FunkyStrange said:

"For You", Prince was trying things with this album, and with his second album too, the real Prince sounding "debut" was "Dirty Mind", an extraordinay monument, only few artists are able to make an album of the high standards like "Dirty Mind".

Lady Gaga, bah she is not worthy to mention in the same breath as Prince, her so-called "music", is she a songwriter playing music. NO she's a product...


[Edited 1/31/10 13:18pm]

gaga is just as commercial, she's up for a grammy. grammys are not, and have not been, about artistic performances in years. if they were, the black eyed peas would never have been nominated for album of the year. perhaps if they had an autotune category ...



agree



agree



the average person listening does not know, or care to know, that gaga writes her own stuff. if that was the case celine dion would never had sold a record. what they do care about is the image of the artist (marketing) and the music (production). the image that she is creating through her intense and racy performances is getting the same type of reaction that madonna got by rising out of a wedding cake, slithering around in her dress, and dancing in front of burning crosses in her videos. gaga is marketing controversy as well by staging intense blood drooling mtv performances, as well as strategically placed videos that imply she may be a hermaphrodite. all marketing. there is NO doubt gaga is WAY more talented than madonna, but as i said before, the average person downloading tunes only cares about what is portrayed on their tv screen and what is currently coming out of the earbuds.

gaga = madonna

JesusFreak said:

Lady GaGa is the face of a huge corporate machine of $$$$ behind her that's raised her to the top of the ladder, much like Madonna. I'd say there's a similarity in that sense, in that image is extremely important to both acts and is a way of expressing her and her teams ideas as much as the music - Much like Madonna.

Lady GaGa's stage costumes may be more 'out there' than most of Madonnas, but it's all been done before by Grace Jones, Bowie, etc, etc, etc.

I actually quite like her for what it's worth, I'm not a huge fan, but I've been pleasantly surprised by some of her stuff (album tracks mainly tbh), and I laugh at those who are so ready to write her off so soon. I mean, Britney Spears has been around over 10 years, and IMO GaGa has already offered the pop world more than Britney ever has. So if that cupcake can stick around, why can't someone who actually pushes a few buttons? (even if they have all been pushed before).

i agree ... gaga will be around for a long time. and i'm becoming a big fan.

Lady gaga is the best thing to happen in pop music since the 80's & will be around for a long time. I'm seeing her & her kick ass band at the o2 and predicting she will beat Madonna & maybe even 1 of the Prince performances I saw (not the indigo performances though Im not mental!) She rocks & has the best music videos since MJ! Go GaGa A true pop ARTIST
To the haters: do some research on YouTube, sit down, watch & listen!

Somewhere Little Richard thinks you’re full of it.

Cravens said:[quote]

pplrain said:

Well, you could say that he stole it from Bowie/Marc Nolan, who stole it from Elvis who stole it from ..

Her album was more successful because she has a machine behind her to insure it was a success. "For you" served prince better because he wrote, produced and played most (I want to say all) of the instruments. I suspect that prince learned lessons on his first album that serves him to this day. Music lesson you only learn being that hands on. I think gaga is interesting and she will stay relevant the way Madonna and David Bowie stayed relevant. Buying the best producers and stealing (ok being influenced by other artist)

FunkyStrange said:

WetDream said:

poom poom poom poom poom poom poom poom p...

seriously though...there is no-one today who can really reach the status of the true icon...someone who brings something new or special to music...Gaga is just the flavour of the month, and nothing really differentiates her music from most of the other pap that keeps being overplayed everywhere...

ans George Clinton wore far better extravagent and bizarre outfits!

Nevermind, wrong thread.
[Edited 1/31/10 20:14pm]

Tonight was the first time I had seen her sing. I thought the performance with Elton John was really good. As far as her and Prince performing together, no thank you, I'll listen to Ashford&Simpson instead.

maciat said:

LOL. and debbie gibson!

maciat said:

if u watched the grammys u should know she'll be remembered

Warner Brothers is a machine, and for it's time Prince's deal was unusual for a young black artist. WB played a huge role in getting him out there and they from day one (along with the wishes of prince and co.) marketed him as a cross over star. When he "hit" many said he would only be around 5 years, i remember at the time they were saying this about hip hop as well. We may not place value on what Ga Ga is doing but i think it is jumping the gun to label her as another plastic creation-the truth is we dont know.Remember this, it takes a machine to ship movie quipment, finance, bring in professional writers, directors, acting coaches etc to a mid sized vanilla market like minneapolis and do a movie. A movie about an african american artist who had only broken through to the pop charts a year earlier, who rarely spoke and was basically known for racy material. By filming, without the release of the monster When Doves Cry single it would not have been a stretch to say prince had a cult following, but nothing that would warrant a feature film.

johno2 said:

Why? Because of the hype?

JesusFreak said:

You might want to take your own snide advice; Madonna has always composed quite a bit of her own material--and has co-written every track since Ray of Light.

aiden said:

I can see some girl with ugly boobs in horrible outfits, who sings po-po-po, pa-pa-pa, ra-ma-oh-la-la type of lyrics with"producers, give me that 80's sound". Is that all?

herrherr said:

Change a word, take a third.

Jacytoon said:

Maybe I missed out Lil'Richard and Marvin Gaye and others .. but who ever's mentioned on the inspirational list actually just underline my point: That Prince didn't invent the flamboyant sex image, only escalated it to a new level.

