Are They Diet Coke Cans in Her Hair?

No one in recent pop memory has been a greater enemy to the authentic than Lady Gaga. In her somewhat un-meticulously constructed universe, there’s nothing that can’t be rewritten, refigured, revised or reborn. Not long ago she was playing confessional piano music in tiny New York rooms. Now she’s the biggest pure-pop-music star of the day, a mercurial talent lurking beneath an orgy of mirrored balls and bubble clusters and vinyl curtains and sticky lace.

Lady Gaga has become successful by adhering to the belief that there’s no inner truth to be advertised, or salvaged: all one can do is invent anew.

NY Times

You know you're a pop-star (possibly icon) when you can piss-off suburbia, or better yet when middle-America just doesn't get you. When you baffle the timid, frighten suburban housewife and her job-hating husband. In revenge, they will label you a whore and a wack-job. Then you know the generations have shifted. The nihilist are taking over. Distraction becomes the objective. And Lady $Gaga$ counts the dead presidents all the way to the bank.