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Lady Gaga and Popular Music: Performing Gender, Fashion, and Culture.
Edited by Martin Iddon and Melanie L. Marshall, M. New York: Routledge,
2014. 302 pp. ISBN: 978-0-415-82452-1

Article  in  Popular Music · October 2016

DOI: 10.1017/S0261143016000362

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 448 Reviews

successfully reach the heights attained by their innovative and theoretically solid
neighbours.
As a researcher interested in the personal narratives and experiences of partici-
pants within the Northern Soul scene, the articles under the organizing theme of
identity were particularly provocative and engaging. Loren Kajikawa’s study of
the white rapper Eminem reframes claims of racial and class-based authenticity in
rap, Joseph Schloss successfully uses the voices of b-boy and b-girls to demonstrate
the influence of a musical canon on scene practices and Mark Katz explores the im-
pact of gender-role assumptions on DJ music production and performance. In terms
of identity, however, a more explicit consideration of African American music within
a multigenerational or retrospective music scene would have added another dimen-
sion of debate, offered by writers such as Mary Fogarty (see her 2012 study of ageing
b-boys).
Offering, as the editorial introduction states, access to seminal texts that are
not widely available, this volume provides researchers and students alike with a care-
fully chosen and well-contextualised introduction to the history of African American
music and, importantly, the frames and methods through which it has been studied.
Perchand’s introduction plays a central role in this, not only summarising the chap-
ters but also placing them within the wider field of study and providing a carefully
critique in terms of date of publication and the authors’ subsequent work within the
field. While other publications have focused upon the history of African American
music in general and in genre-specific detail, such as Guthrie Ramsey’s (2003) Race
Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-hop and Murray Forman and Mark
Anthony Neal’s (eds) (2004) That’s the Joint!: The Hip-hop Studies Reader, this book pro-
vides both an overview of pivotal research and insight into the impact that such
papers had upon academic conceptualisations of African American music, identity
and, ultimately, the ways in which this can be most usefully framed through academ-
ic study.

Sarah Elizabeth Raine

Birmingham City University, UK
sarah.raine2@mail.bcu.ac.uk

References
Fogarty, M. 2012. ‘“Each one, teach one”: b-boying and ageing’, in Youth Cultures: Music, Style and Identity,
1st edn, ed. A. Bennett and P. Hodkinson (London, Berg)
Neal, M., and Forman, M. 2004. That’s the Joint!: The Hip-hop Studies Reader (New York, Routledge)
Ramsey, G. 2003. Race Music: Black Cultures from Bebop to Hip-hop (Berkeley, CA, University of California
Press)

Lady Gaga and Popular Music: Performing Gender, Fashion, and Culture. Edited
by Martin Iddon and Melanie L. Marshall, M. New York: Routledge, 2014. 302 pp.
ISBN: 978-0-415-82452-1
doi:10.1017/S0261143016000362
Once in a while a popular music artist comes along who seems to appeal not only to
ordinary audiences, but to academics too. One only has to recall the embrace of Bob
Dylan in the 1960s and David Bowie in the 1970s and 1980s to realise that performers

