pop pop pop muzik

You know how it is. You hear a new pop song and somehow it sounds so cool, and full of life, and Right, that you want to eat it. Devour it, actually. So you do--listening to it over and over and over again until you're disgusted and ashamed of yourself.

Well, that's not how I felt when I first heard Lady Gaga's internationally gi-normous hit, "Poker Face." But I thought the video was funny and the song was fiendishly catchy and I liked it muchly. I was delighted to hear a young artist put her good singin' over some nice frozen electro eighties beats. It seemed like the first real techno hit I'd heard in a long time, maybe ever.

Now I can't escape the goddamn thing.

This fuckin' "Poker Face" was the first and only song playing in the multiplex two nights ago when I went to see Drag Me to Hell (more about this later. Maybe.) I heard the song bumping around faintly in the background at the pool on Sunday afternoon. In Sardinia, I heard it booming out of car windows and looming over the disco at the campground next to ours. Yeah: "Poker Face" is a big hit at outdoor beachside campground discotheques in Italy. That's the kind of song it is.

My biggest mistake was not letting this craven pop junk into my life. No. My mistake was playing it to my children. Now they want it all day, every day.

With Lady Gaga on the stereo, V. does an adorable, though somewhat hesitant Butt Wiggle--as if she's still unsure whether this sort of move is allowed. And Adinah likes to "rap" along with Gaga, as she holds forth on her "muffin" and, er, her "love glue." At least I think that what she's saying.

Mind you, I'm not bothered by the fact that my 6 and 2 1/2 year old daughters are happily chirping a song which extolls the virtues or oral and/or rough sex. I'm disturbed that they are enamored with a performer who is--conceptually--sorta lame. All bitch can do is sing about wanting to be rich, famous, fucked-up and fucked. She's got barely a stitch of persona, people! Yes, I'm aware she claims to be "commenting" on fame and commodification. Right. She's Paris Hilton with tunes and a copy of Andy Warhol for Dummies. That is troubling.

And now, because I thought it would be a good idea to turn my girls onto a song written in this century, I'll be stuck with "Poker Face" till November.