to me what makes the Gaga song feel Swift-y is not the sound really (they're both drawing off the same stuff) but all the wordplay on "bad." I think of Gaga songs as having direct but bizarre lyrics most of the time whereas this song is comparatively normal but not direct. And all the good girl / bad girl / it's the same girl stuff is very ~Taylor.~
But also I'm enjoying the way on pop forums Swifties mean "it sounds like Taylor" as a compliment and the Gaga fans are taking it as a deadly insult lol. This is the dynamic that forms whenever Taylor actually collabs with a cooler artist so obviously she and Gaga should do that now.
It's totally invigorating and was making me smile so big to watch her on SNL. I loved her acknowledging that she's in her late 30s in the monologue; idk why "Lady Gaga is 38" really moves me, but it does! Happy for her and her civilian husband. I do think the lyrics on the Mayhem are maybe the least distinctive of Gaga's work on the whole, but the sound is fun and she sounds good on the record. The mad/bad, ripped jeans, good girl/bad girl dynamic isn't not Taylor, but I also think those tropes have defined pop for decades now. I think Gaga is just sort of playing in that sandbox. Her convo with David Marchese about trying to put several different characters into one album was enlightening in terms of getting a handle on the vision for Mayhem.
Oh sure. I guess I'm only really seeing the similarity conversation play out in like popheads but to me at least if she was deliberately doing a Taylor-style song that's just cute / sort of sweet, not much deeper than that. But both of them are pulling from "Only You"!
God I love Red Rocket so much… I really do want purity teens to watch and get so scared… I told my therapist my crush on Baker really amped up once they showed him how to comb his hair this season and he laughed
How Bad Do U Want Me *does* sound like Taylor, on purpose. She's embodying a Taylor-esque character and the hint is when she breaks character to do Gaga voice for exactly one bar. The whole album feels very middle-to-late career Bowie to me (highest of compliments) both sonically and conceptually, and How Bad is a great example of the thing Bowie would do where he would arrange/produce a song to be hyper saccharine and commercial because that sonic palette bolstered the themes of the work and it only makes sense/isn't "bad" in the context of the entire album.
Red Rocket — great movie! A movie filled with a million little figurative car crashes and then a catastrophic real one we never see.
I just started reading All That Glitters — memoir about a different kind of “bad art friend.” So far I’d say it’s kind of a hoot, and would probably feel more so if I knew even one thing about contemporary art. Have you already read and written about this and I’ve forgotten? If not, it feels somewhat adjacent to the interests of Fran Magazine and its readers.
Not familiar with All That Glitters but my eyes just went full AWOOGA reading the description of it and specifically the phrase "Goldsmiths University" - I did a few terms there and met some of the most wackadoo artists in my life. Seems like a book that exists at the perfect intersection of "about grad school" and "I'm always mad at my one friend" - I'll be reading!!!
the thin man is so good—love to myrna loy’s eyebrows AND to william powell’s long eyelashes. and to their tiny martinis!
rn i’m reading worn: a people’s history of clothing! was especially fascinated by a section on the emergence of weaving and all the bad blood between the (male) guilds and the (often women) home weavers and how the gender factor became folded into / weaponized within this conflict that was really about profit.. real. reminded me i need to read some silvia federici. currently reading a chapter on pesticides in cotton production — unexpected michael clayton angle!
Their tiny martinis are SO appealing. I also really loved Loy's icepack hat for her hangover. I need to get one of those instead of just sleeping with the icepack under my pillow. People's History of Clothing sounds incredible - I nearly snagged a year or so ago at the bookstore but succumbed to my no new purchased books rule. I really do wanna read, not only because 🚨MICHAEL CLAYTON MENTIONED🚨
How Bad Do U Want Me is much less Taylor Swift and much more Sophie (in my mind). The kind of stuff she was giving Charli XCX when Charli wanted everyone who wasn't busy to drop a verse on any song she had. Immediately ressurected Number 1 Angel in my head. But, it also reminds me of Pynk by Janelle Monae and Grimes in a whimsical-punk-vibes sort of way. Also, the song is definitely not outside of Gaga's history. The whole album has a lot of The Fame moments. Gaga was just simply doing that first. 1989 was released in 2014. Gaga had already dropped every one of her albums that Mayhem references back to. Have you ever done the PC Music, Sophie, A.g Cook, etc. deep dive? I think it would change you, Fran. It changes everyone for better or for worse.