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 Reviews 449

who combine intelligence, creativity and a mission to make political progress can in-
spire scholars in cultural studies and popular music research to discuss their phe-
nomenon. Lady Gaga is one such artist. Not only is she a female role model who
achieved global popularity, but she has also combined pop and art in a way that
questions the fixity of gender and offers hope to fans of marginalised identities. It
is not surprising, then, that there has been a flurry of articles, books and theorizing
devoted to Gaga and her phenomenon. Jack Halberstam’s 2012 concept of ‘Gaga
feminism’ set the benchmark for a range of scholars to use Gaga to explore their aca-
demic interests and rethink their ideas. Working in the fields of musicology and
music aesthetics, Martin Iddon and Melanie L. Marshall have put together an edited
volume that demonstrates a range of perspectives on Gaga as a complex and evolv-
ing celebrity text. I say ‘text’ because, as the subtitle implies, the emphasis is on per-
formance here, and its close reading in relation to intertextuality, rather than any
sustained focus on media production or audience reception. There is still a lot to
talk about; as the editors immediately explain, ‘Lady Gaga’s output is firmly em-
bedded in an intellectual pop culture tradition’ (p. 1). Her music videos and other
representations reflect up on queerness, technology, disability, monstrosity and au-
thenticity in fascinating ways. The consequent enthusiasm of the book’s contributors
is almost palpable. What unites them is an effort to frame Gaga in relation to contem-
porary theories from a range of disciplines and subdisciplines, plus a positive under-
standing of the singer’s creative project.
Iddon and Marshall’s book is divided into two sections: the first on Gaga’s
many contexts, and the second on the broad topic of Gaga and representation.
This does not seem to interfere with the process of reading Lady Gaga and Popular
Music, however. In fact, the editors have tended to pair up some chapters on asso-
ciated topics. So, for example, Chapters 2 and 3 deal with Gaga’s controversial cos-
tumes, While chapters 7 and 8 both address her videos for ‘Telephone’ and
‘Paparazzi’. Iddon and Marshall have recruited some experienced popular music
scholars, among others, to discuss a wide range of topics. Stan Hawkins leads the
first section with a lucid analysis of Gaga’s ‘Judas’ music video. For Hawkins,
Gaga’s over-stylised gendered performance ‘activates a vision of the carnival of
the oppressed’ (p. 16). Next, Lucy O’Brien examines Gaga’s connections to fashion,
especially the star’s famous donning of ‘that’ Franc Fernadez ‘meat dress’ at the
MTV Video Music Awards in 2010. O’Brien argues, ‘Gaga is a perfect example of pli-
able postfeminism. She operates in a pop cultural milieu where it is clumsy to be too
literal, where the past has little significance’ (p. 32). The London-based scholar con-
cludes: ‘Even if the meat dress wasn’t a conscious feminist choice, the confluence of
image and idea lends itself to a feminist reading’ (p. 41). Sally Gray and Anusha
Rutnam continue the sartorial discussion by locating Gaga’s costuming in relation
to couture, gay culture and post-fashion. They contribute an interesting discussion
of the gender politics of Gaga temporarily cross-dressing as the invented character
Joe Calderone, concluding that Gaga’s sartorial performance is not a reflection of
her ‘true personality’, but it is instead ‘sophisticated and informed’: a creative project
evolving in relation to its own previous incarnations and perhaps more about Gaga’s
own choice as an artist than the industrial inputs of her record label or fashion advi-
sors (p. 61).
The next two chapters offer further, fascinating perspectives on Gaga’s image.
Lisa Colton places Gaga’s 2009 song ‘Telephone’ in relation to previous songs on the
same theme, then explores the gendering of telephones as a form of communicative

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 450 Reviews

technology. She concludes that analysis of the song shows how Gag embraces the
politics of diversity, equality and female empowerment. Paul Hegarty, on the
other hand uses the ideas of Georges Bataille to begin talking about Gaga and eroti-
cism. Keeping the focus on French theory, Craig Owens explores Gaga’s celebrity
image in relation to Deleuze and Guattari’s notion of a ‘body without organs’.
Owens’s account names diverse aspect of what he calls the ‘Gaga assemblage’,
which, towards the end of the chapter, includes her engagement with horror monster
images, such as that of the zombie.
The second part of Lady Gaga and Popular Music deals with Gaga’s relationship
to representation in the broadest sense. Lori Burns and Marc Lafrance start the sec-
tion with a discussion of the videos for ‘Paparazzi’ and ‘Telephone’ in relation to ce-
lebrity, spectacle and surveillance. Their scene-by-scene analysis includes discussion
of race, gender and disability. The two scholars conclude that Gaga and her director
Jonas Åkerland embed a complex critique of stardom and fandom in their collabora-
tive work. Carol Vernallis, on the other hand, shows how the video for ‘Paparazzi’
superimposes classic Hollywood narrative structures on its musical form. Simon
Warner takes on a different theme, and explores Gaga’s wider participation in tele-
vision, and in particular her mutual affiliation with Glee and associated support
for gay rights. Alexandra Apolloni’s chapter is about Gaga’s cyborg persona and
the way it links to representations of disability. Apolloni suggests that Gaga’s per-
formance on the video for ‘Paparazzi’ casts technology as enabling while celebrity
is framed as a ‘disabling force’ (p. 205).
This is followed by Theresa Geller’s fascinating and timely essay on ‘monstrous
masculinities’ and Gaga’s performance of ‘trans/affect’ when she adopted the charac-
ter of Jo Calderone at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards. Geller carefully explores
how drag deconstructs the essentialism claimed for gender by saying that it ‘transub-
stantiates’ sex into signs. She concludes by asking what it means for female stars to
‘occupy the space of transmen’ and argues that it allows an encounter with the sub-
lime (p. 227). Melanie L. Marshall’s chapter is novel and equally engaging; it exam-
ines the Gaga phenomenon through controversies around food. Co-editor Martin
Iddons rounds off the collection, not with a conclusion but with a ‘supplement’ in
which he considers Lady Gaga as a cipher: ‘she reveals too that the role of the celeb-
rity is no more or less a performance – with no original . . . she is, as a celebrity, only
present insofar as she presents her own absence’ (p. 261). Iddons argues that this is
not mere postmodern simulation, but that Gaga brings absence itself to the forefront
of her image and continually makes it legible (p. 262). His work presents a rather
spectral ending to a diverse and timely collection.
Lady Gaga and Popular Music presents an array of contributions unified in the
fact that they are relatively celebratory of their subject. They ignore Gaga’s earliest
beginnings flirting with go-go dancing in New York’s bohemian club culture. They
dismiss claims that she is unoriginal. To ask for a volume that is more ‘critical’ of
its chosen artist does seem appropriate, however. As popular music scholars, why
should we judge? A more useful question might be to ask whether the interpretive
and theoretical frameworks that the contributors present can offer significant insights
into Lady Gaga as as a spectacular, and in some ways spectacularly ‘queer’, pop per-
former. On that score, many of the chapters more than deliver. There are a few
caveats, however. The first is that, at least in my own view, the deeper contributors
got into the realms of cultural theory, the more abstract and less insightful they
seemed to become. A small minority of chapters read like their writers were perhaps

