Thursday, May 19, 2011

The Song Remains the Same

So I was listening to the new Lady GaGa song "Fashion of His Love" - on FarmVille, of all places, and I kept thinking, "I've heard this before..." But I couldn't quite put my finger on it.

Initially, I thought, OK, it's like "Dress You Up in My Love" by Madonna. That seems an obvious comparison since the themes are the same, and Lady G often gets compared to Madonna (and rightly so, IMO). But that wasn't quite right. Then I thought of "I Wanna Dance with Somebody" by Whitney Houston. A lot of the rhythms and overtones remind me a lot of that song. Plus, it's got a good beat and you can dance to it. LOL!!

Finally it hit me - "Fashion of His Love" has a lot of the same chord progressions and harmonies in common with "Do They Know it's Christmas" by Band Aid - that 80's supergroup that got together to raise money to feed the children in Africa.

To sum up, you can say that there's nothing original about Lady GaGa. If you're honest, you know that there's "nothing new under the sun", so this is to be expected. But I have to give her (or whoever wrote the song, I honestly don't know and didn't care enough to find out) credit for creatively mixing three disparate, very well-known songs of the 80's into a catchy, dance-able pop confection. Hopefully it won't be stuck in my head for too long.