Mitchell Vs. Winter

For the last month, I’ve felt like lying in my bed, sipping on tea, and ignoring the rest of humanity, but instead worked my ass off and danced all night long. People told me I would hate winter and to expect worst experience of my life. They called February cold, isolated, and depressing. I laughed at them, ignoring them. What experience do Northerners have, anyway? They’ve only lived here their whole fucking life. When I got a cough, I ignored it and kept on dancing, anyways. “They’re allergies!” I said. “I’m from Florida. I’m invincible. I’ve dealt with crazy people. I can obviously handle this shit.”

But winter is a rude bitch, who, when ignored, grabbed me by the throat, gave me a cold, and shoved me in my bed where I fucking belong. She made sure I walked into my next class smelling like a cough drop. But I battled it out. I went to Lauryn Hill with a box of tissues. I coughed all the way through Robyn. When my “allergies” disappeared, I wrote for hours and then stayed up all night. I was acting like someone in one of those movies about “summer,” except my surroundings looked like a Jack London novel. Every time I recovered, I ended up sick two days later.

Now, I’ve given up. Winter, you win. Winter, you’re right. WINTER, I HATE YOU FOR BEING SO EFFING SMART. After eighteen years of summer, I need to lie in bed and CHILL. As my father says, Mitchell doesn’t know how to relax. I work and I play. I hate sleep. It bores me. I could write, read, or go to a teashop, instead of sleeping! But I need it. That’s why the world has seasons: so we fucking hibernate. So our bodies and minds go through cycles. So we stay healthy. So we put down the homework and stop the chit chat and rest. I’ve fought this battle for a whole month, and now I’m ready to leave the ring. Tonight, I put down the notepad and kindle. Tonight, I let the other dancehall queens dance. Tonight, I will fucking sleep.

Born This Way

For the last six months, Lady Gaga has tweeted about Born This Way, calling it her best work and the first single from the album of the decade. Miraculously, she kept the song hidden, leaking it only to friends like Elton John, who praised the song as “the gayest song ever.” Without a performance, interview, or tabloid splash, Gaga transformed her song into an anticipated event that was supposed to be the monument of her career, a ballad like disco epic about human rights and essentialist theory, and a sure fire controversy ringer that would stay at the top of the hot 100 for months.

On Friday, Gaga managed to shock the world, but not in the way everyone anticipated she would. When I first heard the song, I was underwhelmed. It was a corny, unemotional jingle about loving yourself set to left over nineties house beats. Yes, I anticipated the corniness-she leaked the lyrics two weeks ago- but I was expecting an arrangement more “Total Eclipse of the Heart” than “Express Yourself.” I felt like I had heard this song before, but wasn’t sure if it was called “Express Yourself” or “We R Who We Are.” From the “don’t be a drag, be a queen” rap to the empty bridge, the production was a 100% Madonna rip off, but the blatant gay rights illusions reminded me of Ke$ha’s latest single. The difference in the two songs is that Ke$ha-the Jonathan Swift of the Dr. Luke era- has a cheeky humor that hint’s that she’s in on the joke. Based off recent interviews, Gaga thinks “Born This Way” speaks for a generation, and a lot of people agree with her. Thousands of little monsters have gone on Twitter, declaring the song a momentous occasion and life changing, while others deemed it a rip off.

In an ironic way, “Born This Way” is Gaga’s biggest failure and success. If you, as a fan or critic, believe Lady Gaga is a pop star on the verge of artistic genius or an artist who belongs among her downtown influences, then this song is crap. But if you constantly question if Gaga is aPR woman who sings, than this song is a masterpiece. It’s a piece of craftsmanship, not made to express Gaga’s self, but to gain publicity and momentum for her next album. It's supposed to make her a superstar.

After all, since when was Gaga really about the music? Sure, she plays the piano and has stellar vocal abilities, but she gets attention for her shocking outfits, performances, inspirational speeches, one liners, and “love for fans.” Every aspect of the Gaga story is calculated. Former friends never speak about Gaga in interviews. She has told the media everything she wants them to know about her past, shaping her own myth. Rolling Stone and the tabloids made Michael, Madonna, and Britney. Gaga isn’t a singer or dancer. She’s a genius PR person who has one project: making herself. How could “Born This Way” be a bigger success?

Robyn: Swedish Import With A New York Dream

When Robyn announced her February 5^th show at Radio City Music Hall, I was excited and disappointed. After trying to find tickets, for her five previous New York City shows, I would finally get to see her, since she was playing at the city’s second largest venue that once housed gay icons, like Judy Garland and Britney Spears.

But Robyn’s a club kid at heart. She dances around the stage, with carefully choreographed club kid moves, devoid of bigger pop stars’ background dancers and glamorous extravagance. It’s what makes her unique: she plays danceable pop that has the heart of all her fans. While Gaga sings about nonsensical phone calls interrupting her night at the club, Robyn, a singer with actual clubbing experience, sings about the heartache of every kid “who took the bus to town.” How could Robyn, who easily turns Terminal 5 into Club USA every few months, communicate the heartache of every unknown dancer throughout the massive theatre that’s home to the Rockettes?

