How Lady Gaga Went From Meat Dress Weirdo To Wholesome Movie Star

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It’s hard to imagine someone with less talent and charisma than Gaga successfully evolving from alt-freak in a meat dress to old Hollywood glamour A-lister over the course of a decade — who else could make either end of the spectrum feel both exciting and authentic? Who else could convince us that all her various personas aren’t just (or at least only) savvy marketing but joyous expressions of an artist always searching for new ways to get to know herself?

To see the near-widespread coverage of Gaga’s ethereal beauty, “great kindness,” and her status as an all-around “class act” is rather remarkable, considering that, 10 years ago, Gaga headlines tended to feature vicious gossip about her gender and boycotts by pissed-off Catholics. That’s not to say she wasn’t famous — she was a household name as early as, what, 2009? — but she was certainly less widely adored. When did someone famously freaky become, suddenly, “wholesome”?

It’s hard to pinpoint when, exactly, this shift might have taken place, in part because it hasn’t ever really felt sudden or forced. For many longtime Gaga fans, it might not even come as a surprise. Because while Gaga has proved her serious musician chops in recent years by dabbling in more old people–friendly genres, like jazz, there have been those of us who knew she was the real deal all along, and that she’d never stick exclusively to dance or pop. (I remember once forcing my classmates to listen to the acoustic version of “Poker Face” in my 11th-grade homeroom.) Gaga has always been a chameleon, transforming for the sake of her art, performing the self as art. In the early aughts, she was an avowed weirdo, a champion of queer kids in the time of “don’t ask, don’t tell,” a maximalist pop star who celebrated difference.

Following Gaga’s commercial flop turned cult hit, 2013’s Artpop, which included an extremely unfortunate R. Kelly collab, she and her team began to work on something of a reinvention. That led to Gaga’s first album with Tony Bennett, Cheek to Cheek, in 2014, and the next year, a lovely Sound of Music medley at the Oscars gave every gay millennial an opportunity to turn to their parents and say, “See?” (Ditto in 2016, when she killed it while performing the national anthem at the Super Bowl.)

By the time Gaga ascended to movie stardom, with none other than Cooper’s A Star Is Born — a film that is itself about what it means to be an authentic artist — her audience had already been primed to consider she’s capable of far more than what we’ve yet to see. And, as always, it’s her performance of that stardom — arriving to the Venice Film Festival for the Gucci premiere in a boat; flirting with Bradley Cooper; going retro glamour — that takes Gaga to the next level. And just because she’s doing normie red carpet now doesn’t mean her freakier side is gone for good. This week, a fan commented on her Instagram, saying they missed the old Gaga, and she made a rare response: “I’m still here,” she wrote, adding the upside-down smiley face and “see you at #TheChromaticaBall.” A reminder that she continues to make and perform her less commercially successful work, for all the weirdos who want and need it.

Source: https://www.buzzfeed.com/shannonkeating/lady-gaga-reinvention-sza-liza-minelli-oscars-grammys

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