译Pitchfork评Lady Gaga 2009年专辑《The Fame Monster》（超人气魔神）
翻译：Nomanlandever
Lady Gaga's second record, containing "Bad Romance" and "Speechless", finds her coming into her own as both a songwriter and a pop star.
Lady Gaga的第二张专辑，收录单曲“Bad Romance”和“Speechless”，作为词曲作者和流行巨星的她找准了自身定位。
Remember that "Simpsons" Treehouse of Horror where the Krusty the Clown doll was trying to murder Homer? Turned out the problem was the doll had a switch on its back set to "evil" and with a flick of the wrist, it could be reset to "good." It feels like sometime late last summer, someone flicked a similar switch on Lady Gaga. For about a year, she was nothing but a lot of talk and a badge-- only without the badge. She filled her résumé and interviews with style icon namedrops-- Andy Warhol and his notions on celebrity, the denizens of New York's downtown arts scene, and avant couture designers like Thierry Mugler-- but her singles betrayed none of the artistry that she insisted was part of her package. "Poker Face" had about three big hooks, but next to her other singles-- which ran the gamut from forgettable fluff ("Just Dance") to "Muffin Top" ("LoveGame")-- it seemed like a fluke. Then, between the VMAs and "Paparazzi", she came into her own. And on "Bad Romance", the lead single from The Fame Monster, she became kind of awesome.
还记得《辛普森一家》里小丑娃娃Krusty想谋杀掉Homer那里的恐怖树屋吗？最后发现那个娃娃背上有一个能激发“邪恶模式”的开关，手腕一扭，就可以被重置为“善良模式”。感觉去年夏天晚些时候，有人重置了Lady Gaga的开关。在过去一年，她除了是街头巷尾议论的话题或一个明星人物其他什么都不是——只是没有授予徽章罢了。她的职业生涯和无数采访中都有多次提及那些大名鼎鼎的时尚偶像们——Andy Warhol和他对不同名流的看法、纽约市中心艺术圈的人物、类似Thierry Mugler的前卫高定时装设计师们——但她的单曲丝毫没有偏离她一直追求的艺术性。“Poker Face”有三个极佳的hook旋律，但其他逊色的单曲——从全曲都填充着会被时代遗忘的糟粕（“Just Dance”）到“累赘歌曲”（“LoveGame”）——这似乎是一首侥幸歌曲。随后，在VMA现场表演和歌曲“Paparazzi”之间，她找回自我。然后在“Bad Romance”，《The Fame Monster》的首支单曲，她大放异彩。
The rest of The Fame Monster-- out late last year, while we at Pitchfork were wrapping up our 2009 content-- isn't as strong as its lead single (although the Queen-like "Speechless" comes close), but it at least stakes a claim that Gaga is a potential new Madonna rather than simply a new Katy Perry. If I had to guess, I'd say once she became hideously popular Gaga was able to take more control of her career, the early result being "Bad Romance", arguably the best pop single and best pop video of 2009. And the video is part of the package: Like Madonna or Prince, it's impossible to separate the song from the performer. But unlike those artists, Lady Gaga isn't particularly attractive, and she uses this to her advantage by suppressing her vanity and making herself a slippery figure. She's still largely unknowable and also almost unrecognizable from moment to moment, as she contorts, disguises, masks and maims her face and body like a Matthew Barney or David Cronenberg creation.
