在Lady Gaga为格莱美表演之后，美国媒体全面盘点Lady Gaga成名路，似乎有意让Lady Gaga成为美国流行文化的新代言人。
Lady Gaga
Lady Gaga成为美国流行文化新代言人
注意那个为格莱美进行开场表演的女人。
Pay attention to that woman opening the Grammys。
在格莱美的颁奖典礼上，Lady Gaga和埃尔顿•约翰(Elton John)同用一架钢琴表演了合唱。她得到了包括年度最佳专辑在内的五项格莱美提名，不过这和她在短短一年间对音乐文化产生的更为广泛的影响──这种影响可以说是震撼性的──相比显得并不那么重要。
At Sunday's awards show, Lady Gaga is expected to play a duet on a single piano with Elton John. She is nominated for five awards, including record of the year, but that's less important than her broader impact on music culture in the space of a year, which has been seismic。
她的首张专辑就诞生了四首冠军单曲。她在2009年以1,530万首的单曲销量雄踞数字音乐销量排行榜冠军。她的热门舞曲，包括《扑克脸》和《狗仔队》在内，她将一种古怪的欧式情调掺入了摇滚和饶舌音乐，这些歌曲也借此重新界定了电台流行音乐的风格。凭借她那科幻电影人物般的着装，Gaga在音乐世界之外也抓住了人们的注意力。她在演唱会、音乐录像和过去的颁奖礼表演中曾戴着整副面具和行星环头饰，还曾把鸟窝样子的装饰品围在自己的头上。
Her debut album has generated four No. 1 songs. She topped the digital sales chart for 2009 with 15.3 million tracks sold. Her dance hits, including 'Poker Face' and 'Paparazzi,' recalibrated the sound of pop radio with a spacey Euro vibe that's crept into songs by rock and rap artists. She grabbed attention beyond the music world with outfits that make her look like a refugee from a sci-fi film. In concert, on video and at past awards shows she has sported full facial masks, worn planetary rings around her head, and framed her face in what looked like a bird's nest。
“她非常会玩花样，”对Gaga赞赏有加的摇滚歌手艾利斯•库柏表示。库柏曾在舞台上表演“斩首”。不过他表示，Gaga的这些花招能够大获成功的原因是“她确实有副好嗓子”。
'She's very vaudevillian,' says an admiring Alice Cooper, the rocker whose history of stage theatrics includes simulated decapitations. But he says Gaga's antics only work because 'she can really sing.'
Gaga或许最终被证明只是个昙花一现的流星，不过许多资深的业内人士却认为她有真材实料，而且她在这个充满挑战的行业所表现出来的野心和能力或许能让她成为一颗长盛不衰的明星。本名斯蒂芬尼•吉玛洛塔的Gaga毕业于曼哈顿的圣心女中，后来她为了追寻自己的音乐梦想而离开了纽约大学的音乐学系。她曾与唱片公司Def Jam签约后又解约，后来与一个顾问团队开始了合作。当迈克尔•杰克逊的去世让我们意识到如今能够超越狭隘音乐类型的新星已经少之又少的时候，Gaga便在一年的时间内横扫各大媒体。
Gaga may turn out to be yet another fleeting pop novelty, but many other industry veterans see her as the real deal, and her ambitions and skill at navigating the turbulent industry may make her a durable star. Born Stefani Germanotta, she graduated from Manhattan's Convent of the Sacred Heart school, then left a music program at New York University to chase a music career. She was signed and dropped from one label, Def Jam, before uniting with a core team of advisers. She then stormed the media in a year when Michael Jackson's death reminded us how few new music stars transcend narrow genres anymore。
我们在Gaga乱蓬蓬的假发之下看到的是一个有关如何在时下的音乐行业取得成功的案例分析。23岁的Gaga聪明地运用了新的数字平台，而同时仍借助着一家大唱片公司的影响力──DIY文化的众多支持者认为这种做法已经过时。她是一种新型唱片合约的产品，这种合约已经不仅仅涵盖唱片销售，而是从巡演到商品， 甚至是包括造型合约在内的各项事务。尽管Gaga自己创作歌曲，但她对于视觉上的舞台效果、流行时尚和全球号召力也投入了和对音乐一样多的精力。
Underneath Gaga's haystack wigs is a case study of what it takes to succeed in the music business today. Gaga, 23 years old, has made shrewd use of new digital platforms, while still leveraging the clout of a major label, an institution deemed obsolete by many proponents of DIY culture. She is a product of a new kind of recording contract which goes beyond just selling records to encompass everything from touring, merchandise--even her make-up deal. Though she writes her own material, she is as focused on visual theatrics, fashion, and global appeal as she is on the music。
媒体的镜头在今年将继续对准Gaga。她将挑战自己在MTV音乐录像大奖上换装六次的战绩。从她的着装来预测时尚风潮是白费工夫。不过，以下是 Gaga可以告诉我们的有关当今音乐行业如何运作的三件事。
