Lady Gaga is a textbook example of a stage persona as she goes to the extremes to differentiate herself from her personal life,

Lady Gaga is a textbook example of a stage persona as she goes to the extremes to differentiate herself from her personal life, as well as from other artists. Your analysis of the readings lent interesting insights to Lady Gaga’s stage persona. I do agree with you about the class song, I wasn’t thinking of Taylor Swift before, but now that I am thinking of her… “With You” almost seems like it could have been written by Taylor Swift

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A stage persona is essential for every artist as it creates a specific public image for the audiences. In “Metal Faces, Rap Masks: Identity and Resistance in Hip Hop’s Persona Artist”, it claims that how important authenticity is in producing and performing hip-hop music. Also, Hess argues that the appearance of an artist, such as changes of costume or name, could create differences towards the popularity of the music as well. Hess used the example of Greg Jacobs to describe how different stage personas of an artist could affect the outcome. Jacobs has two personas: Shock G and Humpty Hump at the same time. Shock G is a “traditional, ‘‘collapsed’’ identity, which is presented as authentic both to the performer’s experience and to hip-hop culture, while at the same time he performs through Humpty Hump a comic-sexual persona which has proven appeal for the mainstream listener” (Hass, 2005, p. 299). Shock G is “realess” as expressing Jacobs himself, but Humpty Hump is more likely to focus on the digital underground in an aesthetic way.

Different from Greg Jacobs, Lady Gaga only has one persona as presenting Lady Gaga to the public. Her original name is Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta, and Gaga is just her nickname when she was young. During the interview, she revealed that Gaga is a totally different entity of herself as Stefani. The name Gaga serves as a “stronger individual part of myself that I discovered being young in New York — loving music, meeting with young artists, working with musicians, with writers, studying the scene, and being involved in the lifestyle” (Variety, 2016). Stefani expresses her feelings and shares her experiences through the persona of Gaga. An example would be the song “Til it happen to you”; Gaga used her experience as being a victim of sexual assault to create the song as a producer and performer. Thus, Gaga’s music does not have a limited genre but diverseness, which is different from Jacobs.

In the article “Trashing America the Beautiful”: from She to Shining She”, Weissmann claims that the meaning of a song might have misinterpretation due to the discordant interpretation of the song between the producer and audiences. Audiences always believe the song “America the Beautiful” is a patriotic song to express the beauty of the America. However, the producer of the song Katherine Lee Bates did not want her song to be sung as patriotic way because the original meaning of the song was promoting the social problem as the inequality treatment of women. Connecting back to Gaga’s “Til it happens to you”, the song was less likely to be misinterpreted by audiences comparing with “America the Beautiful”.

The song “Til it happens to you” was standing in victim’s situation to illustrate the feelings after being sexual assaulted and how hard it takes the victim to undergo the experience. The music video of the song could definitely help the audiences to understand the meaning of the song because the music video shown the story of campus rape. In addition, there was a meaning behind the song as well. Since women are always the victims of being sexual assaulted, promoting sexual equality and the protection of women’s right is another purpose of producing the song. However, audiences were highly focusing on the sexual assault issue but disregard the other meanings.

When I heard the class song “With You”, it brings me a familiar feeling when I listen to Taylor Swift’s songs. Both singers have a sweet but sentimental voices which able to transmit the meaning of the song. Also, the slow rhythm and emotional vocals help me to picture a break up story between couple in my mind.

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