再版专辑《The Fame Monster》——在去年年末发行，同期我们Pitchfork正进行着2009年度的总结工作——我们发现其中没有任何一首歌可以匹敌首单（“Bad Romance”）的大气磅礴（尽管Queen乐队风范十足的"Speechless"还尚可旗鼓相当）。但这至少表明Lady Gaga是一位未来可期的新生代Madonna，而不是又一个Katy Perry。如果我猜测的话，一旦Lady Gaga超级爆火后，她就能对自己的事业有更多的控制权，“Bad Romance”便是她自我把控的成果，可以说是2009年最佳流行歌曲和最好的流行MV。歌曲MV也是她艺术人格不可分割的一部分：正如Madonna和Prince，根本不可能分开看待歌曲与歌手。但与那些艺人不同的是，Lady Gaga并不是特别有魅力，她通过压制自己的虚荣心来树立自身优势，使自己成为一个神秘莫测的人物。她几乎时刻都无法被辨认出，因为她扭曲，伪装，打扮，“摧残”她的全身，如同Matthew Barney或David Cronenberg的作品。
Gaga comments on fame as she becomes more famous: It's in her record titles-- The Fame, The Fame Monster, "Paparazzi", "Beautiful, Dirty, Rich", "Starstruck". It's also in her wearable art, and the way she deconstructs her own look-- rigid, robotic dance moves as if she's a puppet on a string, moving in crutches after being damaged by her outsized fictional celebrity in the "Paparazzi" clip. In "Bad Romance" she alters whoever Lady Gaga the Pop Star might be into any number of female types-- at times recalling Britney Spears, Madonna, an Anime character, Angelique, Christina Aguilera, and Amy Winehouse. In that sense, she's a perfect 21st century pop icon-- a regular person willing to manipulate herself into whatever it takes at any given moment to be a star.
随着Gaga越来越名声大噪，她对“名气”的看法都体现在她的专辑/歌曲名里——The Fame, The Fame Monster, "Paparazzi", "Beautiful, Dirty, Rich", "Starstruck"，也体现在她的艺术穿搭和她自己对造型的构造中——僵硬、机械的舞蹈动作，如同被细线操控的木偶，在“Paparazzi”MV中，在被虚构的超大牌名人伤害后，拄着拐杖移动的她。在“Bad Romance”中，她将流行歌手Lady Gaga塑造成各种不同的女性——有时会令人想起Britney Spears, Madonna, 某位动漫人物, Angelique, Christina Aguilera或Amy Winehouse。在某种程度上，她就是21世纪的完美流行巨星——一个普通人会倾其所有将自己塑造成超级巨星。
And yet, unlike the empty famewhores climbing atop the shoulders of reality TV and tabloid journalism to notoriety, we know next to nothing about her personal life. In that sense, she's the anti-Kanye, the anti-Eminem, and the anti-Winehouse-- the twists and turns of her private life don't inform her art. Rather, she is whoever she wants to be at any time, and her art is as much the manipulation of that image and notions of modern celebrity as it is music or fashion. And it's refreshing to have a big pop star communicating to us from afar, like pop stars used to.
然而，与那些靠真人秀节目或花边新闻炒作走红，最终臭名昭著的女星不同，我们几乎对她的私生活一无所知。在某种程度上，她是反Kanye，反Eminem，和反Amy Winehouse的先锋人物，一波三折的私生活并未影响到她的艺术水平。相反，她随时随地都能达到理想状态，她在造型和现代女星人设上的艺术造诣丝毫不亚于她的音乐和时尚。很庆幸乐坛又出现一位石破天惊的流行巨星与我们交流，如同黄金时代的巨星。
Everything about "Bad Romance" is big but oddly clean and direct-- whooshing synths, jarring rhythms, and stratospheric choruses. It's not an earworm so much as something designed to just take over a listener, to force them to pay attention the way Gaga's image seems to have done to people in recent months. Sure, the choruses were also skybound on "Poker Face" and "Paparazzi", but they seemed bigger by working as a counterpoint to other elements of the song-- the odd way Gaga makes her voice go deep and guttural, the terrible sing-speaking she has ideally abandoned. "Bad Romance", on the other hand, has two volumes: 10 and 11. In that sense, it's almost template breaking-- reminiscent of stadium house with Gaga as a new KLF, fucking with us from the inside. (No surprise that it sounds so European either-- it comes across like futurist pop music without any hints of hip-hop's influence.)