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 Reviews 451

more interested in their pet theorists than in Gaga herself, although there were plenty
of others that got the blend exactly right. Second, while the book is very diverse and
interdisciplinary, it read as if the long-running debates in popular music studies that
discuss pop and authenticity, for example, were unimportant or non-existent. That
seemed a shame to me. While some such scholarship emerged as a reaction to
MTV and the 1980s era, questions of artifice continue to be an issue that informs
how music is performed and understood, albeit in new ways. Finally, since the col-
lection makes a strong case that Gaga’s celebrity text is an inherently artistic and cre-
ative one, a chapter would have been very useful comparing the famed singer to
Warhol, especially since they have both made celebrity central to their art. Lady
Gaga and Popular Music is, in many ways, a state of the art collection and a useful
addition to the Routledge series, Studies in Popular Music. It will be interesting to
see how the book stands up in years to come, when Gaga assumes her place in
the parade of pop history. My guess is that it will both stand up and act as testament
to a diverse and thriving intellectual field.

Mark Duffett
University of Chester, UK
m.duffett@chester.ac.uk

Reference
Halberstam, J. 2012. Gaga Feminism: Sex, Gender and the End of the Normal (Boston, MA, Beacon Press)

Relocating Popular Music. Edited by Ewa Mazierska and Georgina Gregory.

Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2015. 253 pp. ISBN: 9781137463371
doi:10.1017/S0261143016000374
Relocating Popular Music takes a cue from the spatial turn in humanities and aims at
observing ‘what music does to places and people’ (p. 5). In this sense, the book con-
tains numerous elements shedding light on the relationship between tourism and
music on the one hand and how places acquire specific meanings, depending on eco-
nomical and political factors, on the other. The concept of place, always ‘re-worked
and changed by music’ (p. 11), thus gives space to original topics of discussion
around popular music phenomena, such as visual manifestations of authenticity in
Turkish protest music, reconfiguration of the space of South Africa through Die
Antwoord’s music and bodies, ideological negotiation in Tallinn old town represen-
tation in popular music, etc. According to Eva Mazierska (p. 12), relocations can con-
sist of displacing music from a context to another or/and changing the representation
and the reality of certain places. The book attempts to go beyond the idea that cul-
tural phenomena expressing a sense of space are ‘pure and fixed’ (p. 4).
In a world where national frontiers still determine our conception of space,
music can play an important role in redefining our relation to nationalism. This is
the subject of Srdan Atanasovski’s chapter ‘Recycled Music for Banal Nation: The
Case of Serbia 1999–2010’. By clearing eastern sounds out, Yugoslavian rock music
expressed a form of cosmopolitan integration to the West, while turbo-folk embodied
the hot nationalism that did not correspond to the institutionalisation of Serbia as a
Western nation. Sandra D’Angelo’s stimulating chapter, ‘Sampling the Sense of Place

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