Lady Gaga’s supposedly avant-garde persona recycled existing underground styles

Evidence

Music critic Simon Reynolds noted, “Everything about Gaga came from electroclash.” Her debut single, “Just Dance,” epitomized this synthesis, blending David Bowie–inspired makeup, Karen O’s fashion, and the party visuals of the Cobrasnake’s indie sleaze photography. The track’s rap breakdown nodded to electroclash icon Peaches. Reynolds observed that beneath the avant-garde veneer, her songs were “ruthlessly catchy noughties pop glazed with Auto-Tune and undergirded with R&B-ish beats,” giving the impression of innovation while remaining rooted in familiar conventions. — W. David Marx, Blank Space, 249

Categorization

• SEED: Angle: cultural ‘innovation’ in the 2000s was largely recombination of already-existing scenes — supports or complicates the blankness thesis depending on framing.
• XREF: Reynolds’s comment that Gaga was entirely a pastiche supports the idea that this chapter is using Gaga to exemplify omnivore-monoculture absorption of subcultures.