“Bad Romance”的一切都很宏大，但却出奇地干脆和直率——呼啸的合成器、炸裂的节奏和升天的副歌桥段。这不是刻意迎合听众的抓耳旋律，不是类似过去几个月Gaga靠奇装异服的穿搭赢得大众关注的手段。当然，"Poker Face" 和"Paparazzi"的副歌也同样的响彻云霄，但它们与这首歌曲里其他元素相比显得更为庞大——Gaga以一种奇怪的方式使她的嗓音变得低沉，带喉音，她早已抛弃糟糕的边唱边说的唱法。在另一方面， "Bad Romance"有两个volumes（实在不知道这个volume怎么翻译）：10和11。从这个意义上讲，这几乎是突破性的尝试—— 不禁令人脑补到Gaga加入（英国乐队）KLF做出的体育馆House音乐。(也难怪这首歌听起来如此欧洲风——它给人的感觉就像未来主义的流行音乐，丝毫没有受嘻哈音乐的影响。)
Elsewhere on The Fame Monster, she morphs into other stars-- Freddie Mercury on "Speechless", ABBA on "Alejandro", Madonna on "Dance in the Dark", Britney Spears on "Telephone", Kylie Minogue on "Monster", and Christina Aguilera on "Teeth". Yet instead of hopelessly retro, it comes off very modern, in part because U.S. pop and hip-hop is currently drawing heavily from Europop, hi-NRG, and dance music. It's almost as if we're experiencing a sonic present that's whitewashed most of the influence of backbeat sample-based hip-hop-- from Kanye and Cudi to Jason Derülo and the Black Eyed Peas, it's all presets and synths and dance. All of a sudden, Eminem's claim that "nobody listens to techno" seems like a hell of a long time ago.
在《The Fame Monster》的其他歌曲中，她致敬了其他明星——在 "Speechless"中致敬Freddie Mercury, 在 "Alejandro"中致敬ABBA, 在"Dance in the Dark"中致敬Madonna, 在"Telephone"中致敬Britney Spears, 在"Monster"中致敬Kylie Minogue, 在"Teeth"中致敬Christina Aguilera。然而并非无可救药的照搬复古，而是做得非常现代化。部分原因是美国流行音乐和Hip-pop音乐受到大量欧陆流行乐，高能量迪斯科，舞曲的影响。我们几乎像在接受强烈Hip-pop采样节拍的音乐洗礼——从Kanye West到Kid Cudi到Jason Derülo再到the Black Eyed Peas，都是精心调制的合成器和舞曲音乐。忽然之间，Eminem讲的“没人会听techno音乐”都是很久以前的话了。
Where a lot of The Fame felt like rote pop with overt "comments" on fame, Gaga's recently acquired actual fame allows her interactions with an audience to become a theatrical experience. Her music, meanwhile, has become subtler, more playful, and more well-rounded, extending the electro-pop bubble she lived in on her debut. And instead of shoehorning references to celebrity into some tracks, she's borrowing elements and templates and simply focusing on quality control. The weird result is that, despite her flitting between personalities and personas, her music feels more like her own here than it did on her debut LP. The songs feel like they were written for Lady Gaga rather than simply for any modern pop star.
《The Fame》里许多机械式的流行歌曲都不加掩饰对名气的看法，而Gaga最近获得的真名气得以使她与观众产生一种戏剧性的互动体验。与此同时，她的音乐变得更精细、更值得玩味、更多元，扩展了她出道时的电子流行口水风格的范畴。然而她并未在歌曲里硬塞名人的名字，而是借鉴前人的音乐元素和模板，专注做出高质量音乐，这样产生出的奇特化学反应是，尽管她在不同的性格和角色之间切换，但这张专辑比她的出道专辑感觉更像她自己的音乐。这些歌曲感觉就是为Lady Gaga量身打造的，而不是随便为现代流行歌手们而写的。
Whether Gaga can keep up the streak is another matter. Maybe she'll get chewed up and spat out in the end, or maybe her chameleonic image changes are just Madonna's career at the speed of the Internet era and we're seeing all of her ideas at once. But all of a sudden, for a brief time at least, she's the only real pop star around.
Gaga能否保持这种势头则是另一回事了。也许最终她也会断气和被人唾弃，也许她变色龙般的艺术形象会使她的事业成为互联网时代的Madonna，我们现在可以随时追踪她的动态。但转瞬之间，至少才近期一段时间，她是唯一一位真正的流行巨星。
