Lady Gaga Plays SXSW: 'You Don't Need a F--king Record Label"

[Miguel]

Excerpts from a few stories about her keynote address.

#1

Lady Gaga gives mixed message at SXSW about corporate interference

...The singer, who appeared with long white dreadlocks and in a huge dress made out of clear plastic bags, also criticised the industry's constant hunger for more record sales.

She said: "The business (is) always trying to widen your demographic. You have these people, so why not go after them as well ... so you can have more. But I don't need more. I have my amazing fans, I don't need anybody else. I won't abandon my morals and core values to be more famous."

Her message against corporate interference wasn't entirely consistent, however. The previous night she had played a visually spectacular show at SXSW that was heavily branded by Doritos chips. When challenged on this point – and the wider issue of corporate sponsorship at the festival, which has been steadily growing in recent years – she became defensive.

She said: "Whoever says these things – [they] don't know fuck about the state of the music industry. Doritos (was) not telling me how to do the show or putting chains around my neck. They just said they wanted to support me in having a great experience and they wanted to help my charity [the Born This Way foundation]. The people who are criticising that just want more clicks to their website.

"The truth is that without sponsorships and companies coming together to help us we won't have any artists in Austin because the record labels don't have any fucking money."

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/ma...terference

#2

SXSW 2014: Lady Gaga's keynote: 'I wanted to look ugly all the time'

...Lady Gaga was far more interesting when the talk turned -- ever so gently, in Norris' hands -- to the perception that last year's "Artpop" was a bomb.

"I'm sorry I didn't sell a million records the first week," she said with a little laugh. "I have before." The singer went on to insist that she's held "to such an insane standard" in terms of her commercial performance at a moment of overall collapse in the record business. "When it comes to me, everyone forgets where the music industry is now," she said. "You come see me and it's like you're time-warped to the '70s."

On that subject, she defended her controversial decision to team with Doritos for Thursday's performance, saying that anyone who criticized her alliance with a corporation doesn't know jack -- she used a more colorful word -- about the state of the business. Record labels, she said, can no longer afford to fund the kind of lavish productions she's interested in, so she simply found help where she could.

...She captured my attention again near the end of the talk when she acknowledged how hard it's been to retain her drive to innovate even as her success encourages a kind of creative stasis.

"Once you have so many people's attention, they think that as a female, it's better for me to make inconsequential music ... and just look beautiful," she said, referring to her handlers. Being told to look beautiful, she added, "poisoned" her in 2013 and led her in part to devise the intentionally rough-edged show she played Thursday night.

"I wanted to look ugly all the time," she said. That's an idea worth its own keynote address.

http://www.latimes.com/entertainment/mus...z2vyDMws2C

#3

Lady Gaga's keynote at SXSW: No compromise

…"As you become more successful, they start to push the rule book closer and closer to you and say 'Now you're here. How are you going to maintain it?' Really what 'Art Pop' is all about is the truest way for us to maintain the music industry is to put all the power back into the hands of the artist."

The root of the problem is the importance of sales and charts, she said, and an industry that channels its artists toward being commercially successful foremost.

"When you do that, you take the power out of the hands of the artists and into the hands of a corporation," she said. "That means you, at home with your guitar, have less of a chance of making it happen on your own because you need someone in a corporate tower somewhere telling you, No, this is how you do it; this is how you're going to make it.' I don't think any of us want that to be dictating the music we listen to."

..."At the end of the day, nobody's going to remember what you tweeted when you die. No one's going to remember your web content. What's going to be remembered is those magical moments you have helped create, bringing artist and the arts community together … I've been talking so much about creative rebellion because it's like, what are we as an industry if we are not telling ourselves to be creative? What are we? What are we doing? What is happening? Why is it a prison? Why are we allowing it to be a prison?"

http://www.kansascity.com/2014/03/14/488...rylink=cpy