ORIGINAL HIPSTER

Yesterday, Technorati writer Tricia Weight posted an interview with British music journalist Paul Lester, author of a new biography on Lady GaGa called Looking for Fame – The Life of a Pop Princess. While I have absolutely no interest in his book, I do think Lester’s remarks at the end of the interview are particularly smart:

This is the point about Lady Gaga, there’s that phrase, “In the Kingdom of the Blind, the one-eyed man is King.” In this day and age, when there are simply no remotely interesting pop musicians, she seems quite interesting, but that’s because there’s nobody else.

If Lady Gaga had been around in 1982, when she would have had to have competed with Boy George and Marilyn and Adam Ant and Madonna, all these really flamboyant characters–I mean, right now, she’s the only one, but back then they were ten-a-penny.

If she’d have been around at the same time as those big, flamboyant rock stars like Mick Jagger and Rod Stewart and Donna Summer… if she’d have come in the late ’70s, the music scene was absolutely chock-full of really outrageous characters, from Johnny Rotten to Sid Vicious, to Poly Styrene, to Siouxsie Sioux–everybody was colorful and outrageous and made completely frank sexual statements and were really forthright and candid in talking about sex and drugs–Lady Gaga would just have been one of many. And she wouldn’t have made it.

But she makes it in 2010 because she’s the only one, pretty much. That’s probably a sad indictment of everybody else, but very fortunate for Lady Gaga.