"Lady Gaga and the Death of Sex" by Camille Paglia

Questions that the author attempts to answer:
1. How do today's superstars in the music industry compare to that of previous generations?
2. Are there anymore transcendent sex symbols?
3. How has society and culture affected music taste?

Response

Amidst the height in the popularity of Lady Gaga, Camille Paglia, in her piece “Lady Gaga and the Death of Sex”, highlights the more unsavory sides of Lady Gaga. This new artist, with bizarre antics and an eccentric wardrobe, has been propelled to a level of fame similar to that of Madonna. Paglia, however, asserts that Lady Gaga is a “manufactured personality” without any originality in that she “has borrowed heavily from Madonna” (3). There is no doubt that Lady Gaga is a superstar, but is she really a transcendent figure in the music industry as artists from previous generations have? Paglia argues that she is not, and I myself would happen to agree.

             The level of stardom and fame that musicians reach in the music industry today is very brief. This is due both a depletion of real talent and the consumers of music. It is so easy to mask musician’s inadequacies in making music, with voice alternations and the use electronics to make sounds. Our consumption of music has changed drastically alone in the last ten years with the advent of iTunes. Instead of buying entire albums, we can buy singles, thus our appreciation for the artist tends to be diminished. Thirty years ago, one song was not to stand alone, it was complemented by other singles on an album, creating a better and deeper experience for the listener. Today it is very superficial in that we only get a little bit, instead of the whole.

            My sister, whose love for popular artists such as Justin Bieber and One Direction is fanatical, always gets upset when my dad would say that they do not have any lasting power. He would say that thirty years from now, we would not be listening to artists such as Justin Bieber. I absolutely agree. Paglia points out that Elton John is “still on the radio after 40 years” (5). If we turn on the radio today, The Beatles are still on, David Bowie is still famous, and many other artists from the late seventies and the early eighties are still widely popular. Madonna, approximately 30 years from her peak in popularity, performed in the Super Bowl halftime show, the greatest spectacle in American culture. I do not envision any star in today’s music industry having that kind of lasting power. I do not think I have heard a Lady Gaga song on the radio in two years, even though she was widely popular in 2010 when Paglia wrote her piece.

            This brevity in popularity is due to the instantaneous nature of society in which we live in. We can have instant access to any type of music we want, this our allegiance to an artist can change very easily. A new artist can ascend to stardom at a rate unprecedented in the history of the music industry. After one song, One Direction was catapulted to the mountain top of popularity. These factors have contributed to an industry with prospects of no real sustaining power for the future.