Gaga’s mainstream success required translating underground aesthetics into marketable pop

Evidence

In Iovine’s account of their meeting, “an Italian girl with brown hair” walked in, and she “started telling me about Andy Warhol, and dance music, but yet industrial, and paintings…. She confused me so much that I signed her.” Partnering with up-and-coming Moroccan Swedish producer RedOne, Gaga transformed her love of eighties heavy metal into a market-friendly electropop sound, trading guitar riffs for synth lines. As she refined her stage persona, Gaga embraced the aesthetic of drag culture, platinum blond hair, and over-the-top fashion inspired by Warholian iconography and gay icons like Liza Minnelli. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 248

Categorization

• XREF: This is the chapter’s concrete case study presumably illustrating the ‘omnivore monoculture’ thesis — Gaga as a cultural omnivore who sampled downtown scenes. Connects to the reader’s goal of tracing the book’s four-period mechanism.