This year, expect the cameras to hover around Gaga, who will be challenged to top the six different costumes she donned at the MTV Video Music Awards. Divining fashion trends from her outfits would be fruitless. Instead, here are three things Gaga can tell us about how the music industry works now。
她是个数字现象
She's a digital phenomenon
Gaga惊人的数字唱片销量──几乎全部来自于iTunes下载──只说明了事实的一部分。实际上，Gaga的大部分听众都免费、而且合法地获得了她的音乐。调查公司BigChampagne表示，人们收听的是YouTube和其他网络服务商提供的免费流──数量以上亿计。Gaga在 MySpace上的音乐播放量达到了3.215亿次。而与之形成对比的是，尽管歌手苏珊大妈在2009年的专辑销量排行榜上位居第二，但她在 MySpace上仅得到了13.3万次播放。Gaga和这位在英国选秀节目中脱颍而出的苏格兰大妈有一个不同点(她们之间还存在着许多不同点)：苏珊大妈的歌曲，包括那首《奇异恩典》在内，都属于传统范畴──而购买她专辑的大部分人也比较传统。她的专辑有大约97%都以CD形式销售。
Lady Gaga's towering digital sales, almost all of them iTunes downloads, only tell part of the story. In fact, much of Gaga's audience got her music for free, and legally. They have listened to free streams -- by the hundreds of millions -- on YouTube and the other online services that Gaga currently leads, according to research firm BigChampagne. On MySpace, Gaga has had 321.5 million plays. By contrast, singer Susan Boyle tallied only 133,000 plays, despite scoring the No. 2 selling album of 2009. A difference (among many) between Gaga and the Scotswoman discovered on a British talent show: Ms. Boyle's material, including 'Amazing Grace,' was traditional -- and so were most of her buyers. Some 97% of her albums were sold on compact disc。
她有360度的视野
She's got a 360-degree view
音乐行业需要更多的Gaga。美国唱片业协会最近的一份报告显示，过去十年的巨变迫使大唱片公司将员工裁减了60%。仅仅在最近的一周之内，环球音乐集团的雇员就被裁减了数十人。(Gaga自己的公关就选择了“买断工龄”；这一职位也不会得到填补。)唱片公司不得不改变和旗下艺人之间的关系，倚靠新的生意伙伴，其中包括那些他们过去经常与之口角不断的人才代理们。
The business needs more Gagas. The upheaval of the last decade has forced the major record companies to cut their work force by 60%， according to a recent report by the Recording Industry Association of America. Within the last week, dozens of Universal Music Group employees were laid off. (Gaga's own publicist took a buyout; his job won't be filled。) Labels have had to change their relationship with artists and lean on new partners, including the talent managers they often squabbled with in the past。
由于没有资金和人员来支持他们曾经过于庞大的艺人队伍，唱片公司大幅缩小了雇员数量，并对那些预期能够为热门歌曲流行推波助澜的活动加大了投入。他们还希望从艺人们在唱片公司销售音乐的传统业务之外获得的收入中分得一杯羹。这带来了行话中所谓的“360度合约”，也就是说一家唱片公司先期投入更多的资金(比如说，在营销中)来换取商品销售、巡演收入和其他的一些收入，而这些收入在过去一直都归艺人自己所有。
Without the budget and staff to support their once overloaded artist stables, labels have slashed their rosters and doubled down on acts expected to drive hits. They're also going after the money artists generate outside the labels' traditional business of selling music. This has given rise to, in industry parlance, the 360 deal, in which a label invests more money up front (for marketing, for example) in exchange for a piece of merchandise sales, touring revenue and other earnings that artists had long kept for themselves。
她有可能成为麦当娜第二
She could be the next Madonna
在歌曲《糟糕的罗曼史》中，Gaga唱道，“我想要你的丑陋，我想要你的疾病。”她亲热地将自己的歌迷称为“怪物”。在台上，Gaga的假伤口血流不止。这些黑色戏剧化的表现手段并没有妨碍她通过借鉴麦当娜的成功秘笈，包括跳跃的舞曲节奏、多变的形像和假意痴迷名人的态度而成为主流电台的宠儿。
On the song 'Bad Romance,' Gaga chants 'I want your ugly, I want your disease.' She lovingly refers to her fans as 'monsters.' On stage, she bleeds from simulated stab wounds. Despite these dark theatrics, she's become a darling of mainstream radio by drawing from Madonna's playbook, with thumping dance beats, a shape-shifting image and a playful obsession with celebrity。
