Quite an auspicious start to 2009 for a girl who had been, until quite recently, a nearly unknown singer/songwriter performing nightly burlesque-inspired shows in New York City dives after leaving the prestigious Tisch School of the Arts at NYU (where she gained early acceptance at age 17) to pursue her music career. Gaga madness had officially reached pandemic status. The following week, after 22 weeks of climbing, it reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. By the end of 2008, "Just Dance" had become the unavoidable song of the moment, the ubiquitous soundtrack for just about everybody's New Years festivities. Released in April 2008, "Just Dance" steadily climbed the charts through the summer and fall, gaining Gaga a huge fan base through radio airplay and word of mouth (and, just a guess, from people blasting the song out of their cars). It might not be too much of an exaggeration to say that 2009 was the "Year of the Gaga." After first appearing on the pop charts, seemingly out of nowhere, in 2008 with her hit single "Just Dance," Lady Gaga suddenly found herself on the tip of everybody's tongue. Kanye West made an even bigger joke out of himself than we thought possible and somehow skyrocketed Taylor Swift to fame in the process. Gay rights activists took to the streets to try to win the right to marry conservative Tea Party activists took to the streets to try to stop the Democrats from enacting what they saw as a "socialist" political agenda. Polar bears got stuck on thinning sheets of polar ice humans got hit with a nasty plague of H1N1 swine flu. Iraq cooled off a bit while Afghanistan heated up. Twilight conquered the world, sending teenage girls everywhere into a feeding frenzy over human/vampire/werewolf love triangles. The economy teetered on the brink of Great Depression 2.0. Prophetic, poetic and a killer visual that is able to be endlessly analyzed.No mistake about it: 2009 was a big year.īarack Obama became the first Black President of the United States. Paparazzi turned out to be oddly prophetic as Gaga would wind up in a wheelchair in 2012, when a hip injury ended up being a major obstacle. The film, and that's what this is, Gaga routinely defies the label of music video, and turns her video treatments into films, worlds with their own aesthetic and world building totally unique. Paparazzi set the stage for a new age of pop culture, where visuals mattered, fashion mattered and an avant garde sensibility was a must for any new pop star. No one at the time, at least in the mainstream was executing high concept music videos to this degree. While Poker Face showed that Gaga was going to be more than a one hit wonder, Paparazzi, and the music video and performances that went along with it proved that Gaga would be an enduring force in pop culture. Just Dance was a sleeper hit, and at the time many thought it would be a fluke, but Gaga followed it up with Poker Face, a genre-defining hit with a clever bisexuality metaphor. Katy Perry was making waves with her debut album, but nothing could compare to the cultural juggernaut that was Lady Gaga. At the time, radio was awash with R&B, and stars like Britney Spears and Rihanna were dominating the radio. The year was 2009, and Lady Gaga had just burst on the scene.
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