Either way, I figured the crowd would match the extravagance Robyn lacks. I imagine boys covered in glitter and hags as wrecked as a raver post day glo. Instead, Alison, Belle, and I found ourselves covered in glitter war paint, in an orchestra full of Lactose wearing queens, boring but drug induced teenagers, and a closet case who brought his wife. I expected the soul of Judy Garland to hover around the theatre, not the audience of “doomed queens” that saw her in the fifties. It felt like I blew fifty-five dollars on a lame show, with a lame audience, dressed for a lame night.

As the curtain rose and Robyn walked backward toward the mic, the audience rose. When she turned around, grabbed the mic, and belt the first two lines of “Time Machine,” she exhaled into the audience, destructing their stereotypical gay facades as they inhaled her lyrics, bringing their heartbroken inner dancing queens to life.

Prior to “Dancing on My Own,” her trademark song, the purple lights shined like ray beams around the tiny singer, as she folded her arms around herself, beginning a series of carefully choreographed poses and club moves that seemed both natural and symbolic. She pointed at the audience, climbed into the mezzanine, dived into the crowd, and held onto their hands, with truth, love, and sadness, in her voice, gestures, and eyes. Lacking midgets on trampolines (I’m looking at you, Britney), pools of blood (Sound familiar, Gaga?), and disco crucifixes (Crucify yourself lately, Madonna?), Robyn’s show matched the size of the stage and theatre. As John Guare says, theatre is not big set pieces and flying cast members. It’s emotional height.

In a culture saturated with Lady Gaga’s ten-minute music videos, meat dresses, and “little monsters,” I forgot the power of truthful emotions. Whereas Lady Gaga reminds crowds of her fan adoration, Robyn never mentioned it. She grooves across the stage, dancing with us, for us. She climbs into the top of the theatre, taking a risk as she dives into the mezzanine, trusting her fans to hold onto her, saving her from death. She only talked to the audience to thank us for being her largest audience, as she jumped into the air, fist pumping.

Saturday was Robyn’s triumph. It was the night the indie girl, the Z-100 reject, and the import sold out the most famous venue in America. It was a night fit for Radio City, an American icon, where Fantasia premiered and Judy Garland belted about the rainbow. Standing outside of the venue, posing with my friend, a long time New Yorker, as if we were tourists basking in legendary lights, consumerism, and dreams, made me feel 100% American.

Deciphering the New Britney Spears Cover

Critics, fans, and Jive Records have called Britney Spears a role model, a protégé, a rock star, an ingénue, a corporation, a concept, a puppet, a mime, a write off, a hypocrite, a country bumpkin, a train wreck, a punk rebel, a mother, a tragedy, a pawn, a recluse, and, quite symbolically, an Obama era comeback queen. Her label, enemies, and own rebellion fuel these roles, ensuing public debate and the biggest question of all: why does Britney, an artist who comes across as unaware and controlled in interviews, lip synchs and strips at concerts, and has nothing thematically relevant to sing about, capture and symbolize America at every moment. Twelve years into her career, it seems, whether lip synching at Madison Square Garden or grabbing a mocha at the bowl, she’s possessed by a pop spirit, that, even when auto tune disguises her voice, brings her to an other worldly level we know as “Britney,” capable of selling hit records and pissing someone, even country has beens, off.

Ironically, we come to a moment where Britney Spear’s public image matches her artistic and commercial role as an icon, because during her iconic meltdown (get ready to hear the word iconic in this blog post), she shattered the corporate images that imprisoned her from critical success. Sure, In The Zone sold more copies than Blackout, but hearing the Britney, who dated Justin and asked if the old lady dropped it in the ocean at the end, sing about massaging her clit is cringe educing. Yes, “Baby One More Time” was provocative, but still only provocative enough that Britney could sing a line reminding us that she’s “not that innocent.” The label made her strip in public but claim she never got it in. But after she shaved her head, dropped her babies, lost her babies, regained her babies, declared that “she’s country,” stripped at a strip club, and told a fan that she’s not “that bitch,” she finally overcame her public puberty. She was finally Britney, bitch. Britney the icon, not the person, was made or possessed by an artistic demon, to sing tongue and cheek songs about sex. Now that she had a whole mental break down, she could also sing “Piece of Me” and “If You Seek Amy,” unsubtle stabs at the public’s perception of her. Her differentiating public image and previous success gave producers enough material to make her their muse, an actual icon, and her mental break down and recovery proved that she belonged with MJ and Madonna, because the public would only forgive and sympathize with an icon after she abandoned her fans and children.

When her management, Dr. Luke, Max Martin, and Jive Records created the cover for her new album, Femme Fatal, a work a press released called “non conceptual,” they wanted to remind consumers of Britney’s history and that they need no concept, because Britney’s a concept, herself. Even though Britney Spears now hides from the public, she still has that “crazy quality.” She wears smoky eyeliner and BRITNEY SPEARS, as the cover prints in huge letters, is a FEMME FATAL. She’s dangerous but no longer unstable, because she made it to ALBUM 7. Yes, they even print the number in huge letters, because yes, against everyone’s wildest predictions, the girl who stripped to a song called “Oops I Did It Again” is STILL more relevant that Radiohead, because the crazy- that deranged spirit that even made her pop in her “innocent” “virginal” days- is within. It’s so present they don’t even need a scandalous video to remind you. They just need the name Britney.