Last week I was at the SAPPHIRE conference, in Orlando, FL. It’s a big, corporate event, and they do a pretty good job of looking after the 30,000 attendees, from providing free food and beverages (Coke and Pepsi so as to not curry favor!) throughout the conference, to laying on company-sponsored dinners and drinks in the evenings (and into the very early hours…). The last night of the conference always features a live band or performer, and this year that was Lady Gaga.
Now, full disclosure, I can’t exactly claim to be a fan, being fairly indifferent to her music, but I thought I’d go along and check it out anyway. I was with a good group of people, the ticket was free, and there was an open bar beforehand. Besides, last year the performer was Justin Timberlake and I’m similarly not really a fan of him, but that turned out to be relatively entertaining, so I figured I’d approach Lady Gaga the same way: with an open mind. But much as I tried, it was awful. Truly terrible.
It wasn’t so much the music itself – I’ll concede that she has a pretty decent voice on her, but she really does not know how to put on a concert. I don’t know if there was supposed to be a ‘conceptual theme’ to the concert, but there was a large screen behind the band on which was projected visual effects (like you see on a graphics card demo) and an anthropomorphic figure that we learned through the ‘show’ represented Gaga’s spirit, or soul, or some claptrap like that. The problem was not so much the visuals as the fact that this animated persona was an integral part of the show, with Gaga ‘conversing’ with it at regular intervals. Like between every song. So she’d get the crowd all amped up and dancing to Poker Face or something, but then everything would stop – no band, no background music just Gaga talking to this figure. And not even ‘natural’ talking – it was so wooden! I don’t understand how she could possibly be given a part in a movie. I haven’t seen A star Is Born, but on the basis of this, I can’t believe she could be even remotely convincing.
She adopted a slightly breathless delivery for these segments, and a faux-surprise “Oh my goodness, what’s happening? Who are you? Where am I?” that came across like a budget Dora The Explorer at a six-year-old’s birthday party. The whole thing was hammier than her infamous ‘meat dress’ made of bacon. In fact, throughout the entire concert I don’t think she actually felt one single emotion she was trying to portray, even when blathering on about her friends and early performances. I know all ‘performers’ are just ‘acting’, but this was so lacking in believability it was impossible to relate, or empathize, or even make any kind of connection with her or her material. I’ve honestly heard more believable delivery at an elementary school nativity play.
But the real problem was that her stopping everything every five minutes to talk to her ‘spirit guide’ just broke up the concert so much it was impossible to maintain any momentum, or for the crowd to really get into it. And this disruption to the flow wasn’t just between songs. On the otherwise-bearable piano ballad You and I she stopped, mid-song, to deliver some trite (and unconvincing) pearls of wisdom, then continued with a couple more lines of the song, stopped again and talked about how much she loved us all and what her ‘spirit guide’ had taught her, before finishing with a crescendo that was now out of place because you’d lost sight of what was building up to it! So what was probably a decent 3 minute song was stretched out to a 7 or 8 minute endurance test – or memory test as you tried to remember what she was singing and whereabouts in the song she had gotten to. And that’s true of the entire performance. If she’d just stopped talking, cut out all the pseudo-theatrical crap, didn’t stop for five-plus minute costume changes every couple of songs, and just ploughed through the maybe ten songs she actually sang, she could have delivered a pretty solid 30-minute performance that may have been enjoyable.
She also didn’t particularly endear herself to the audience, which, remember, was largely made up of post-college corporate professionals. I’m sure she was trying to be all ‘ironic’, but pointing out that she was “being paid a lot of money for this shit”, and that we all only came because we got free tickets and half the audience probably didn’t like her music anyway, so they could “go fuck yourselves”, before spending literally five minutes exhorting us to tell her to go fuck herself because she knew that’s what we wanted to say, didn’t exactly create a party atmosphere. If you don’t want to suck a corporate dick then don’t take the money. And certainly don’t bite it, halfway through!
She also swore a lot. Maybe she feels it’s just part of “who she is” as a New Yorker, and she’s just ‘keeping it real’ – and I know I use the f-word for punctuation pretty often – but it did seem a bit forced, and entirely (and I know I’m turning into my dad, here) unnecessary.
During one of her chattier segments she did try to explain how she’d done her research before taking the gig, but then informed us that SAP provided 78% of the world’s food and 40-odd% of medical devices and thanked us for that, which left everyone bemused, and trying to figure how she could have arrived at those figures (maybe that percentage of the companies who do those things run SAP, would be my guess). And sure, I get that she’s on TMZ not Bloomberg News, but you compare that with Sandra Bullock who spoke at the conference earlier the day, and had done her homework and spoke to how she liked what she’d learned about SAP’s commitment to diversity and women’s equality, and their philanthropic efforts, and it was a marked difference.
All-told, it was hugely disappointing. Everyone I spoke to beforehand had told me Lady Gaga could “really put on a show”, but on the basis of what I saw, bitches be trippin’. Maybe in terms of an off-Broadway amateur musical that ran for a week before ending under a tidal wave of bad critical reviews, but in terms of a ‘musical concert’, no. Not even close.
The only bit I truly enjoyed was the break after the second song when she left the stage to go off for her first costume change. No, I’m not being snarky and saying I only enjoyed the bits that she wasn’t in (although that’s true…), but for those five minutes her two guitarists locked into a tight, kind of neo-goth groove that was really good – like something I’d actually pay to go see live. Unlike the rest of the concert, for which I received a free ticket and still felt ripped off.
So, clearly not my cup of tea. But, objectively, I wouldn’t even recommend this ‘show’ to someone for whom Lady Gaga is their cup of tea. Instead, download her ‘hit singles’ off the interweb, and enjoy them in the comfort of your own home with an actual cup of tea.
Leave a Reply