Yes, Lady Gaga has heard all the rumors about she’s a rip-off of Madonna, back before Madge turned into that weird, gristly, veiny-armed harpy-witch she is today. And now Gaga’s clearing the air in her new interview with NME magazine, stating that she’s not just a rip-off of Madonna and that her songs just happen to have the same chord progression as some of Madonna’s work, so they just have a similar structure. You know, sort of like how every romantic comedy shares the same structure, or how every James Patterson novel has the same basic foundation as a frozen dog turd.
In a new interview with NME, the popstar has hit out against those saying her smash hit Born This Way is a ripoff of Madonna’s Express Yourself. “That’s retarded,” she said about the accusations, “If you put the songs next to each other, side by side, the only similarities are the chord progression. It’s the same one that’s been in disco music for the last 50 years. Just because I’m the first f**king artist in 25 years to think of putting it on Top 40 radio, it doesn’t mean I’m a plagiarist, it means I’m f**king smart. Sorry.” SOURCE
You know what? I’ll let her slip. At this point, all songs share the same basic skeleton when you think about it, and yes, every once in a while two songs are going to sound alike. Although I’d probably respect Gaga a lot more if she just came right out and said a lot of her look and performances are based on prior acts. Let’s face it, it’s what she does: She takes forgotten bits of pop cultures and retools them into something new. Granted, it’s not the most innovative way of creating art, but pop culture is cannibalistic in nature, so you really can’t fault her for going with the crowd on this one.
And as an added bonus, here’s Weird Al Yankovic‘s Born This Way parody, which I’m including here because I thought it was kinda spiffy, but certainly not interesting enough to warrant its own post. Apparently, neither did Lady Gaga. Sorry Al!
About Jeremy Feist
