Lady Gaga (Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta) is certainly famous, but is her “Fame” built to last? She has done interviews where she has spoken about “Decay” and how people today like to see famous people fail and end up in the gutter. She speaks of how we live in a time where we crave for drama. Like it’s not enough to just become famous then grow old gracefully, we need our famous people to fall off their perch and die disgracefully, drunk, drugged, or falling out of nightclubs vomiting all over the place then choking to death on it sometime through the night, as many previous famous people have done.
A lot of her music is certainly very enjoyable, “Bad Romance” is certainly a very catchy enjoyable recording, although when I first heard the opening lines I found it a bit irritating, but it soon grew on me and she looked great in the video! She likes to create controversy, like in her video for “Paparazzi” where she is apparently pushed over a balcony after being snapped by photographers. But is Lady Gaga more famous than Elvis Presley? Well, we will probably have to wait until she fails and dies before we know that. Perhaps one day as she says, the public will get their thrill by reading about how she choked on her own vomit, died from a drug overdose, or stumbled drunk out of a nightclub into the path of a bus, then and only then will we know! Will her fans for countless years after her death make a pilgrimage to her present home just to celebrate the fact she ever lived, as they do with Elvis?
In the meantime, Lady Gaga very cleverly creates and courts controversy, not just in her videos, but in other ways, like for instance the “Lady Gaga Hermaphrodite Rumour” which I have no doubt is total rubbish. If it were true you can be sure that the “paparazzi” would have somehow uncovered medical records to prove the fact.
Lady Gaga is definitely not a one hit wonder, she has already proven that. And fame for Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta did not come instantly either. She has worked hard for her position at the top of the charts, she has studied, recorded, failed a few times, made a few sacrifices for the sake of her own principles, and finally found the fame that she, and let’s be honest, everyone wishes for. The difference between people like Elvis Presley and Lady Gaga is that they have an uncontrollable drive to be recognised, to be proved right, to show everyone that they were different from everyone else, not freaks, not oddities, but talented people, people with an unquenchable thirst for fame.
Thank God there are people like her around! Imagine how boring the world would be if everyone was just like you and me. We dream of fame and yes fortune too, but at the first, or maybe second hurdle, we give up and go and get a normal job in a factory or office. That is the difference between me, you, Elvis Presley, Lady Gaga and every famous person you see in concert, on the television, in a film, or on the news. They had the energy, the self belief, the determination, to stay the course. That is why we worship these people, because they truly are different from us, we are the freaks!
So, back to the original question, is Lady Gaga more famous than Elvis Presley? I think it is very unlikely that Lady Gaga will ever become a legend in the same way that Elvis Presley did. Lady Gaga is basically following in the footsteps of people like Madonna, who in turn followed in the footsteps of groups like Bananarama, who in their turn followed in the footsteps of their own idols. But Elvis Presley actually helped to launch a system of music which eventually became known as “Rock and Roll” and without Rock ‘n’ Roll, it is very doubtful that any of today’s music artists, including Lady Gaga, would ever have existed, at least in their present form, because whether they know it or not, and I’m sure they do, they have all been influenced in some way by Rock and Roll and therefore Elvis Presley, which in my book makes Elvis Presley more famous than Lady Gaga!