Another week, another overblown piece of Lady Gaga “performance art.”

I should admit that, contrary to the tone of this post, I do like Lady Gaga. She’s got some catchy songs, and for better or worse, she’s gotten people talking about Pop music as a serious genre again, so that’s nice of her.

But, as I sat for eight minutes and forty-four seconds taking in her latest video for ‘Alejandro’ — that strange second track from The Fame Monster that sounds like a mix of Madonna’s ‘La Isla Bonita’ and pretty much everything Ace of Base ever recorded – I couldn’t help but think of how tired it all looked. How tired Lady Gaga looked.

I’ve mostly been a fan of Lady Gaga’s 9-minute videos; I appreciate the style, the tongue-in-cheek, and the Tarantino references. But with the ‘Alejandro’ video, it seems as though Gaga is using the power of her own inflated ego to propel her level of creativity into the realm of philosophical and, worse, important. And oh, how she falls flat.

Let’s see, we have obvious lifts from various works of Madonna (‘Like a Payer’ and ‘Vogue,’ specifically), shock-value defilement of religious symbols, men in various states of crossdress, and your typical full-of-poses dance choreography. Oh, and don’t forget a few references to Nazi Germany and the Holocaust. In short, it’s nothing we haven’t seen before — done previously and more genuinely by artists that have come before her. The video for ‘Alejandro’ seems like nothing more than Gaga attempting to demonstrate how “deep” and “important to our generation” she thinks she is. She describes the video as a tribute to the gay men she’s developed “pure friendships” with, the kind that she feels she’ll never find with straight men, or something like that. I guess the best way for her to do that is to hump a bunch of men in heels and swallow a crucifix. I’m surprised it didn’t occur to her to incorporate a scene where she’s swimming in a giant replica of Piss Christ and then claim it was commentary on the oil spill in the Gulf.

In short, it was nothing more than “KEEP TALKING ABOUT ME!” shock-fodder disguised as something worth taking seriously. Maybe it would be easier for me to take her visuals seriously if the underlying message wasn’t something so insipid and overdone as “I love my gay besties!”

The weakest part about the video to me is that it follows the trend of overblown Gaga videos that have absolutely shit to do with the song they’re set to. It was forgivable at first, as the videos for ‘Paparazzi’ and ‘Telephone’ were fun and told interesting stories of their own. But now, after ‘Alejandro,’ I have to wonder if her absolute refusal to connect her “performance art” to her music is less of a conscious decision and more because she just…can’t. I think it’s getting a little lazy. Gaga’s building her cred on being a new kind of “intellectual” pop star, well, it’s hard to believe that when she takes average electro-dance-pop/RedONE music and pairs it with absolutely unrelated and ankle-deep video concepts. When I watch a Gaga video these days, I find myself having to either separate myself from the visuals to enjoy the song, or vise versa.  Does she just not have what it takes to expand on the ideas she introduces in her music with corresponding visuals, or does she feel it isn’t important? I used to believe it was the latter, now I’m leaning toward the former.

And, through all the debating of whether or not Alejandro is deserving of the slack it’s getting, I’m reminded of a particular artist. A most perfect artist who had absolutely no problem marrying the creativity and point-of-view of her music with equally compelling music videos. The glorious Kate Bush. I can’t think of a single Kate Bush video that didn’t leave me with a better understanding or at least a different perspective of its corresponding song. Kate Bush was simply the queen of using music and visual to tell a story. No pandering, no unnecessary shock-value. Just pure storytelling. Gaga should take more than a few pages from her book.

Really, all this dissing of Lady Gaga is just a setup for me to post my favorite Kate Bush videos. After all, what better way to introduce Kate Bush than by placing her triumphantly on top of a pile of artists who’ll never be as good as her?

Tagged as: Alejandro, Kate Bush, Lady Gaga