Number 1 Angel is a great point of reference - I thought a bit of Janelle too... an artist whose work I've almost totally abandoned. I feel like she was ahead of her time for so long and now the work feels even more dated than I could imagine. I am a longtime Sophie fan and miss her work very much, I'm way less familiar with PC Music/AG Cook (the latter of whom I only really know from Charli) - need to go deep on all them. The Sophie collab that came to mind with Mayhem was this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDOCScOT-Mo
Where has MØ been... used to really rock with her.... If you haven't listened to Tove Styrke, I recommend. Her + Jade Thirlwall making (imo) the most exciting pop stuff to me rn outside of the A-listers.
cleaned the apt to mayhem yesterday and the taylor swift song stopped me in my tracks; literally had to sit down until it was done. favorite song is the killah/zombieboy double punch. red rocket GOOD side note we've been watching jj abrams's Felicity and simon rex is all over season one as a sensitive art major who draws portraits of keri russell.
Killah is amazing… I need Zombieboy to grow on me but I have faith that it will. I had no clue where Simon Rex was between Mickey Avalon’s My Dick and Red Rocket so this is good to know.
I haven't seen Anora, but I did see on the home flat screen (and gave my high praise to) Sean Baker's unheralded Florida Project (yay, little Moonie!) and Red Rocket (yay, Mikey!). I never saw Thin Man or its sequels on the big screen, either, but what a pair of actors...
I'm reading Reid Hoffman's "SuperAgency: What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future", and on deck is a sci fi/ fantasy novel, The Dispossessed by Ursala Le Guin. I'm not a part of sci/fi fantasy Nation, but this is part of a Substack read along, so I'm game to play. Le Guin had a huge New Yorker profile piece about 10 years ago, but I regret to say I never heard of her.
I didn't see SNL but DVR them just for musical guest. Congrats on finding new job, hope it works out well!
Le Guin is great - I've read both her adults books and some of the kids' ones. I find she always has a wonderful fresh perspective, and many contemporary writers would no doubt not being writing the kinds of things they write had she not broken that ground to begin with. And thank you!
If you don’t have it, there’s a super useful tool called the Blasphemous Claw that you can use to stun Maliketh when his sword is glowing yellow. Timing is a little finicky but it’s got a pretty big window for success. You get it by defeating the invader that’s around the easternmost of the four circles that surround the Dragon Temple Rooftop grace on the map.
i was literally going to come in the comments and ask abt mayhem but you already knew!!! i’m crazy about zombieboy and i love love love the one that sounds like taylor swift. my seth is completely neutral but he liked killah i think? (he is not a gaga fan). so excited for u to defeat ur elden ring demons so that u can play a game for babies and then in four months be like “you know what i have an itch for…elden ring…” bc it happens to everyone LMAO
I also really struggled with Maliketh. My tip/how I did it is to take it super slow and steady on the in first form and try to minimize damage, and save the summon (Tish the black knife duh) for the second form. Summon right before the form change, then immediately run behind a pillar, spam heals, and pray
I don’t have tish 😭😭😭 but my mimic tear has been pretty good minus the one time he fell off the edge. I’m getting increasingly better w the beast clergyman so this feels like what’s gotta happen
Tish is so worth it. Definitely one of the hardest fights in the game imo though so since you're so close to just beating it you will probably be fine without
Could not be more real re: every single word, and nodded furiously at the note on Anora's sense of humor. I know TV is currently in its "it's not 2016-2022 anymore" era re: the proliferation of so many singular, specific, "nuanced" comedies/dramedies/character-driven dramas that resonated with at least someone, but I do wonder if TV as a whole has been more successful at showcasing senses of humor that are decidedly more interesting than the Marvel strain of jokes!
Also-- finally finished The Guest and am very, deeply obsessed with Emma Cline and her writing-- had never read any fiction that so startlingly crystallizes our everyday thought processes, be they benign or to justify little cruelties humans commit every day. Fav kind of book is "moves like a cable dramedy with a lot of character actresses," so I'm hoping to read more in the literary fiction world that's just as lived-in and reasonant.
to me what makes the Gaga song feel Swift-y is not the sound really (they're both drawing off the same stuff) but all the wordplay on "bad." I think of Gaga songs as having direct but bizarre lyrics most of the time whereas this song is comparatively normal but not direct. And all the good girl / bad girl / it's the same girl stuff is very ~Taylor.~
But also I'm enjoying the way on pop forums Swifties mean "it sounds like Taylor" as a compliment and the Gaga fans are taking it as a deadly insult lol. This is the dynamic that forms whenever Taylor actually collabs with a cooler artist so obviously she and Gaga should do that now.
