If you’re anything like me you’re probably sick of reading broadsheet articles about the implacable appeal of Lady Gaga and her effortless charisma.

I just can’t abide these broadsheet claims that she is something other than just a pop star and this ever expanding vein of cloying articles seem to me, part of a sinister cultural land-grab designed to hoist Gaga onto a middle class pedestal of pop acceptability.

Firstly may I say, I don’t hate Lady Gaga. Sure, I find her music utterly insipid, her “image” gratingly dull, but I’ve got nothing against people who are engaged by her.

But what I am sick of is this slew of ridiculous broadsheet articles calling Lady Gaga, anything from the saviour of pop, to the only interesting presence in music today. Seriously, how hard are you looking?

“She’s so subversive, though isn’t she?” Yeah you’re right, she so subversive, what with all those dangerously seditious hats she wears.

What these articles are engaged in is a tactical intellectualisation of their fandom to try and make it more acceptable to their staid high-brow self-image.

Because how does their Lady Gaga CD fit in with the rest of their Review Show, Gillian Wearing retrospective, kitchen island, organic lentil dhal image? What would their book club say if they found out that their most played iTunes song was that Gaga song that goes, rah rah ooh la la, blah blah blaah bla bla blahhh.

The cold hard fact is, Lady Gaga’s music is nothing new, it’s a calculated blend of pop, that has just enough of an electro edge to sound risque to middle America, where frankly, any song that doesn’t have the word “love” in the title is considered dangerously secular.

And her image? Well, it says something about your charisma if you feel the need to supplement it with a dress made of synthetic meat.

“She’s just so crazy.” She isn’t crazy, have you seen her in interviews? She’s profoundly normal. She’s gauche and nervous and very human. But underneath it all, is a performer who is desperately talented, and that’s what’s sad.

She just knows that in our painfully reductive, increasingly polarised times, how to get cameras to point at her and what makes news.

Our society is increasingly getting close to a dangerous point where two defined sects will develop. One who read gossip mags and the Daily Mail online, and watch X-Factor, and another who read the Guardian, and watch Downton (and only watch X-Factor “ironically”).

People are being cajoled into aligning themselves with one or the other, narrowing their field of interests to only what you’re allowed to like, in the way you’re allowed to like it.

And then when someone like Lady Gaga comes along, and her classically “catchy pop” appeals to both sides, the intellectuals are so revulsed by sharing an interest with people who read gossip magazines that there is this desperate scramble to intellectualise their enjoyment.

It’s nothing other than utterly stupid. For anyone to believe we live in a world where a person can’t like John Updike and Lady Gaga, for just what they are, isn’t just thick, it’s evil.

It’s all part of a broader tract of sociological pressure for people to define themselves precisely, in order for them to package up advertising to sell to you.

Just look at your Facebook page, Bio, Interests, Music, Film, likes. Is Lady Gaga in there?

Who are you? What are you? Where are you? What do you like? Tell us what we can fucking sell to you. Who’s it to be, Milan Kundera or Tulisa? Stop liking contradictory things, we can’t sell contradictions to Pret a fucking Manger. Do you want the Big Mac or do you want the salt beef and mustard on rye? You can only have one!

What kind of psychopath has a falafel wrap from EAT on Monday and a McDonalds on Tuesday? Are you deranged? What are you? How are we supposed to work with you when you behave so inconsistently?

Do you want Lady Gaga, or do you want freedom?

This article was first published on Asylum UK, which has since been shut down. It was reposted on Oh No They Didn’t without mine or Aol’s permission. So, I decided to publish it here.

[Picture via Creative Commons: Anirudh Koul]