The moment you know

Gaga did Bowie. Duncan Jones tweeted:

"overexcited or irrational, typically as a result of infatuation or excessive enthusiasm; mentally confused." Damn it! What IS that word!?

— Duncan Jones (@ManMadeMoon) February 16, 2016

The problem with Bowie tributes is that Bowie left all that stuff behind. He didn't linger when he could or should have: it wasn't the changes but the changing. He left a trail of fans holding moments that were important in their lives, which is what pop does: it marks time like a photograph of summer. But then the seasons shift, and no matter how good they were to recall them is to roll in melancholy.

Bowie himself was never truly melancholy until the goodbye wrench of 'Where are we now' -- his last album, Black Star, is filled with a resolved sadness but it's nothing like the beautiful dejection of that 2013 single. The cover of The Next Day is Heroes, patched with text like an afterthought: the moment when the artist reached back for his Berlin self just for a moment, then let go.

Guys and Dolls

'I came to the conclusion long ago that all life is six to five against.' -- Damon Runyon

(John Cassavetes, Columbo: Étude in Black; Marilyn Monroe by George Barris; Ben Gazzara, The Killing of a Chinese Bookie; Gaga by Terry Richardson.)

I want your ugly, I want your disease

I love pop music because it inspires me to lesser things. To wit, the red dwarf of Lady GaGa, neither stellar nor a black hole, and the luxuriously boxed but boxed nevertheless 'Bad Romance' which opens a bit amyl and Gatecrasher but kicks into Wham Vogue and stays there, in French. The French and the catwalk talk will get it into fashion shows and the remarkable video (did anyone think videos would ever be interesting ever again, like, ever?) will sell it on iTunes. She's a worker, a songwriter who deduced that she needed her own brand to make money, and an introvert who disguises herself with the loudest clothes possible. It doesn't matter if it's GaGa under all that digital slap (it is) or if she can play (she can) and as long as her songs can be ProTooled into ringtones they don't need to be beautiful (but they are). GaGa lifted from Roisin Murphy and Miss Mosh, in the same way Roisin lifted from Portishead and Mosh lifted (licked?) Boop and Betty Page, but really Lady GaGa is the pop future Kraftwerk promised us: sexual, detached, romantic, efficient, modular, universal.