I am not going to use this space to rain down insults on Lady Gaga. I admire her dedication to heels, and some of her songs are very catchy. And she celebrated the McQueen claw shoe, which I would love to use as a super-chic door stopper (It’s my birthday next week, if anyone has thousands to spare).

Actually, this pretty amazing quote from Joanna Newsom captures how I feel about Gaga:
“I may have contradicted myself. My problem isn’t actually with Lady Gaga. But there’s not much in her music to distinguish it from other glossy, formulaic pop. She just happens to wear slightly weirder outfits than Britney Spears. But they’re not that weird – they’re mostly just skimpy. She’s fully marketing her body/sexuality; she’s just doing it while wearing, like, a ‘fierce’ telephone hair-hat. Her sexuality has no scuzziness, no frank raunchiness, in the way that, say, Peaches, or even Grace Jones, have — she’s Arty Spice! And, meanwhile, she seems to take herself so oddly seriously, the way she talks about her music in the third person, like she’s Brecht or something. She just makes me miss Cyndi Lauper.”

OK, so I am drizzling some insults. Maybe. Anyway, what I wanted to talk about was how so much of pop music today is swathed in glitter, with no real substance beneath. It’s all costume and lighting and set design, without any consideration for the music. On this note – I discovered this video of Sinéad O’Connor from the 1989 Grammy’s. And although she seems to be singing over a pre-recorded track (different times, people), this performance is so much more powerful, amazing and bold than anything I’ve seen anyone do all year. So raw! So beautifully un-choreographed! I think she has a t-shirt hanging from her jeans! Bravo! There is not enough tin foil or latex leggings in the world to make a performance this awesome.

Screw artifice. Less is more, people. When you have the talent to back it up.