Phillip Clark

April 17th, 2012

Intro to Journalism

Professor Caplan

Since When Were Two Queens Ever Too Many?

The Baltimore Sun

By Phillip Clark

The Queen of Pop has released her latest studio album, her twelfth such production in a career that has spanned three decades. Although M.D.N.A. debuted at number one on the musical charts, the veracity of Madonna’s pop royalty could genuinely be cause for question among some circles today.

Since late 2008, another provocative, controversial Italian diva has been dominating the globe’s news headlines. Stephani Germanotta, better known as Lady Gaga – reigns supreme as today’s preeminent voice in pop music.

It is obvious that Mother Monster has often turned to the original Madonna countless times for artistic inspiration. Whether it has been shamelessly utilizing the iconography of religion, (Remember seeing her clad as a vivacious nun in “Alejandro,” or playing the part of Mary Magdalene in “Judas”, trying to quash her affection for a Hispanic, corn-rowed Jesus, complete with a crown of thorns) or simply indulging in certain actions for shock value (like when she donned a conical-shaped bra just as the Material Girl had done nearly two decades before), Lady Gaga has been hailed as the contemporary incarnation of Madonna in today’s

music world. To many, she has even supplanted Ms. Ciccone in terms of relevance and musical talent.

These assertions are especially pronounced among the two icons respective fan bases, both of which are significantly composed of gay men.

Fans of Madonna claim that everything Lady Gaga is – she thoughtlessly copied from Madge. To many, she is simply creating a baseless career by marketing and adopting trends that were employed by Madonna years before. Take her biggest hit to date, “Born This Way.” While the song is a courageous anthem of hope and affirmation, directed towards discouraged LGBT individuals who may find themselves the object of scorn because of their sexual orientations, there is a very obvious critique of the song, once again tying her to Madonna. When the melody is analyzed its musical composition evokes an unmistakable parallel to one of Madonna’s biggest hits. In 1989, Madonna released a song entitled, “Express Yourself.” Like “Born This Way” it was also a ballad of self-affirmation, but in this case, directed towards women in relationships with men who seemed to be challenged when it came to expressing their true emotions. Minus the words, if the songs “Born This Way” and “Express Yourself” were played one right after the other, they would sound practically identical. Madonna affirmed this herself during an interview, stating that it felt somewhat “reductive” to hear Lady Gaga’s song played on the radio for the first time.

In this case, even to the media, this criticism was a valid point.

However, Gaga’s fans remain adamant in their devotion to Mother Monster as the ultimate avatar of creativity and musical prowess. To many of them, Madonna is bitter that the glory days of her career have long passed. They allege that, vocally, Lady Gaga is entirely in a different league, and that Madonna’s voice has never been that special in the realm of music. Further, they purport that for the past decade Madonna, has surrounded herself with, and used popular artists in today’s music world to substantiate and bring relevance to her declining audience. Her previous album, Hard Candy, was a collaborative effort meant to project her as channeling a hip-hop oriented sound, reinventing herself yet again. Justin Timberlake, Kanye West, Pharell, and Timbaland were all featured in various songs on the production. Despite all the star power mustered in the endeavor, with the exception of the single “4 Minutes,” Hard Candy failed to capture much airtime on the world’s radio stations.

Now, with her latest album, she has continued this trend, enlisting M.I.A. and Nicki Minaj to support an aging monarch struggling to stay upon her throne…

Do Madonna and Lady Gaga really see themselves as being involved in a competition to see who can be the most exuberant, adored, and relevant figure in pop music? Does Madonna viciously despise Lady Gaga, and does Mother Monster

consider herself so much more sophisticated and talented than the has-been Material Girl?

Are all of these ideas simply manufactured by the media and over-zealous fans?

Coming from a feministic perspective, Kristin Strong, a French teacher at John Hopkins University does see the aggressive comparisons as somewhat contrived, “I deplore manufactured rivalries between women. Did either one ever say anything disparaging about the other? If not, then this is a manufactured conflict.” However, she goes on to state, “I’d say Lady Gaga is probably more relevant to the present day than Madonna. I say this because I don’t think Madonna sets the trends anymore; I think she does her best to follow them, and maybe on her best day to put her own stamp on them. Even so, I wild still venture to say that without Madonna, there would be no Lady Gaga, or even Katy Perry – by that I mean female artists who remake their images seemingly at will and use those images to reinforce the music they make.”

Yet, others feel that Madonna has rightly cemented her position in the realm of music history.

“It’s hard to compare two singers who belong to two different historical contexts. Madonna created the impact of music videos and Lady Gaga is the queen of the internet…Madonna is even studied at universities for her historical role in the emancipation of women and the sex revolution. That’s something Gaga can’t compete against,” says Rodrigo Arellano, a master’s student in applied linguistics at the University of New South Wales in Sydney Australia.

Lady Gaga is blatantly copying Madonna, from her allusions to religion, her dance choreographies, and even her sense of fashion Arellano contends. “The one who imitates is always the second in command.”

If this phenomenon is indeed manufactured, could it not only be said to be perpetrated by the media but by the fans of each respective artist as well? Most, poignantly among the fans who happen to be gay, could this rivalry between the two icons said to be bringing out what have stereotypically been considered to be the worst attributes of gay men? Namely, being catty, instigating drama simply for the thrill of the affair, and at the very least, being judgmental.

Dorian Holliday, a 27 year-old grad student who lives in Baltimore says that, “When it comes to fans, the ‘rivalry’ is not different than any other rivalry. There are people who like one and hate the other, like both, or hate both. Both incorporate religion and sexuality into their personas, music, and videos. Their music is grounded in dance music, with both being credited for bringing it into mainstream music. Both speak out on issues that are important to them and their fans such as AIDS, racism, homophobia, sexism, censorships, sexuality, etc. I don’t

think this so called rivalry says anything about the gay community. Musical taste is subjective.”

If all of the controversy has been generated by the media, and fans who have nothing else to do, then perhaps something very different could be expected from the Queen of Pop as well as the Heir-Apparent. Drawing on the successful careers that both of them have enjoyed, and still maintain, would it be too much to suggest that both have wisdom and lessons to respectively impart to one another? In the early part of the twenty-first century Madonna famously took Britney Spears under her wing during a particularly dismal and trying period of her career. Perhaps a similar relationship could be formed between Madonna and Lady Gaga. Not one of superiority vs. inferiority, but one of mutual respect and esteem.

Despite what the press may say, Madonna has described Lady Gaga as “very talented” and as someone in whom she sees “a lot of myself.” Gaga has on several occasions how Madonna has been one of the role models who helped shape who she is as an artist today. Instead of seeing them merely as copies, could many of her videos be seen as thoughtful tributes to the legacy that Madonna has instilled to the world of music?

“I think that they are both great and from different eras,” says Kacie Williams, an aspiring massage therapist. “That being so, they reach out to the different age groups. They are not the exact same person with the exact same style, just similar. How many other hands or singers are the exact same yet no one makes a rivalry between them? It’s a bit biased in my opinion. I think it’s done partly for ratings and publicity. I love them both!”

As so I and I continue to hold out that we will one day see a duet between the Queen and Mother Monster.