Intro for February 6, 2017

Dear Gossips,

A friend texted last night right after Lady Gaga’s Super Bowl halftime performance.

“I’m only watching for the halftime show. Between KStew on SNL and Gaga, I wish I had this to hold on to as a young man growing up gay. There’s a kid out there who’s trying to figure it out. And she or he will remember it forever.”

That’s what Gaga said she’d hoped for at the press conference a few days ago: 

“As much as (this halftime show) is a great moment for me and my life, I really feel like it wasn’t given to me, it was given to (my fans). So, essentially, that kid that couldn’t get a seat at the cool kids’ table, and that kid that was kicked out of the house because his mom and dad didn’t accept him for who he was, that kid’s gonna have the stage for 13 minutes. And I’m excited to give it to them.”

Which is why there was so much speculation about whether or not Gaga would get political. And so much rumouring about whether or not the NFL would stop her from getting political. But, in her mind, given all that she’s represented through her career, the very act of her being there, for Gaga, was already political. And the way she opened was political, merging God Bless America with This Land Is Your Land, a song that is unmistakably political, and one that’s been chorused with much more frequency over the last 10 days.

In these times, it’s no longer possible to escape the political. Even the Super Bowl commercials were political! That said, it doesn’t mean it can’t be fun. And that’s what Gaga brought to halftime last night: all the energy and all the effort. It was campy and extra. It was pop and glam rock. As the Daily Beast noted, it was also “super gay”. What I appreciated most was how bad she wanted it to be good. How hard she tried. Which made it terribly uncool – and this is a compliment. As Duana noted last night, earnestness has never been Gaga’s problem. Earnest is also when she’s at her best. I loved her last night. Because with every fist pump and over-the-top snarl, every stomp, every grunt, she was showing us how hard she’d been working, and how important it was to her that we approved. This was Gaga at her most endearing.

Yours in gossip,

Lainey