During the next year or so as I re-integrated to the work world after Alaska, Rina told me that she'd rediscovered Lady Gaga and there were two songs in particular that I had to check out: "Alejandro," and "Bad Romance." Rina wrote so poetically about "Alejandro" that I didn't have a choice but to like it. "Bad Romance" I was a little more on the fence about, but not for anything having to do with the song but for the fact that so many Xena fans made Xena/Gabrielle videos to the song. I'm not a subtexter and I never have been -- I've been firmly in the Romantic Friendship camp since the term was first revealed on the board. The lyrics to "Bad Romance" seem quite opposed to Romantic Friendship -- not just favoring the subtext 'ship, but actively opposing mine, and thus I won't watch any X/G videos to the song. There was one that Rina sent me for Helen Magnus and Nikola Tesla from "Sanctuary" that I really enjoyed.
The "Xena" fandom in general was never more than lukewarm about Lady Gaga -- at least, I don't believe that there was ever a big burst of popularity on the boards. There were the people who liked her songs, and then there were the people like Claudia, who responded to me once saying that she couldn't believe I'd have such poor taste as to buy a Lady Gaga album. I just did what I've always done -- listened to the music that Rina sent me, paid attention to the parts that I liked and disregarded the rest, and remained generally oblivious to popular music.
Right around the time "Born This Way" came out, Lilly, Genkakette, and Apple all fell head over heels in love with Lady Gaga. I'd been independently discussing the album with Rina and bought my own copy.
The nice thing about buying it myself was that I had a chance to form my own opinions before I delved into any Lady Gaga discussion with any of my friends. My favorite songs were "Marry the Night," "Highway Unicorn (Road to Love)," and "Edge of Glory." Genkakette joked with me that as she was trying to tell people that Lady Gaga had deeper lyrics than "Poker Face," said people would quote the line with "whiskey mouth," which really has only one interpretation (and it's not kid-appropriate). LOL. I never liked that song much, but it was more a question of taste than anything else -- just like I wanted to like "Born This Way" and could never get into it. I really, really, really adored "Edge of Glory," though. Rina sent me a Youtube link to an acoustic piano version that cinched it for me. It has the kind of layers that capture me in a song, the way that it can be to and about more than one type of experience, and the imagery is astounding.
I've tried to listen to it again -- the Glee version of "Edge of Glory," anyway, since sometimes cover/alternate versions of songs aren't as painful as the originals. I can handle the Glee version of "Edge of Glory" every once in awhile if I prepare myself sufficiently, and ditto for "Highway Unicorn" (the real version of that one). Besides that, I haven't even attempted to listen to Lady Gaga since everything went wrong. One of the worst parts of all this is that some of the most beautiful songs in my whole collection are too painful to listen to anymore.
I remember one visit to Genkakette's which was all about Lady Gaga. First Genkakette showed me her Twitter page. I've actually never used Twitter myself. I've seen a few of my friends' accounts, but never in the kind of detail that Genkakette showed me. She pointed out all the other regular fans and some of the inside jokes and the creative projects they swapped back and forth. We watched at least two Lady Gaga interviews. I was impressed with Lady Gaga's perspective on fame. It seems that most people who are in the spotlight have to become kind of like Captain Picard -- they develop public personas and private personas and draw the lines very clearly for themselves since they know that some media person will try to cross them. Versus, there are a few stars like Lady Gaga, who have the type of personality that makes it almost impossible to do that -- I can relate because I'm the same way; if someone asks me a question, I'm going to answer in as much detail as I can first and think about consequences second. So rather than that, Lady Gaga gives the cameras something to look at -- she puts some pretty outrageous stuff out there, but it keeps reporters from asking her questions about the stuff she does want kept private. Her music suffers for me from the mainstream need to please a lot of different kinds of audiences, but I appreciate the talent and depth and skill that went into all of her songs. Oh, and Genkakette wanted my opinion on "Judas" from a Christian perspective. I can't recall precisely what I told her, but I remember not being offended so much as wondering if there was a theological error in the premise around the poetic truths. I liked the song, if not quite as much as Genkakette did.
After that visit, I made this banner for Genkakette:
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