10 December 2009
Our first ’00s Irish number one was the world’s biggest pop star, a young white American woman, with ‘Born To Make You Happy’. Now we’re almost at the end of that decade with the world’s biggest pop star, a different young white American woman, and ‘Bad Romance’. Had anything changed in the meantime? Well, the first of those two pop stars, Britney Spears, also refitted the word ‘Toxic’ to the pop-cultural sexism, misogyny and crassness of the ’00s and beyond. The second, Lady Gaga, is certainly engaging with the toxicity of our pop culture on ‘Bad Romance’. It also cemented her iconography. When we think of Lady Gaga, Pop Star, it’s with the visual language of the ‘Bad Romance’ video (below).
But is ‘Bad Romance’ any good? Well, that depends if you like your Gaga ‘Just Dance’ or ‘Poker Face’. I’m on team ‘Just Dance’, so I find ‘Bad Romance’ to be the same record as ‘Poker Face’: flavours of Berlin art-techno, which are always welcome on daytime radio and the top of our charts, but ultimately a naff and cheesy song. Starting your next big single front and centre with “Rah, rah, ah-ah-ah / Roma, roma-ma / Gaga, ooh-la-la” may well be a statement of something or other, but I doubt that statement was meant to be ‘yerra, this’ll do’. From start to finish of ‘Bad Romance’ my reflex is to hear this rah-rah-ráiméis and cringe.
Insofar as it’s an event release and a sort of self-informing loop of meta-commentary on its performer, ‘Bad Romance’ isn’t far removed in spirit and execution from other ’00s Britney hits like ‘Everytime’ and ‘My Prerogative’. That would make it a tidy way to finish the decade, by showing some continuity from our first number one to our last, and perhaps even some evolution. However, it’s only our second-last chart-topper. The final Irish number one single of the ’00s will tell us something else about the decade and about ourselves – not so much the song itself, but its remarkable circumstances.
