Lady Gaga

Lady Gaga made pop a theater of shock, artifice and confession. She emerged as a dance-floor creature on The Fame, pushed celebrity culture to baroque excess, fell into experiments, jazz, film and intimate country, then returned to the electronic body that made her name. Her importance lies in treating stardom as mask and wound, spectacle and autobiography, never just as a well-lit product.

Why listen to Lady Gaga?

Gaga sings like someone who knows every mask, sooner or later, starts to bleed.