After oodles of hype this week, Lady Gaga finally “dropped” her new, much-anticipated single, “Born This Way” today, and I gotta say… it makes me cringe.

Don’t get me wrong: it’s catchy. But seriously… the lyrics, while admirable in their anthemic aspirations, are just ham-fisted. It’s like my seventh grade self (the same self who thought Jonathan Livingston Seagull was a delicate musing on life and empowerment) wrote the song. Gone are Gaga’s clever playfulness and cheeky humor. In their place is a silly, borderline preachiness and a musical arrangement that sounds like the opening credits to some failed Logo reality show.

I’m not in the grips of some Lady Gaga backlash nor am I pushing back on the inordinate hype surrounding this single. I think she’s amazingly talented, but she may have pushed a little too hard on this track.

What do you think about it? Yea or neigh?

15 replies on “YEA OR NAY: Lady Gaga’s ‘Born This Way’”

  1. I feel like it’s a rip off of “Express Yourself”. As one of my friends said, it’s bad when you listen to a song and walk away singing something else. Maybe it’ll grow on me…

  2. Hated it at first but now I love it, as I tend to do with all of her songs. I love that the message, however cheesy it may be, is sitting at number one. I love that the teenagers of the homophobic parents I babysat for will be singing it because it’s going to be on KIIS FM 900 times a day. And ya it does sound like express yourself and waterfalls as THE ENTIRE INTERNET has pointed out today, but that doesn’t diminish it for me.

  3. WTF with “chola” being used? I’ve read some arguments where some find it offensive and others don’t. I just think it’s damn ignorant. Being of Mexican descent and currently living in the Southwest I can tell you being labeled a “chola” is quite offensive. Not necessarily a slur but implying you’re in a gang. Not all Mexican women or Mexican-American women are in gangs. That’s the equivalent of her singing about blacks referring to them as “gangstas”.

    I thought she was the best song writer of our time? Her ego is going by the way of Kanye West. And while Kanye is talented, he sticks sticks his foot in his mouth so much it puts people off from some of his better stuff.

    Those are my two cents anyway.

  4. I love it even if it does give me Madonna. So do her other songs and so do her eyebrows. I like it for the fun pop song it is.

  5. Btw, I’ve heard comparisons to TLC’s waterfalls and I really don’t hear that. Maybe because Waterfalls is one of my all time favorites (don’t judge, I was young and impressionable listening to crazysexycool on my new discman!).

    And to roslvr, being half Mexican, I don’t find her use of chola offensive. She just used it to rhyme. She also said orient and that’s similarly ridiculous. Btw, chola references have been being made for awhile now. Think Gwen Stefani or Fergie.

  6. Chickadee…sorry but we just disagree I suppose. I’m a huge Gwen Stephani fan and while I see her identify with the fashion in her videos, she never sings about them as a race or region or sexual preference. Same for Fergie. I can’t speak for the word Orient because I don’t know the background for it. I’ve known cholas, know cholas and having said that my mother is not a chola, neither are my sisters or my nieces. Chola comes with a stigma that many Mexican girls and women do not want. The reason I keep saying Mexicans is because I’m not even first generation American so my parents were very careful to teach us about perceptions, especially being just immigrated minorities.

    Gaga went and tried to fit everyone who she thought would be a “cast out” put them in a song and said “Here you go. Here’s your anthem”. What? And then to say she threw Chola in there just to rhyme makes her seem like a lazy song writer. I’m still not impressed.

      1. Well, I was criticizing Gaga and giving MY opinion and if that makes me an asshole then so be it. That would be like calling people who like Lady Gaga’s music simple-minded, finger-sniffing idiots.

        You like her music? Great. Go kiss her ass on Twitter. We were asked for our take on the song, I gave it…that’s it. So, chill out little monster.

  7. I think it’s a catchy tune, even though it does sound like something Madonna would have put on her “Like a Prayer” album.

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