I suppose this is the part where I’m supposed to write a lengthy intro detailing my credentials, perhaps talk about how many cool bands that cool people like I also like, or talk about how, normally, I wouldn’t make such a huge concession to modern pop before addressing this particular Lady Gaga record and discuss how even I, with my highbrow tastes and fabulous music-choosing pedigree, have to give her begrudging props for her highly addictive pop hooks. I’m supposed to do that, sure, because any review that touts the merits of modern top 40 dance-pop has to approach it from a very over-analytical and self-reflexive place; I guess there’s always the ironic-appreciation route, too, or perhaps the one where I tout Lady Gaga as the obvious torch-holder for innovators like Bowie and Madonna.
But, you know what? I’m thirty. I spent my early twenties being derisive towards pop music, ignoring all its myriad charms in favor of curling up with a bunch of indie bands I didn’t really like that much because, I thought, it made me cooler. It took me a couple of years to realize that guilty pleasures don’t truly exist — that one should not be ashamed of liking what one likes (provided what one likes isn’t Nickelback, naturally), because you’re only depriving yourself of joy that way. Three short years after Lady Gaga released The Fame Monster, Carly Rae Jepsen gave the human race a perfect and beautiful gift in the form of her song “Call Me Maybe”; liking albums like this unapologetically allowed me to appreciate songs like Ms. Jepsen’s treasure of a pop tune without shame or reproach. So why make my review of The Fame Monster an apology, when it should be a celebration? Dollars to donuts any music snobs reading this would cite Adele as their one concession to pop music, because you can’t dance to Adele’s music and that somehow makes it cooler.
Initially conceived as a companion EP to Gaga’s first album, The Fame, The Fame Monster became its own entity after Gaga realized what a progression it was from that first record; where The Fame was a hook-heavy, danceable collection that simultaneously satirized and embraced pop artifice, Fame Monster is more Gothic, infinitely more well-written, and better-performed. Gaga cited horror movies and industrial music as influences here, and it’s easy to see that in the brassy, flippantly macabre “Teeth” or in the Psycho stabbing strings of the “Bad Romance” intro; still, what’s most important is Gaga’s pure ability at writing off-kilter, insidiously catchy songs, and The Fame Monster at a scant eight-song length reels them off at a breakneck pace.
She conjures ’90s Madonna with the beguiling, “Careless Whisper”-meets-“Vogue”-esque “Dance in the Dark”, and evokes the perfect pop of ABBA’s best moments with the dramatic, Europop-flecked “Alejandro”. (It almost sounds as if Ace of Base actually wrote an ABBA-quality pop song.) She concedes to the call of the power ballad with “Speechless”, one of her most honest, gratifying compositions to date, foreshadowing future mega-hit “You & I”; she even trades vocals with Beyonce on the bonkers “Telephone”, which builds a beautiful tension with that spellbinding piano intro.
Any of these songs would strengthen a lesser pop album immeasurably, but we haven’t even discussed Gaga’s magnum opus, a song so good I’m not sure I express the vocabulary to describe: “Bad Romance”. Scoff away, kids, but “Bad Romance” is SO GOOD. That lurching, insistent beat, the psychosexual themes, the Hitchcock references, that absurd and feral-sounding “rah-rah-AH-AH-AH” opening, the way the ominous, tense spoken-word pre-chorus launches into the soaring major key for the hook, the way hooks layer in on each other and then double back again… “Bad Romance” might be the single best hit song of this era of pop music. What other major hit is as wonderfully demented as this? Or arranged as impeccably? What other chartbuster has so many marvelous little moving parts, each one catchier than the last?
And that, my friends… that is why Lady Gaga’s The Fame Monster is so good. Instead of pushing against the mainstream and being willfully obtuse, on this record, Gaga found a way to harness her pop smarts and her artier flights of fancy into something of impeccable quality and endless replay value. She’d go on to have more success, as we all know, but this album represents the peak of her abilities as a songwriter. I thought, when I realized that I liked this Gaga character, that the sheen might wear off in a few years; turns out, I thought wrong, and The Fame Monster sounds better than ever.
Playlist track: “Bad Romance”
Drew's Album of the Day 