I think my favorite is "Garden of Eden" though.
now I'm catching up on the SNL episode… so good…
It's totally invigorating and was making me smile so big to watch her on SNL. I loved her acknowledging that she's in her late 30s in the monologue; idk why "Lady Gaga is 38" really moves me, but it does! Happy for her and her civilian husband. I do think the lyrics on the Mayhem are maybe the least distinctive of Gaga's work on the whole, but the sound is fun and she sounds good on the record. The mad/bad, ripped jeans, good girl/bad girl dynamic isn't not Taylor, but I also think those tropes have defined pop for decades now. I think Gaga is just sort of playing in that sandbox. Her convo with David Marchese about trying to put several different characters into one album was enlightening in terms of getting a handle on the vision for Mayhem.
Oh sure. I guess I'm only really seeing the similarity conversation play out in like popheads but to me at least if she was deliberately doing a Taylor-style song that's just cute / sort of sweet, not much deeper than that. But both of them are pulling from "Only You"!
100p agree. I wonder how often they see each other given they share mutual friend Bradley Cooper...
God I love Red Rocket so much… I really do want purity teens to watch and get so scared… I told my therapist my crush on Baker really amped up once they showed him how to comb his hair this season and he laughed
And yeah Meghan kept just talking to no one and making jokes only she laughed at so yeah Yellow Wallpaper afffff
The “Lettuce Romaine calm” hat says it all
How Bad Do U Want Me *does* sound like Taylor, on purpose. She's embodying a Taylor-esque character and the hint is when she breaks character to do Gaga voice for exactly one bar. The whole album feels very middle-to-late career Bowie to me (highest of compliments) both sonically and conceptually, and How Bad is a great example of the thing Bowie would do where he would arrange/produce a song to be hyper saccharine and commercial because that sonic palette bolstered the themes of the work and it only makes sense/isn't "bad" in the context of the entire album.
Her bob haircut is growing on me. I always like when Bowie did commercial songs........ my mom once made fun of me in the car for saying this.
go off Mrs. H
we agree on everything this week 😍
Gaga was incredible on SNL btw
my eyes shot open at 5 am and i was watching the performances before i even knew what i was doing and then i cried :( or :D
Red Rocket — great movie! A movie filled with a million little figurative car crashes and then a catastrophic real one we never see.
I just started reading All That Glitters — memoir about a different kind of “bad art friend.” So far I’d say it’s kind of a hoot, and would probably feel more so if I knew even one thing about contemporary art. Have you already read and written about this and I’ve forgotten? If not, it feels somewhat adjacent to the interests of Fran Magazine and its readers.
Not familiar with All That Glitters but my eyes just went full AWOOGA reading the description of it and specifically the phrase "Goldsmiths University" - I did a few terms there and met some of the most wackadoo artists in my life. Seems like a book that exists at the perfect intersection of "about grad school" and "I'm always mad at my one friend" - I'll be reading!!!
the thin man is so good—love to myrna loy’s eyebrows AND to william powell’s long eyelashes. and to their tiny martinis!
rn i’m reading worn: a people’s history of clothing! was especially fascinated by a section on the emergence of weaving and all the bad blood between the (male) guilds and the (often women) home weavers and how the gender factor became folded into / weaponized within this conflict that was really about profit.. real. reminded me i need to read some silvia federici. currently reading a chapter on pesticides in cotton production — unexpected michael clayton angle!
Their tiny martinis are SO appealing. I also really loved Loy's icepack hat for her hangover. I need to get one of those instead of just sleeping with the icepack under my pillow. People's History of Clothing sounds incredible - I nearly snagged a year or so ago at the bookstore but succumbed to my no new purchased books rule. I really do wanna read, not only because 🚨MICHAEL CLAYTON MENTIONED🚨
How Bad Do U Want Me is much less Taylor Swift and much more Sophie (in my mind). The kind of stuff she was giving Charli XCX when Charli wanted everyone who wasn't busy to drop a verse on any song she had. Immediately ressurected Number 1 Angel in my head. But, it also reminds me of Pynk by Janelle Monae and Grimes in a whimsical-punk-vibes sort of way. Also, the song is definitely not outside of Gaga's history. The whole album has a lot of The Fame moments. Gaga was just simply doing that first. 1989 was released in 2014. Gaga had already dropped every one of her albums that Mayhem references back to. Have you ever done the PC Music, Sophie, A.g Cook, etc. deep dive? I think it would change you, Fran. It changes everyone for better or for worse.
