Certainly, wondering where Lady Gaga receives her inspiration for nightmare outfits and dreamscape music videos isn’t shocking. The artist engrosses herself in suffocation, death, falsehood and fear, spewing blood at award ceremonies and idolizing bleeding statues, and plunges into “The Fame Monster” album, her collection of depravity and darkness more gothic than Miley Cyrus’ “Can’t Be Tamed” (then again, what isn’t?). Borrowing from the title, the eponymous “Monster” collects the singer’s innumerable disturbances and, perhaps the CD’s most compelling song, reminds that we can’t take our eyes off the sickness in everyone.
After all, he “ate my heart.” Gaga’s compulsory dialogue echoes the infamous opening soundhorn, whispering “that little monster” and “you amaze me” behind one-two step beats and casual cannibalism. “Monster” knows how to crawl under our skin, blending mystery, “but something tells me that I’ve seen him, yeah” with “girl you look good enough to eat”, though it’s endlessly alluring. Though dark, it inevitably draws us in, whether in surprise (“you amaze me) or sex (“he tore my clothes right off”) or inhuman rhythm our flesh tingles and the heart beats.
“He’s a wolf in disguise, but I can’t stop staring at those evil eyes.” We’re mesmerized. Fame captures our attention, those blinding lights and faceless fans, the little monsters. “Monster” is as much about love and passion as it is obsession and domination. Here’s a beast, the Fame Monster, preying on a singer’s thirst for success and creation, a creature who follows her onto subway trains, tempting with “could I love him?”
He’s inescapable. Under your bed, inside your work. It’s an idea that seduces insanity and attracts infatuation, the monster that takes over your mind, her art, the music, the fear of disappointing and the fear of never finding love, and poisons with guilt. He’ll eat your heart, and then “eat my brain”- but we can’t get enough. “Monster” is the masochistic fixation on hidden desires and emotional suppression, when we’re torn between the lustful wrong and the proper right. Not that either can be vanquished; rather, each eats into us, and we love it, hate it. These are our monsters, secret internal conflicts that devour sense and reason, the worry harbored throughout the album. They’re everywhere.
Lady Gaga calls her loyal followers “little monsters.” Individuals with the same struggles and pain- they manifest the deepest of the monster mode, and its best, with hope, excitement, and shared love. In a sense, we’re all in this monstrous cult, scrambling to control the gnawing mess tearing at our insides. But we learn to love our faults and the inner disaster; “Monster” contemplates imperfection and fear, but the song rushes on in liberating synth. Flashlight on, music pumping, see them for what they are: monsters.
