Lady Gaga has a huge gay following, and Rufus Wainwright is gay, so he should know, right? Wait a minute…
In an interview to Music Week, Rufus spoke about the inspiration behind the lyrics of his next album entitled ‘Out of the Game’, which are said to be ‘strikingly acerbic’,… Effectively, we are talking about lines like this one, ‘Look at you suckers/Does your mama know what you’re doing?’. This is what he declared:
‘I think a lot of it has to do with Lady Gaga, to be honest, I totally admire her tenacity, her ambition and her strength of vision. There’s just not one good song there.’
‘People, especially gay men, are falling so hard for it. Certain things that [she] says: ‘Look at me. I was like you one day and now I’m this – and you can do it too.’ I find it a bit disingenuous. We are in this somewhat sinister period and [artists have] got to kind of toughen up and be real. I guess I want to put a little bit more grit into my presentation of what’s happening in the world. It’s about conveying what’s inside us, as opposed to the return of the cone breasts. I find it predictable and boring.’
What can I add? Predictable and boring, this sounds like a perfect description of Lady Gaga's music for me. But what does it say about all these gay men who ‘are falling so hard for it’? Any generation had its gay icon I suppose, and since Gaga is so supportive of the gay community, it makes sense, but she is not the ambassador of gay culture.
I hate these expressions anyway, as if gays were one big monolithic block thinking all the same, liking all the same artists. Rufus Wainwright is the evidence of the contrary,… like in many groups the majority will like the ‘predictable and boring’, but fortunately not all of them.
I’m not gay — and I think she’s great. Hardly “predictable and boring.” As for one good song, try on “The Queen” and “The Edge of Glory” for size. They aren’t good songs. They are great songs.