So how did Madonna copy Prince specifically, when Prince wasn't the source?

And how am I full of it exactly, when you seem to agree?

I had started this same thread b4 :]
Same thoughts
[Edited 2/1/10 4:29am]

FunkyStrange said:

Can u please define the word "better" used in this context?

Cravens said:

It's often been said that Madonna was influenced with her 'Boy Toy' era look by Vanity 6. Dunno if it's true, no interviews or anything to support it, but it's an opinion often made. Other than that, I don't see much influence.

Lady Gaga is just a carbon copy of Madonna with the shock thing. She overdoes it on the costumes. I see no comparison at at all to her and Prince. I can see a better comparison to Betty Mabry-Davis and Prince though because Betty was pretty shocking in her singing style and bold, sexy lyrics and wearing lingerie on stage, at a time when many weren't ready for a female being so bold on stage. If Betty came out in the mid 80s instead of the early 70s, she probably would have been better received as a female, in my opinion. Prince was shocking with what he wore on stage at the beginning of his career as well, as the bold and sexy lyrics he came out with during that era..
[Edited 2/1/10 6:46am]

= Peter Gabriel


= Grace Jones

[imagine this picture]Lovesexy Tour Program[/imagine this picture]=Prince



= Lady Gaga




Of this lot, Prince is perhaps the one less like the other three. Or to put it differently: Gaga is more like Grace Jones and to some extent (early) Peter Gabriel than Prince.
[Edited 2/1/10 7:02am]
[Edited 2/1/10 7:04am]
[Edited 2/1/10 7:05am]

NouveauDance said:

Agreed .....the only think i would ad is that Ga Ga is less corporate than Pink, Madonna and foresure Britney...

Ga Ga should only be compared to the Women in her field .i.e, Christina, Britney, Madonna, Pink etc.. even Taylor Swift as she pop more than country i'd say ...I think she wipes the floor with them all and she only had one CD out ...give it time she could be bigger than Madonna but not is record sells terms but live concert terms..

thedance said:

if she is a product she is obviously her own product..in that case it is totally cool to be a product.

thedance said:

yeah she is a songwriter playing music actually

Cravens said:

the whole sex and religion thing was prince...and the early look she had was alot like his at that time as well

Ok. Let’s look at it.

The OP wants to discuss Lady Gaga’s fashion style in comparison to that of Prince in his early days (Dirty Mind and forwards I assume). The claim is that there’s easily something in common between the two in sense of style (or the choice to shock) .

Other’s want to compare Gaga’s talent with Prince’s … and they’re just nuts really. Firstly, it’s too early to say. Secondly Tori Amos, Nina Simone, Fiona Apple, Alicia Keys and many more are by far better singers to compare Gaga with, since the all play piano (only) and write their own tunes and are women (vocally it makes more sense to compare with women). Does everyone have to be compared to Prince just because they can play an instrument on a decent level? Third, it seems to me, that people try to make a crowbar argument about similarities as a sort of excuse to like Gaga. Who cares who she compares to? If you like her, fine … don’t make weak links to Prince to “defend” you bought The Fame and The Fame Monster.

As for style:
I don’t think the two compare at all. Sure, there are similarities between them (speaking only in terms of shock via clothes). Fair enough to point out, that both artist’s (would in pre-Purple Rain days and) will always have a few lines in any article dealing with their outfit or lack thereof, but that’s about all you can compare them by. Firstly, many, many artist’s have done this since the 1950s, used clothes as a way of getting noticed. Alice Cooper, Little Richard, Samatha Fox, Madonna, Marilyn Manson, Adam and the Ants and lastly and most importantly in regards to Gaga and who she’ll be better suited to be compared to: the whole new-romantics thing in the 1980 (see this)and special mention: David Bowie (Here’s a good look)..

It’s a very established way of getting yourself noticed by the media, and I’m sure the list of pop stars with outrageous clothes could fill a land field five times over (remember these two?). The question is then: why compare her to Prince, when they stylistically aren’t alike, but only share the idea of letting their outfit grap people’s attention. Madonna is probably a more suitable pop star to compare Lady Gaga to.

And why is that?

Because, and this seems to be missed by most: Prince is a man and Gaga is a woman. For a woman to dress up like Gaga in a post-disco, post-Donna Summer, post-Madonna, post-Britney and post-Janet Jackson era isn’t really all that. We’ve sort of learned to see female pop stars crawling around in some weird gear (seen this?) and ever since the dawn of mankind we’ve become used to the idea that women are the ones dressing up in dresses and big hair or dressing down to the bare minimum (everybody remembers Sabrina. So Gaga isn’t really pushing the envelope here, but rather reprising old material from a proven formula.

Male pop stars however almost always look really straight, macho and all zipped up in masculine gear. So what Prince did with his small panties in the Dirty Mind years, was by far more provocative, since the outrage has always been greater if a man did anything sexually charged and blurred the lines between straight and gay (here’s proof: the Adam Lambert kiss vs the Madonna and Britney kiss). Lady Gaga would have to be seriously hardcore, like say the singer Peaches, to even reach the controversial level of Prince. Again, the comparison between Madonna and Gaga seems more appropriate.

If you wanna compare Lady GaGa to somebody, compare her to Stacey Q! She's the original Lady GaGa to me!

Cinnie said:

da da da