My two cents on Telephone...

Since I'm hearing about Lady Gaga and Beyonce's new Telephone everywhere, I figured I would throw in my two cents as well. I'm a music geek, but I'm also a music biz geek. What that means it that I can equally love and hate something for totally different reasons. I see the perspective of art and artist, but also of sales tool and image. So, here we go...

This is my opinion on Telephone: They looked amazing, that's what they're good at. The actual concept of the video, putting the song aside completely, was cool. It was shot well and they pushed the boundaries on the fashion front. However, the concept of the video when you put the song with it (which is really the point, right?) was STUPID. Were they making a short film promoting their love of makeup and fashion and disguising it (loosely) as a music video? I think so.

The song itself isn't good, but the concept of the song is kind of cute. The song is about being out and having a dude blow up your phone...did you see ANY of that in the video? Nope. They had the chance to make a crappy song more palatable by pairing it with a high concept video that you couldn't help but watch, which in turn would make you give in to the song. Ask Rihanna, she does it with every single. No one really cared what she "want want want" til she started the slow wine in hot outfits. Let face it, video is the way mediocre artists make you care. It's a full on visual assault in the hopes of getting some wack ass song stuck in your head.

What they did was a short film about lesbian murderers. Even standing alone, I still have to ask where that fits into the concept of Gaga's album. It's probably the first video of hers where I immediately thought it just didn't match. She's a pop star who likes to make simple pop music and wear crazy fashion. She was a performance artist before any of us knew a thing about her, this is the same thing on a bigger scale. Can she write great songs? Yes, but that's not her goal so she doesn't do it often. The entire package of fashion, shock and music together is her goal. They were going for the impact of huge stars, a big budget and high fashion. But they were missing the connective tissue that would've made the video sell the song and, subsequently, the album. She's also going into to ridiculous amounts of debt with her label. She'll be there for a long while. Yet another page out of the "I don't sell enough albums to support the marketing campaign" book of Rihanna.

So, to sum it all up:

Song: D

Concept of the Song: C-

Video Concept w/o song: B+

Video as compliment to the song: F

Clothes, Hair & Makeup: A+

Hate me if you wanna, but I'm gonna have to give the Telephone video a C-.