A Deeper Context: The Born This Way Factor

Lady Gaga. Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta. Born This Way. I wanted to write about this song since the very first minute I heard it and just be fucking melodramatic in telling how it has changed my life and has become the soundtrack song of my life. But I waited. I waited till now. Being already played over 400 times on my iTunes+iPod- it explains something. I must say I was quite critical seeing the lyrics at first. With the words being so direct and socially vulgar with race and gender issue- I felt Gaga might have been too ambitious too soon. She’s not like Madonna where there’s already many albums and materials released that can back up her legendary status. However, what has happen with this song? You Google it. Yes, I admit it sounds like Madonna’s late 80’s Express Yourself and Vogue, but listen up fucking lame haters….there’s a big difference between imitating and inspiring. Music is a universal language that is created by the inspiration of one another and this is no difference here. People should give Gaga props for bringing electronic dance music back to Top 40 and big again. She paved a new pop-dance pathway for our generation and we’re going to continue to bring her down by one song, which I must say have saved millions of live? Just be positive that Express Yourself and Born This Way are telling you to embrace your uniqueness and love the uniqueness of others.

On the music production side, Born This Way has a hybrid of Electronic, Pop, East European Industrial and even Gospel accent sounds, which is blended to ear orgasm perfection. Producer Fernando Garibay and DJ White Shadow was able to capture the 90’s empowering vibe that artist like TLC, Whitney and MJ achieved so immensely. It was all about how you could injected inspiring lyrics to a radio commercial song, make it ready for the clubs and just wants you to go out onto the streets and be who you want to be. I also applaud the fact that this song is actually lighter in tone compared to her previous 


hits like Bad Romance, Telephone and Poker Face even if the message is universally groundbreaking.

Now moving on the music video. Lady Gaga…7:20 minutes. Nick Knight direct it. Laurieann Gibson choreographed it. Nicola Formichetti styled it. Little Monsters like us just died. Died because the fierceness, ferociousness and ‘Gaga is one motherfucking legend’ness. I mean, this is visually stunning yet again. I don’t know how this woman does it. To create this concept of giving birth to a new race was just...Gaga please adopt me. At least I know I’m whole-heartedly belonged to this race. I credit Andy Warhol and Michael Jackson as my creative gods, and Gaga certainly proves she’s the goddess here. She somehow knows how to push the commercial art boundary into fine art so effortlessly and has so much sentimental symbolisms. However, being unbiased, I feel this video might be too avant-garde for the normal public right now. It’s not like the Bad Romance video which had the right pop-music video elevation ingredient. This video might have taken the abstract art imagery too far. It’s not wrong, but I feel some people may be put off by it. What Gaga has to do now is to somehow lighten the visual imagery of her next videos and maybe put its mentality more straightforward like Telephone and Paparazzi. Still, I’m so fucking excited for her directorial debut for the Judas music video. I expect nothing less than spectacular.

Her Grammy Awards performance of the song was a like eye-ecstasy for me. I’m still high from it. It was beyond words. Gaga and Gibson somehow played the minimalistic route with the performance concept which was too clever. They let the song speak for itself. The choreography was also a master class. It has this unique-tailored for Gaga only stamp to it, but it’s still modern with the Willow’s Whip My Hair tribute. Gibson choreographs for everyone in the business from Diddy to Katy Perry, but her work with Gaga is always on a new level. It’s like what Brian Friedman does with Britney Spears (8 years ago though). The performance’s music arrangement was also interesting. It had this weird church organ breakdown in the middle, which shows that Gaga can fucking sing! She’s not those lip-synching pop queens I can officially declare.  Now there was the Hussein Chalayan Egg Vessel that Gaga made her historic grand entrance. This was just pure wackiness meets the God of genius. Gaga whores for attention, but the attention is for her artistry and not about going to an LA club, get plastered and then receive a DUI.

On a side note, I have to highlight that Gaga released a country-road version of the song to mark the song’s sixth week reign on the Billboard Hot 100 and the new version could instantly be featured on a Clint Eastwood Cowboy movie if he decides to make one in this new era. It has this psychedelic-murder-esque meets light Bruce Springsteen blue-collar sound to it which feels like your epically lost in the Nevada desert. Hopefully, it’ll receive some airplay on country radio.

Born This Way has changed my life and this song defines who I am. I don’t belong to a gender or race group mentioned in the song, but I live through the spirit of the song in embracing my inner-self and who I am as a human being. But what human being that is will remain within myself. I’m too complex as a person. It’s a fucking waste of time for you to question me.