by Jen Connors

I will admit that I am not the world’s biggest Little Monster. I like Lady Gaga in moderation, usually when I need a beat to get me through the next three minutes and some odd seconds and nothing else is really cutting it. When I read the lyrics to “Born This Way,” after months of hype and buildup, including a declaration from Gaga herself that this album will, “change the world,” I was intrigued, but a little disappointed. When I heard the song for the first time, I felt it even more. While “Born This Way” is a good dance song and sure to gain some sort of club-anthem status, it has the same beat and message as another “love yourself” anthem: Madonna’s 1989 smash hit “Express Yourself.” From the spoken intros to the techno-friendly, drum heavy tempo, it’s hard to distinguish the songs at first. “BTW” is already breaking records, becoming the 1000th song to top the Billboard chart and the fastest-selling song in iTunes history, selling over one million downloads in less than a week. I think on its own the song is good, but not as fantastic as Gaga made it out to be in interviews prior to its debut.  When the video made its debut about two weeks ago, I felt that disappointment again. What had so much potential to be a truly groundbreaking video for Gaga turned into another space show, complete with unicorns, visual effects, and birth scenes.
The video opens with a shot of “Mother Monster,” a Gaga alter ego, and a reading from her manifesto. Mother Monster is a God-like creature who births both good and evil. The births are shown through somewhat graphic effects. The music itself doesn’t begin until two and a half minutes into the video, which clocks in at seven minutes and twenty seconds. Intercut with images of Mother Monster is the “good” side, dancing along to the song for the first verse with a somewhat natural Gaga shown with dancers and by herself. When the “evil” side is shown, it is just a zombified dancing Gaga with a man standing still next to her. It’s a dance-heavy video that relies heavily on the usual over-the-top Gaga techniques.
I feel like “Born This Way” had a lot of potential to be the next “Beautiful,” but Gaga completely wasted it. The video is so frivolous and overproduced, it’s almost impossible to take the song’s message seriously. If she wanted to do something truly daring, she would have abandoned her usual production values, her usual makeup and costumes and especially the unicorn featured throughout the video, in favor of a natural approach, showing the way she is without the pizzazz and the effects, and maybe even showing some regular people that are comfortable with who they are. If she is trying to make herself the spokesperson for the LGBTQ community, she should be able to show her listeners that she knows what it’s like to be young and confused about who you are. A unicorn isn’t going to help the fourteen year old who’s been bullied all day and puts on the song when they get home from school. A dancing zombie isn’t going to help the seventeen year old who’s confused about what they want in life. By releasing this video, with this type of message song, Gaga is essentially saying that she was born an overly-sexualized zombie God, sent down to earth to end prejudice and hatred. I would definitely recommend listening to the song, but I would skip the video unless you are a die-hard Little Monster.