A Sensationalistic Society

Lady Gaga has stunned us by wearing a "meat dress" and even by pulling outrageous stunts like having someone throw up on her on stage, but this Wednesday she left the audience at the Roseland Ballroom feeling underwhelmed. According to Amanda Holpuch, writing for The Guardian, the crowd was "muted". The audience seemed to be "waiting for their leader to do something outrageous". But instead of over the top outfits and shocking performances, they recieved heartfelt accoustic renditions of hit songs like "You and I" and personalized compliments as well as a sincere thankyou to the city of New York for supporting her from the start.

This is a great example of how American society has become obsessed with things being over the top or sensationalistic. Lady Gaga's success is undoubtedly correlated to how shocking she is. That's what makes the news and that's what people talk about, and as they say any publicity is good publicity. Now I'm not going try and speculate whether her outlandish behavior is just who she is or if she is using it to increase her fame, but my guess would be that it's a little bit of both. And at the end of the day it doesn't matter much because people will still talk about it and it will still be considered news. So when she tones it down a notch  while still giving a performance her all, the audience leaves feeling a little dissapointed and maybe even jaded because they didn't get to see (or take a picture of) Lady Gaga doing something absurd.

Other pop stars have caught on to this means of achieving and maintaining fame such as the one and only Miley Cyrus. After her controvertial music video of the song Wrecking Ball (now at just under 600 million views), she shot to the front pages of the media and to the top of the pop charts. She now continues to go over the top and make people uncomfortable as an attempt to maintain this fame.

Now there is even a knock-off Flappy Bird app that is Wrecking Ball themed

When it comes down to it being outlandish sells, and it seems difficult for some artists nowadays to maintain fame and hold people's attention when they aren't acting extreme.