'Gypsy' Songs

Many Gaga fans love 'Gypsy' from Artpop:

It does nothing for me: more 'loud', space-filing, but strangely unexpressive vocals, more wretched lyrics, more ghastly rock bombast, more pieced-together song structure, and so on. (The only songs I like from Artpop are Artpop, Sexxx Dreams, Fashion!, Manicure, Mary Jane Holland, and Do What U Want, i.e., 6 out of 15 tracks)

Anyhow, Gaga's 'Gypsy' got me thinking about other, better tracks with 'Gypsy' in their title. Roughly in order of preference then

1. Cher's 'Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves'

2. Suzanne Vega's 'Gypsy'

3. Fleetwood Mac's 'Gypsy'

4. Santana's 'Black Magic woman/Gypsy Queen'

5. Uriah Heep's 'Gypsy'

6. Tony Orlando & Dawn's 'My Sweet Gypsy Rose'

7. Milton Henry's 'Gypsy Woman'

8. Black Sabbath's 'Gypsy'

And that's about it: Shakira's 'Gypsy' is almost certainly worse than Gaga's. Have I missed anyone (especially anyone good)?

Versions of 'Everybody Wants To Rule The World'

Tears for Fears' original was, of course, one of the best #1s of the 1980s.

Its 10 minute, extended version is worth listening to at least once just to hear all the synth layers separately.

The Bad Plus's jazz trio arrangement is lovely (I'm not sure why these guys get sneered at).

Clare & The Reasons' chamber pop/torch reworking (live on The Culture Show) is pure seduction.

Lorde's grim reimagining (which sounds like it's a good fit for The Hunger Games Part 2) initially struck me as too mannered, but has grown on me these past few days.

Glee, as is its wont, used the song as an anthem of perseverance and (gay) self-affirmation. Anything I've missed?

Two Thoughts on (the rise and fall of) Female Pop Stars

Two years ago, at the height of Born This Way furore, I identified the problem with Lady Gaga's pop trajectory: after Bad Romance Gaga took as her model the more conceptual, overexposing 1989-1992 Madonna, the Madonna whose music feels secondary to exhibitionism, cultural provocation and domination for its own sake. That was a problem for Gaga because Madonna had all the cultural political capital gained from her first three albums to spend down during that period, while Gaga's obnoxious and exhausting phase had to be 'funded' out of only the handful of broadly appealing singles up to Bad Romance.
Fast-forward two years and Gaga's OK-ish (and certainly better than BTW) next album, Artpop, arrives together with all sorts of extra-musical, antic and excessive promotional stunts, but only the hard core of fans are paying any sort of positive attention: Gaga's selling a few hundred thousand records not millions. The sort of good will you need to have to get the casual fan to buy your stuff no longer exists for Gaga - it's all been spent. Maybe Gaga will enjoy being a more cult figure, albeit one's that's possibly about as big as Bowie was for much of the 1970s:

"As of June 1983, Bowie’s total global album sales were as follows (according to Zanetta/Edwards’ Stardust, figures rounded up/down):
Three top sellers: Ziggy Stardust (1.38 million units moved), ChangesOneBowie (1.33 million), Young Americans (923,000). A few gold records: Diamond Dogs (745,000), David Live (598,000), Station to Station (552,800), Aladdin Sane (533,000); a few mid-list sellers: Space Oddity (455,600), Hunky Dory (445,600), Pin Ups (421,250), Scary Monsters (347,400). With the “Berlin” records, a complete cratering: “Heroes” (279,000), Low (265,900), Lodger (153,360), Stage (127,350). Between 1977 and 1983, one of every two new Bowie LPs was returned unsold by retailers. By contrast, Michael Jackson sold over a million copies of Off the Wall between August and December 1979 alone." (Pushing After The Dame)

Here's hoping she can come up with some 'Berlin'-worthy music once she realizes her new status.
2013 has seen the rise of the exciting, brilliantly precocious Lorde. This was a genuinely unexpected development; 2013 was supposed to be the year of the 'Baby Robyns': Frida Sundemo, Faye, MØ, and the like:



I'm not sure that it quite makes sense for all these Scandi-gals to sell nothing while Lorde sells millions! Indeed Robyn herself has never had quite the global success (esp. in North America) that Lorde is having. Thus, while Lorde is a fantastic development for the charts, the flukiness and winner-take-all-ness of pop chart success remains troubling. Incredible luck is involved in becoming a 'chosen one'. Lorde shows signs of understanding this, and of appreciating her good fortune more generally. Let's hope she never forgets the point (it's probably one of the keys, along with staying a little bit 'alternative' to the mainstream, to Lorde's preserving good will and having a long career).

holychild's Playboy Girl

I could love this. The video's 'ironic burlesque' thing is confusing but sort of brilliant. Is this LA duo the next XX or The Knife or Passion Pit? Or does the 'Madonna Studies' influence trump all? Who knows at this point? But holychild definitely seem worth following. Several more tracks are perusable (a couple are freely downloadable) here.

Rachel's Reflective Surfaces (2003)

Go to 2m 50s in. (There's some recent problem with youtube coding for start-times of embedded videos that prevents this from happening automatically.)

Who's the mocking, blonde cutie in Stage Door (1937)?

Update 2019: The mystery gal is Jan Wiley, credited as Harriet Brandon for Stage Door and for her debut, New Faces of 1937. Wiley succeeded as a serials star throughout the '40s.

The Finale of Sweet Smell Of Sucess (1957)

The final two minutes of Mackendrick's (and Odets and Lehman's and Wong Howe's) Sweet Smell of Success clinch its status as one of the greatest films of the '50s, and it's Elmer Bernstein's remarkable score that, having jet-propelled the film since its first frames, now brings it home. Bernstein makes two miraculous transitions, from a violin threnody to a reprise of the brassy Street theme from the beginning of the movie to a first wistful then heraldic, Copland-ish theme as Suzie Hunsecker steps out of the Brill Building and, after we close on a trembling J.J. 30 storeys above, she crosses the street into the light and her future. Perfect.