Frank Kogan

Agreed on Madonna's visuals, and I think Lady Gaga played right into the Madonna playbook with her own visuals, which rarely match the adventurousness or lack thereof in her music. For one thing, Madonna was all about breaking down loaded imagery, or presenting it in a new way, whereas it seemed like Michael was creating a genuinely new iconography. Madonna spoke a pre-existing language in intentionally provocative ways, Michael spoke in tongues (and then we all learned the tongue). I think that one thing that puts me off about Lady Gaga is the way that she uses existing visual language and then tries to appear to be speaking in tongues. (Self-conscious "speaking in tongues" probably isn't effective as natural/visceral speaking in tongues -- there's something about genuineness there, but maybe not "purity." So something like, visually speaking, Madonna was in conversation with the avant-garde, Michael WAS avant-garde, Lady Gaga is playing at avant-garde. And maybe I'm overestimating how much Madonna was "playing at," and it's merely the rose-colored glasses of history that makes her avant-garde-ness seem interesting when perhaps it was just as dull and contrived as Gaga's?)