One of the problems with looking at Lady Gaga as a music writer or cultural critic is that there’s usually too much stuff going on. This is decidedly a "me" problem and not a "Gaga" problem.
Born This Way, Lady Gaga, Pop, Reeëvaluations | on September 27, 2011 Pop music, at least pop music now ("now" entailing the consolidation of the channels of distribution and the stranglehold that the Top 40-style singles have on radio airplay, along with the broadening of music distribution offered by the internets—a paradoxical intensification of the very most popular songs' popularity along with a growing, diverse array of popular songs that don't make it on the radio at all), seems to be fairly backward-looking on the macro scale—record labels, like movie studios, don't necessarily want to bet large on left-field artists—while being incredibly rich and interesting on the micro level.
Björk, Pop, Simon Reynolds | on July 12, 2011 Like the gangsta-rap-on-steroids trend, a lot of pop music has taken the essential idea of 90s girl power pop music and augmented it, trading in pedicures for PEDs. Now, pop stars aren't just powerful. They're like Cloverfield monsters destroying the world with their music.
Robyn’s “Dancing On My Own” is one of the greatest damn sad pop songs in history. There are five reasons.