Number 1 Angel is a great point of reference - I thought a bit of Janelle too... an artist whose work I've almost totally abandoned. I feel like she was ahead of her time for so long and now the work feels even more dated than I could imagine. I am a longtime Sophie fan and miss her work very much, I'm way less familiar with PC Music/AG Cook (the latter of whom I only really know from Charli) - need to go deep on all them. The Sophie collab that came to mind with Mayhem was this one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDOCScOT-Mo
Where has MØ been... used to really rock with her.... If you haven't listened to Tove Styrke, I recommend. Her + Jade Thirlwall making (imo) the most exciting pop stuff to me rn outside of the A-listers.
I'm so happy to inform you that MØ has an album dropping May 16th.
YES!!!!!
cleaned the apt to mayhem yesterday and the taylor swift song stopped me in my tracks; literally had to sit down until it was done. favorite song is the killah/zombieboy double punch. red rocket GOOD side note we've been watching jj abrams's Felicity and simon rex is all over season one as a sensitive art major who draws portraits of keri russell.
Killah is amazing… I need Zombieboy to grow on me but I have faith that it will. I had no clue where Simon Rex was between Mickey Avalon’s My Dick and Red Rocket so this is good to know.
I also really like the Lady Gaga song that people say sounds like a Taylor Swift song.
If you have a switch you should play Super Mario 64. I’ve been really into being an obsessive completionist about this the past few weeks.
Great call I always forget you're a gamer now randomly
I haven't seen Anora, but I did see on the home flat screen (and gave my high praise to) Sean Baker's unheralded Florida Project (yay, little Moonie!) and Red Rocket (yay, Mikey!). I never saw Thin Man or its sequels on the big screen, either, but what a pair of actors...
I'm reading Reid Hoffman's "SuperAgency: What Could Possibly Go Right with Our AI Future", and on deck is a sci fi/ fantasy novel, The Dispossessed by Ursala Le Guin. I'm not a part of sci/fi fantasy Nation, but this is part of a Substack read along, so I'm game to play. Le Guin had a huge New Yorker profile piece about 10 years ago, but I regret to say I never heard of her.
I didn't see SNL but DVR them just for musical guest. Congrats on finding new job, hope it works out well!
Le Guin is great - I've read both her adults books and some of the kids' ones. I find she always has a wonderful fresh perspective, and many contemporary writers would no doubt not being writing the kinds of things they write had she not broken that ground to begin with. And thank you!
If you don’t have it, there’s a super useful tool called the Blasphemous Claw that you can use to stun Maliketh when his sword is glowing yellow. Timing is a little finicky but it’s got a pretty big window for success. You get it by defeating the invader that’s around the easternmost of the four circles that surround the Dragon Temple Rooftop grace on the map.
I actually might have this......... thank you for the tip!!!
It was a fight I had a lot of trouble with, too. Any little bit helps!
i was literally going to come in the comments and ask abt mayhem but you already knew!!! i’m crazy about zombieboy and i love love love the one that sounds like taylor swift. my seth is completely neutral but he liked killah i think? (he is not a gaga fan). so excited for u to defeat ur elden ring demons so that u can play a game for babies and then in four months be like “you know what i have an itch for…elden ring…” bc it happens to everyone LMAO
Our friend came over for doctor odyssey and he was on his sixth play through 😭😭😭😭
it comes for us all…
I also really struggled with Maliketh. My tip/how I did it is to take it super slow and steady on the in first form and try to minimize damage, and save the summon (Tish the black knife duh) for the second form. Summon right before the form change, then immediately run behind a pillar, spam heals, and pray
I don’t have tish 😭😭😭 but my mimic tear has been pretty good minus the one time he fell off the edge. I’m getting increasingly better w the beast clergyman so this feels like what’s gotta happen
Tish is so worth it. Definitely one of the hardest fights in the game imo though so since you're so close to just beating it you will probably be fine without
Could not be more real re: every single word, and nodded furiously at the note on Anora's sense of humor. I know TV is currently in its "it's not 2016-2022 anymore" era re: the proliferation of so many singular, specific, "nuanced" comedies/dramedies/character-driven dramas that resonated with at least someone, but I do wonder if TV as a whole has been more successful at showcasing senses of humor that are decidedly more interesting than the Marvel strain of jokes!
Also-- finally finished The Guest and am very, deeply obsessed with Emma Cline and her writing-- had never read any fiction that so startlingly crystallizes our everyday thought processes, be they benign or to justify little cruelties humans commit every day. Fav kind of book is "moves like a cable dramedy with a lot of character actresses," so I'm hoping to read more in the literary fiction world that's just as lived-in and reasonant.