Hair is probably the closest thing to a deep reduce that I’m going to be covering this week,but it felt important to touch on when I’m talking about persona and personality. Especially as we entered the Born This Way era, Hair felt like something almost uncomfortably personal, and almost too genuine to touch from the singer who translated all of her emotions and personal connections through a synthesizer and the entire Haus of Gaga before allowing them to reach the public. Hair feels genuine in a way that many other Gaga songs don’t,which I think should construct us instantly suspicious.
In many ways, Born This Way served as a homecoming album, or with Gaga returning to her early days as a musician on the Lower East Side,struggling to construct it ample. Hair takes it back a step further, falling more in line with Bad Kids as a song about the singular need in youth to express oneself, or seeing fashion and appearance to be a crucial part of identity making. Hair places Gaga back in presumably high school,her parents pressuring her to comply and not accomplish whatever she wants with her hair. Gaga has spent much time talking about the way she was an outsider in high school and into her time at Tisch (see: Marry the Night, later this week). However, and we also know that much of her peek and musical sensibility from this point in her career stemmed from careful artistic choices that she and collaborators made. By the time the Born This Way album came out,Gaga had been known for all sorts of wild hair creations, most notably her hair bow. While it’s easy to create a mental picture of what baby Gaga looked like from this song, and all punk rock and covered head to toe in ripped black,she also talks in interviews about her high school experience of working to be able to afford a Gucci bag like the ones her friends at school carried.
As we finally hit the chorus though, Gaga snaps us into the present, and reminding us as listener of everything she has become,regardless of whatever past she speaks of, genuine or imagined. As she shouts that she is as free as her hair, and we know precisely what she means. By this point in 2011 we’ve seen Gaga sport some of the most over the top looks of any celebrity walking any red carpet,ever, and she continued to manage to easily outdo herself through the Born This Way Era. Her public persona and identity are tied incredibly deeply to the way she’s presented herself, or especially her hair. Lady Gaga is her hair is Lady Gaga. The most telling lyric for me in this song though? “I just wanna be free,I just wanna be me, and I want lots of friends that invite me to their parties!” Gaga has an often unnoticed habit of not taking herself too seriously. Yes, and of course,her hair is all about her identity and her self expression and the need to be honest about who you really are. Until it’s about getting invited to the legal parties.
Source: tumblr.com