Who does it better?

Madonna has been one of my idols since I was a teenager.  I still remember the first time I heard her on the radio.  She sang Into the Groove and I was spellbound.  The tune was catchy and fun and you couldn’t sit still.  No matter how many times it was replayed, I always loved it.  And my adoration was born.

I bought that album, Like a Virgin, which was Madonna’s second, and then the previous and then the next and then all the ones that followed, up until a couple years ago, when I started to lose interest in buying new CDs altogether.  I still follow her work though, and not just her music.

I saw and loved her in Desperately Seeking Susan, Who's That Girl, Dick Tracy, and Evita.  Other roles she played rank from weak to terrible, but she was never considered a serious actress (although she did win a Golden Globe for Evita).

Similarly, she doesn’t have a spectacular voice (à la Barbra Streisand, Mariah Carey, or Whitney Houston) and her music if often a generic mixture of pop and rock that lyrically lands on the softer side (she’s no Bruce Springsteen or Bob Dylan if you will), and yet, she’s always very original and often controversial.

She’s also incredibly skilled at marketing her own image.  Coming of age at the dawn of the MTV era, she figured that the best way to sell her music was to pair it up with cutting edge, provocative videos that always positioned her firmly in the center of any media firestorm.  Madonna was also always reinventing her look, which allowed her to remain relevant year after year, decade after decade.

She has also always been a strong supporter of gay rights, always surrounding herself with gay friends and collaborators, and never one to shy away from stating her opinion or courting controversy.  In short, in spite of her limitations as a singer, a musician, and an actress, Madonna has been fun to love and hard to ignore, and through the years she’s given me countless hours of entertainment.

While I’ve fallen in love with many other artists since and for a variety of reasons, no one ever matched Madonna in terms of originality or histrionics.  Until Lady Gaga.

I had been hearing her name and tidbits of her songs for a while without really knowing her work, until one day, wanting to know what the deal really was, I sat down and watched the video for Bad Romance.  The song was so original and the video so over the top that it was instant adoration all over again.

Her second album The Fame Monster, which contains Bad Romance, is, in a word, brilliant, with 6 great songs out of its 8 tracks.  Quite a feat.  Her first album, The Fame, also features great tunes, and I can’t wait to hear/see what she does next.

What I like about Lady Gaga is her willingness to push the envelope and stand up for what she believes in.  Her costumes, makeup, songs, videos, performances, and appearances are always eventful.  She freely states that she always felt (and was treated) like a freak, an outsider, so she wants to make the “freaks” among her fans feel at home around her.  And she’s a big gay rights supporter as well.

On top of all that, she’s also got a very powerful voice that, honestly, can run circles around Madonna’s.  That’s not to say that Lady Gaga has replaced Madonna for me, I’m just saying that Gaga, unlike Madonna, has an incredible voice that shields her from the countless criticism that Madonna had to endure concerning her singing abilities.

Like Madonna before her, Lady Gaga’s tunes are catchy, fun, and original.  Her videos, like Madonna’s, are provocative and cutting edge, but I thought they were also very original … until I saw this montage:

It’s quite impressive how closely the choreography, makeup, costumes, photography, design, and direction of Lady Gaga’s videos mirror Madonna’s isn’t it?

Again, I’m not disparaging anyone here.  I love Madonna.  I love Lady Gaga.  Who knows, maybe Gaga is a huge Madonna fan and all those similarities are just tributes to her (our) idol.

Anyways, to answer the post title’s question, I think that all things considered, Madonna does do it better.

Now I’m waiting for a duet.