The New Pop Music Theatricality

It's time for an update on my earlier entry, "Rule 5 Rescue: Lady GaGa Nude!"

It turns out that today's Los Angeles Times features a critical review of the shifting trends in pop music, with artists like Lady Gaga and Katy Perry blending fantasy and reality to create a permanent state of super-freaked pop theatricality. From Ann Powers, "When Rock Stars Fake It: It's Not About Just the Music. Lady Gaga, Katy Perry, Janelle Monae and Others Never Break Character. But Is It Real or Merely an Elaborate Act?":

Across nearly every genre in pop, artifice, theatricality and synthesized sound rule the day. The biggest group in the nation is the Black Eyed Peas, hip hop's answer to both the Monkees and Cirque du Soleil. Green Day, formerly your basic snotty punk band, has gained renewed respect and commercial success by writing rock operas; now the band's Billie Joe Armstrong and "Spring Awakening" director Michael Mayer are turning one into a musical. And Slipknot-style masks and pseudonyms have returned to the hard rock underground via the band Hollywood Undead.

Theater veteran Adam Lambert turned "American Idol" on its head by wearing glitter and metal wings and performing with KISS; he reportedly is working with Gaga's producer, Red One, on his upcoming album. Lambert's friend Katy Perry became the most talked-about female artist of last year by resurrecting classic styles of feminine masquerade, including burlesque and Lucille Ball-style screwball comedy, and releasing songs like "UR So Gay" and “I Kissed A Girl,” which make provocative hay from the hot topic of fluid sexual identity.

Even college rock, once a bastion of frumpy sincerity, has been taken over by the drama club kids - from the kitchen-sink epics staged by bands like the Decemberists and Of Montreal to the fairy tales spun by alter-egoed fantasists Bat for Lashes and St. Vincent (real names are not cool these days, unless your mama called you Panda Bear).

Country music too has gained a synthetic sheen: The hot new single by crossover band Gloriana kicks off with what sounds suspiciously like a drum machine, while industry standard-bearer Brad Paisley celebrates video chatting and smart phone Super Pac-Man on "Welcome to the Future."

This giddy embrace of the world as a stage seems to go beyond where glam rock and disco took pop in the past, partly because it's assisted by more sophisticated technology. Auto-Tune, the software program that alters vocal pitch, has become ubiquitous both as a corrective and a kind of carnival mask, used by artists like T-Pain to upend listeners' expectations about what a love song - or a party song - should sound like ...

I'm not completely sold that today's trends are a genuine revolution in pop music. The piece notes that Lady Gaga traces her influences to David Bowie, whose gender-bending musical innovations shattered pop conventions 35 years ago.

I must say, though, that it's an exciting time with artists like Lady Gaga. Be sure to check the picture at the Times article. This is a fabulously beautiful woman.

Photo Credit: BBC, "Lady GaGa Performing Live at Glastonbury 2009."