Tuesday 8 March 2011

Lady GaGa- Bad Romance- music video analysis

Lady Gaga’s videos and performances are extremely symbolic and filled with hidden messages. Her latest video, named “Bad Romance”, describes the dark and ritualistic inner-workings of the entertainment industry, by symbolically depicting Gaga as a sex slave. This article examines the occult symbols present in the video and its hidden meaning.

The video for the song Bad Romance is a mix of deep symbolism with sheer randomness, creative fashion with corporate product placements and modern day decadence with religious imagery, all rolled up in a great big music industry celebration. Gaga uses her odd-ball theatrical presence to its full extent to shock, creep-out and fascinate the viewers. I’ve mentioned the presence of mind control elements, of the horned god Baphomet, of secret societies and so on. Far from steering away from those themes, Gaga’s latest offering incorporates all of them in this video, which is a great big metaphor for the music industry. Let’s look at the song.


Bad Romance is the first single out of Gaga’s Fame Monster album. If you look back at her past works, the main message of her music is that she is willing to do anything, even sacrifice herself, to obtain fame. The video continues in the same vein by depicting Gaga as a willing victim in the music industry’s shady inner-workings. She wants to live a Bad Romance with the abusive, cruel and satanic music industry. She’s aware of all of its flaws but she still desires to be part of it more than anything else. She is a Fame Monster…she feeds off of fame…she enjoys being famous…if she is not famous, she’ll die or something…you get the picture. At face value, the song lyrics seem to be about her wanting to get “banged” by a kind of psychopath, but the video reveals that the psychopath is in fact the music industry.
The song starts with a weird chant that goes
Rah-rah-ah-ah-ah-ah!
Roma-roma-mamaa!
Ga-ga-ooh-la-la!
Want your bad romance
This is the type of senseless crap drunk people like to yell in those disco dance parties you crazy kids go to. Is there a deeper meaning to it? Gaga announces it in a weird, gothic accent, in the manner of a ceremonial/incantation, a little like the “Bum-bum-bedum” of Rihanna’s Disturbia (article here). Ra, as the name of the ancient Egyptian sun god, is still of great importance in today’s occultism (see the “Eye of Ra”, the All-Seeing Eye). Roma may be a reference to the roman catholic church, but I’m not sure. This could be interpreted in many ways so I won’t linger on it.
I want your ugly
I want your disease
I want your everything
As long as it’s free
I want your love
(Love-love-love I want your love)
I want your drama
The touch of your hand
I want your leather-studded kiss in the sand
I want your love
Love-love-love
I want your love
(Love-love-love I want your love)
Right away, it is obvious that the love that Gaga is seeking is wrong and sick. She’s a sex slave and apparently, she likes it. She knows that the industry is ugly but she still wants in. There is an obvious sense of sadomasochism, as she seems to know that this love (of success in the music industry) will hurt her and treat her badly, but she’s up for it. As we will examine in the video, there is also a spiritual meaning to the lyrics where fame equals submitting to the dark, satanic side of the music industry. In other words, the song is also about submitting to evil and the imagery of the video corroborates this fact.
I want your horror
I want your design
‘Cause you’re a criminal
As long as your mine
I want your love
(Love-love-love I want your love-uuhh)
I want your psycho
Your vertigo stick
Want you in my rear window
Baby you’re sick
I want your love
Love-love-love
I want your love
(Love-love-love I want your love)
Here again, there is a mix of the “horror” of evil with hardcore sex references, which convey the fact that she wants to be “penetrated” by this evil influence in order to gain its favors. There are references to Hitchcock movies (Psycho, Vertigo) that are cleverly turned into sexually explicit lyrics.
During the bridge, Gaga sings emotionally “I don’t wanna be friends“. She does not want to be an outsider of the music industry, she wants to be part of it. Later she says “I want your love and, All your lovers’ revenge”, which means that she wants all of the attention of the music industry to the point that she also wants the “hate” of the artists who are jealous of her.
Of course, the lyrics are open to interpretation but the visuals of the video really give a particular meaning to the words. Gaga is not singing to a person, but to a group, an entity, an organization. She is singing to the Illuminati, to the music industry, to Baphomet: to the ones that have the power to make her famous. She wants to be part of that sinister and corrupt system and write a Bad Romancewith it.

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