Katy Perry/Gaga - Madonna/Cyndi Lauper

[giskardsb 12,565]

I'm sure in every pop "era" you can find similar comparisons.

In any case, usually this particular comparison is made as an argument that Gaga will fulfill the "Cyndi" role and therefore become "irrelevant".  The reality is that all these women have different career goals.  Pop fans think that all pop girls want to be the "next Madonna" but there is no reason to believe that.  Pop fans only do that because they are in this silly mode of treating pop stars like sports teams having a competition.

I think Gaga would much more be a Liza Minelli than a Madonna.   And the fact is that Cyndi has two Tony Awards in her pocket for her musical Kinky Boots.  While pop fans may think Cyndi is "irrelevant", clearly Broadway does not.  

These types of comparisons are useless when pop fans quit being so myopic about what "successful" means for a particular artist, and quit trying to generate hierarchies of pop royalty.   Pop stans often are more concerned about how a particular pop star's "success" affects their own standings among stan groups than they are about a pop stars own goal for their career.   It's dumb.

 

 

 

[Levine 23,479]

Uhm nope.

In this comparison Gaga IS Madonna, The difference is that now the GP is STUPID. They don't wanna think, they just want silly generic music and that's it.

Madonna, back in the years, tried to change things and brought people to think on certain topics (this is what Gaga does) and people accepted that. Why is Madonna doing that? Why is Madonna doing this? Maybe that's a message behind that? And so on.

 

Katy Perry is the luckiest woman alive: she is a popstar in a time full of ignorant and stupid people.That's pretty much why she is still successful. 

[Bette Davis 12,742]

Maybe Cyndi should've pulled a C2C/Oscar performance 

[BricksNStrings 231]

I think fans forget that there have been many artists who have been way more "successful" than gaga in terms of sales, fame, popularity, etc both amongst her contemporaries and legends, but there have been very few who have had the specific kind of success Gaga has.

You can say any number of people sold more or have more hits but Gaga almost single handedly brought back the superfan. 

[LoveandMagic 1,731]

I'm sure the poster meant no harm, but... 

I'm sure in every pop "era" you can find similar comparisons.

In any case, usually this particular comparison is made as an argument that Gaga will fulfill the "Cyndi" role and therefore become "irrelevant".  The reality is that all these women have different career goals.  Pop fans think that all pop girls want to be the "next Madonna" but there is no reason to believe that.  Pop fans only do that because they are in this silly mode of treating pop stars like sports teams having a competition.

These types of comparisons are useless when pop fans quit being so myopic about what "successful" means for a particular artist, and quit trying to generate hierarchies of pop royalty.   Pop stans often are more concerned about how a particular pop star's "success" affects their own standings among stan groups than they are about a pop stars own goal for their career.   It's dumb.

I'm getting burned by all that white hot tea!

"Successful" means more than sales and charts. Gaga already has made an impact in pop culture and would like to continue expanding her artistry. She knows where her priorities lie and what kind of career she wants to have. It's her art, her craft, no one can tell her what her goals should be. People need to stop confusing their own interests and priorities with an artists. 

They need to stop trying to project onto Gaga and pretend they are worried for her career. There are plenty of other females in the business that have the charts and sales numbers that they value over the artistry, plenty of females that too have reached a very shallow level of "success" that they can fawn over. Stan for them, and stop worrying about whether she is "pleasing" enough to a very fickle branch of the public. It's only in the pop fan forums have I ever seen people so obsessed about such trivial things. 

I also don't like comparing artists to those in the past (or even contemporaries). Artists from the past faced different circumstances from the time they came up in. Their world is not ours. Their own obsticles, though maybe similar in generality, took a different mindset  and tools to overcome due to the politics, economy, technology, and culture of the time. Madonna and Cyndi carved their own paths in music and media, just because one is more of a household name doesn't make her an automatic "better." The priorities were different, and thus too are the rewards. But their pathway of success can't be duplicated because of the different circumstances involved.

And as Gaga and Katy's careers aren't even close to being over yet (as melodramatic as some like to become at the mere HINT of a failed album era) even from a broad perspective (like charting) it's about impossible to predict their future, because our own hasn't even been written yet.