What's Hot

.

The news of Amy Winehouse’s death this weekend had been barely broken before fans, critics, and casual observers alike began rushing to compose their final thoughts. Within minutes, thousands of words went up on the Internet — words that, while outwardly meant to express how we felt upon hearing the news, turned out to say more about how we interpret the lives of our icons. Armed with a bizarre mix of superstition and literary affectations, these elegies hewed closer to the final act of a Shakespearean fall myth than to the factual account of one woman’s tragic ending; they convey more about the way we “read” death as a culture, than they do about the real life of Amy Winehouse.

.
The official launch of Lady Gaga’s second full-length album began in February with an announcement: Born This Way would be released on May 23, and an expanded version of the disc — featuring bonus material — would be available only through an exclusive partnership with Target. Deals like this are not uncommon; big-box stores like Target are responsible for almost 40% of all physical CD sales in America, and even superstar artists like Gaga are at the mercy of the increased promotion and exposure these stores can provide in a failing retail climate. What made this deal unique, however, was exactly how much Target stood to reap from their half of the partnership. More than mere record sales, an association with Gaga could have ostensibly regained some of their lost cachet with the gay community, who had begun a grassroots campaign against the store last year following reports that the company provided significant financial support to a number of anti-gay politicians in 2010 — including a $150,000 donation to Minnesota Republican Tom Emmer, whose vocal opposition to same-sex marriage and gay parenting seems almost humanitarian in comparison to revelations that he made his own donations to a Christian ministry that once endorsed religious-sponsored executions of LGBT people.
.
Needless to say, the deal backfired. After a failed attempt at damage control, Gaga abruptly dissolved the partnership with a terse statement simply stating that the two parties “didn’t see eye to eye on Target’s policy of political donations.” Curiously, the topic was never raised again.
.
For an album whose lead single features the most unambiguous gay rights lyric of any #1 song in the history of the world, it was a clumsy — and unlikely — start for Lady Gaga 2.0, who seems like she should have known better to begin with. But it was also an instructional moment: For as much as it’s difficult to remember pop music before Gaga, we shouldn’t forget that her ascendancy did not begin in earnest until the summer of 2008 — which means that, at only 25 years old, she’s had less than three years to become the biggest pop star on the planet, and even less time than that to figure it all out. It also means that despite the image of the fully-realized artist that she’s been successfully projecting for the last couple of years, it isn’t very clear whether or not a truly holistic identity of Lady Gaga has actually emerged.
.

The last major musical event to emerge from Newmarket, Ontario, happened in 1986, when a band called Glass Tiger released their debut album, The Thin Red Line. On the strength of its lead single, “Don’t Forget Me (When I’m Gone),” the band became a Top 40 radio staple and, within a year, a multiplatinum–selling act.

They also became an easy target. An article in SPIN magazine, for example, snarled that Glass Tiger “must come from Canada, where bands work for the government,” before going on to describe their debut video as “flaccid, anemic, baby-fatty, ungraceful.” It wasn’t long before Newmarket’s sudden international cachet dried up as quickly as it surfaced, attaching a dismal sense of irony to Glass Tiger’s biggest hit: After all, America had all but forgotten the band by 1988.

Dave Monks, the singer and bassist for Tokyo Police Club, was born in Newmarket during Glass Tiger’s 15 minutes of fame — at a time when the likelihood of a small-town Canadian band becoming bona fide pop stars didn’t seem so far-fetched — but, today, he is reluctant to muster up much enthusiasm for the Toronto suburb.