New Music CDs: Favourites of 2009

I must disagree with you there M.B., on both points. - The idea of a male artist "coming to define a new model of masculinity in pop" is at the very heart of what pop music has been from the very beginning. Where did the power of the stage personae of Elvis, Little Richard, Jagger, Bowie, Lydon, Prince etc etc etc come from if not from subversion and re-examination of what maleness is? - The "icy robot" may have been around for a long time, and Gaga certainly plays with that (see her album inner sleeve photo by David LaChapelle that directly references Metropolis!) - but I used the word "cyborg" rather than "robot" with good reason. Gaga in particular is not a robot built by man but a woman empowered, amplified and made bigger and scarier by her use of technology. Her version of this role IS new, and IS - I think - subversive and questioning of gender roles.

Ha, well if you want to split semantic hairs, what I actually said was "define a new, disquieting, gothic cyborg model of femininity in pop". Not (re)define femininity per se, but define a *model of it* - as the theatre of pop always does: create new, exaggerated, strange models of the familiar which people can project onto the realities of their lives, try on for size etc.