricature of her single masterpiece, a torch song-tradition break-up record that both Marianne Faithfull and Joni Mitchell morphed into lengthy and redemptive careers. Rawness writ large. The self-evident polarity of Gaga and Swift leads us to two singer-songwriters who function primarily as solo artists in the extreme, almost becoming solipsistic, in fact, though their professional enterprises require an army of musicians, dancers, performers and producers to support their singular visions.
Any contrasts made betwixt or between them are not meant as value judgments so much as attempts to get to the bottom of their allure as certified pop goddesses of an entirely new order. Besides, it appears the future has already spoken, in a loud enough voice for us to hear all the way back to the present: "You have different artists dominating different sectors of the industry: Some are huge at streaming, some are big draws on the road. But we're at this moment where there's no one better than Taylor Swift, whether that's on the radio, with streaming, ticket sales or just cultural impact.” So intoned Jason Lipshutz, Billboard Executive Director, in 2023
Like many other listeners who were deeply affected by their messages, I have used these songs to both help understand myself and to clarify the shared confusions of mid-20th- and early-21st-century life. And to acknowledge that the dream, pace a famous late Beatle, is largely over. The stripping bare of all falsehood is indeed one of the primary urges of the best solo singer-songwriters being examined, where an appetite for truth is elevated far above the need for consolation or concealment. The self-consciousness of American popular musicians is certainly one of the major identifiers for their craft. The quest for authenticity in popular music has pretty much become its holy grail. And both Gaga and Swift learned early on the secret inner sanctum of primal pop: being truthful, being authentic is what matters the most, so if you can fake that, you’ve got it made.
What makes certain mirrors so strong, and so unforgivingly real, despite their obvious cracks? The fact that they embrace the cracks and transform them into the veritable crux of their whole enterprise: the vulnerability industry. Which is why so many singer-songwriters, especially the ultra self-possessed sort like Mitchell, Faithfull, Winehouse, Gaga and Swift, choose the route of relentless self-examination over that of some sort of therapeutic remedy. In other words, they use the songs themselves as their own private form of therapy session, which we, ironically enough, just happen to listen in on while in the comfort of our own living rooms. Free sprits are always alluring, and are more delightful to us the more passionate, lunatic, hedonistic and noble about their own situations they become on the scale of self-indulgence. Lord Byron, one of the first and finest of these momentary flashes known as universal artists (the ones who say something furtive and fast to the world in passing), and the one who is so powerfully evoked by all true rock stars, put it this way a long time ago: “A true voluptuary will never abandon his mind to the grossness of reality.”
But that that is precisely what makes artists like Gaga and Swift so seemingly transcendent: the fact that they accept transformation without knowing the consequences in advance. In their recent and highly informative study, Faking It: The Quest for Authenticity in Popular Music, Yuval Taylor and Hugh Barker accomplished something which one critic celebrated as “diabolically provocative.” Greg Quill’s review focused on the impossible dreams of the enthusiastic amateur performers who appear on so-called reality idol programs, and how, due to their entry onto the pop arena, they will never be able to live up to the kind of scrutiny which genuinely attentive and caring music fans have applied to their artistic heroes: “They will never be the real deal. Then again, authenticity may be just as illusory as wanna-be dreams. And given the abundance of heavily manufactured pop froth that’s cluttering up radio these days, credibility may not matter much at all in the future.”
It’s an intriguing question, why artists like Gaga and Swift struggle to define themselves so authentically, and also why it seems they are simply never really satisfied that they might in fact already be authentic. Strange to say, but we need these singer-songwriters to suffer through their authenticity contest, just exactly as much as they do for their work’s sake, in order that their songs can help us suffer less, or at least help us to suffer with that degree of dignity which only poetry in the end provides. Solo artists such as Gaga and Swift deliver their work in solitude, whether or not they have a performing and recording band accompanying them, but they share it on the most public stages on earth. We listen to their tales woven, their dreams told, their seduction shouted and their party thrown, via their diverse and distressing voices colonizing our consciousness, if only for ten minutes at a time. Fueled by a duality and polarity at the heart of any creative pop enterprise, the singer-songwriter phenomenon, which has indeed already had its classical rise and fall, is one of those unique and deep mysteries which make listening to music so magical in the first place, regardless of which songwriter our taste preferences incline us toward. They are mediums. They are time-ghosts. They are traveling sales reps for a future which is always just arriving, one song at a time.
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