The creation of Lady Gaga
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Lady Gaga wasn't born this way.
The pop superstar, performing Wednesday night in Sacramento, owes a clear debt to other artists, especially Madonna. To hear a few bars of "Born This Way" is to want to hum "Express Yourself."
Wearing her influences on her meat sleeve, Gaga last month told Jay Leno, "There is really no one that is a more adoring and loving Madonna fan than me." Gaga looked relieved while reporting to Leno that Madonna's camp gave its blessing to "Born This Way."
Madonna showed plenty of influences herself, arriving in the 1980s as a amalgam of Debbie Harry, Marilyn Monroe, the downtown New York club scene and Motown's synchronized dance moves.
Gaga, by extension, taps those same influences as well as 1970s glam and punk rockers (see accompanying chart) whose aesthetics shaped her combination of high theatricality and appearing as if she always has dirt under her fingernails.
Yet Gaga has distinguished herself as a pop icon, through a musical background more extensive than those of most pop divas, her boundary-pushing public image and her ardent support of gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender fans – and of anyone else who sometimes feels left out or bullied.
"She represents the outsider perspective," said Carla DeSantis Black, an advocate for women in rock music who for 10 years published a magazine called Rockrgrl.
Though much of Gaga's music is mainstream, her videos are ambitious, wild, subversive.
"Her whole image is a blending of punk rock and performance art with music that is 100 percent pop," Black said.
Gaga's pop confections share radio airtime with songs by Britney Spears and Katy Perry. But the visuals differ sharply. Though barely clothed in her videos, Gaga also sports pointy, unsexy shoulder prosthetics.
"Her come-hither look is scary," Black said with a laugh.
The pop star plays "Mother Monster" to "little monster" followers who, over two days last week, raised $250,000 toward Japanese earthquake/ tsunami relief. The fans heeded Gaga's Twitter call to buy $5 bracelets she designed for the cause.
Gaga's primary cause is gay rights. She frequently voiced her opposition to "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and continues her call to legalize same-sex marriage. She wrote her No. 1 hit "Born This Way" as a gay anthem.
"Other songs have become gay anthems, but this might be the first time" a big star has written a song for that purpose, said Michael Jensen, editor of AfterElton.com, a website covering pop culture for gay and bisexual men. Gaga reached out to his site well before anyone knew who she was, Jensen said.
"It was like she made the gay community and gay rights her mission."
Gaga's constant, outspoken support of gay rights is unusual at her level of stardom, Jensen said, and her ability to be so political without alienating her broader fan base is reflective of changing attitudes.
Straight people under 30 "don't view the gay community as being separate from themselves anymore," Jensen said. "They have gay friends, and they don't look at Lady Gaga as this gay fringe figure."
Nor do Gaga's young fans likely sit around comparing early Gaga with early Madonna.
"Her audience is probably not big Madonna fans," Black said. "That was two generations ago."
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