Lady Gagas newest single, Edge of Glory: fantastic 80s ballad or just bad?

Yesterday evening, I got my sizzurp on (it’s prescribed!) and I clicked on this Gawker link, where they were discussing Lady Gaga’s newly released single for “Edge of Glory”. I believe this is the third track that’s been released from Gaga’s sophomore album, after “Born This Way” and “Judas”. I listened to the track as I read the comments, finding amusement from both – Gawker claimed that Gaga had abandoned copying Madonna and begun copying Pat Benatar. Gawker commenters disagreed for the most part, which made me start wondering if after “Born This Way” and “Judas” got such mixed critical results, and Gaga was being bashed by more and more people… well, I wondered if maybe there was a backlash against the backlash against Gaga. First, listen the single:

As I’ve been saying in Gaga posts the past few months, I’m kind of over her. The bitch has changed. Where she used to be weird-funny, nowadays she’s just try-hard, weird-creepy, and there’s a vein of megalomania in her. That being said, I don’t really hate this song. It’s becoming clearer that Born This Way is no The Fame. It would be difficult, when you really think about it, to try to live up to enormous success of The Fame. Gaga IS trying, but is she succeeding?

In some ways she is, because after all, I’m writing a post completely devoted to Gaga’s third track release, and she’s one of the few pop artists that gets that kind of treatment from me and everyone else in the media. Gaga’s relevance might be that everyone wants to discuss how irrelevant she is, how coked up she is, how the bitch has changed, how she’s a disaster, how she needs to get a grip, etc. Which is to say, everybody has an opinion, and so she is still relevant and important to pop culture.

As for the song… well, as I said, I kind of like it. I loathe “Judas” as a pop song, and lyrically, “Born This Way” is just awful. But “Edge of Glory” sounds so dated and familiar… it feels like the song that would have been playing in the final match at the end of The Karate Kid. RIGHT?!? That’s what I realized on the second listen. “This song belongs at the ‘turning point’ scene in a wonderfully cheesy and iconic ‘80s movie.” And FOR THE LOVE OF GOD YES, please bring back the saxophone solo in pop music!!

Photos courtesy of WENN.

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