What’s that? Where have I been for the past five months? Well, highly inquisitive reader, I’ve been seeing places, meeting people, and learning things. But more specifically, I had been suffering from pop music burnout. Hopefully that won’t happen again for a while, as I actually wanna start blogging again (just probably not in such a regimented structure). But enough of that. Let’s get down to business.
Lady Gaga’s “The Edge of Glory.”
This song...fascinates me. It seems that, in the current music industry, only Lady Gaga can surprise me anymore. Once you’ve heard one Kesha or Katy Perry song you’ve pretty much heard them all. But Gaga is proving herself to be very flexible in her style.
By the way, if you’re wondering what I thought about her other two singles off this album, “Born This Way” would’ve been great if the mix weren’t so bombastically unlistenable, and “Judas” is basically the unholy love child of “Bad Romance” and “Alejandro.”
Back to “Edge,” though, you can consider me impressed. On paper, I never would’ve thought this song would work. If you were to take this song apart down to its basic elements, you would think them rather disparate. You can understand that they are sound musical concepts, and you can guess at how each of them would be used in other songs from different genres. But you would never think they could all be put together into something that actually sounds good.
And yet somehow, they do. The catch consists of two short soundbites of human vocalizations combined with 80's soft pop sounding percussion. During the verses, the beat used sounds more like something from a Savage Garden song. During the pre-chorus and the first half of the chorus, you get a much more typical dance beat. And then the strings kick in for the chorus’s second half. You should know how much I love stringed instruments by now.
The first bridge is your typical 80’s synth riff, which should be instantly recognizable if you listen to variety stations on the radio. The second bridge, though, is something nobody would be able to guess. It’s a sax solo. And who’s playing the solo? Clarence Clemons. Of The E Street Band. As in Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band. Lady Gaga got Bruce Springsteen’s saxophone player to take part in her song.
The last third of the song is an intricate weaving of all the elements used through the song being punctuated by Gaga’s soaring vocals. God, that girl can sing!
If you’re wondering why I haven’t talked about the lyrics, well, that’s kinda the weak point in the song. By themselves, the song just sounds like your typical, if extremely vague, love song. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but I guess from this particular artist, I expect a bit more.
That minor quibble out of the way, this song is great. This is the first time I’ve seen Gaga’s musical know-how shine all the way through. I’ve always known she was a little more competent than other mainstream artists, but this is the song that finally convinced me that she may actually be the genius everybody says she is.
Not that she’s finding completely new ways to create music. No, there hasn’t been anybody that supernaturally brilliant in a long time. Instead, what she’s doing can best be described as rediscovering the old ideas and recombining them into something new yet familiar. Sort of how Classic R&B and Rockabilly made the jump to Rock’n’Roll, or how Country evolved from its roots in bluegrass into something more akin to Southern Rock.
Although, I do have to say, not everyone will like this song. Obviously, if you hate pop music, you won’t even give this song a second listen. If you can’t stand songs like “Teenage Dream” or “Your Love Is My Drug,” or songs like “Born This Way,” you should avoid this.
As for myself, because of this song, I might actually listen to her new album once it comes out. We’ll see.
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