Lady Gaga became a worldwide sensation thanks to her catchy pop songs, including “Bad Romance”, “Poker Face”, and “Paparazzi”. Is her singing any good when she has to ditch auto-tune and bizarre costumes and rely on nothing but her voice?
Lady Gaga’s live performances prove that she’s an exceptional vocalist. She can really sing and has an incredible voice, but some of her biggest hits don’t fully showcase her talent and that’s why so many people question it.
Lady Gaga’s Vocal Abilities
Fame didn’t come easy to Lady Gaga, and she spent years honing her musical skills. The “Poker Face” singer started taking piano lessons, studying music history, and training with a vocal coach at a young age.
Her vocal range is called contralto, and she’s been applauded for her ability to regularly change her vocal style. Entertainment Weekly praised her for never overwhelming a song with her vocal ability, and having “an immense emotional intelligence behind the way she uses her voice.”
Her fans were fully aware that she’s capable of delivering electric live shows for years, but it took a while for the rest of the world to take notice. The tide started turning in 2015 after she performed a tribute to The Sound of Music at the Oscars.
She received universal acclaim for her performance and reportedly spent half a year preparing to get it right. Classical singer Catherine Bott praised her delivery while chatting with Classic.fm and said that people probably didn’t know she could sing like that.
2016 marked another amazing year for Lady Gaga. After singing the national anthem at the Super Bowl, she delivered great performances at the Academy Awards and the Grammys, where she paid a tribute to her hero David Bowie.
Her fifth studio album Joanne hit the shelves later that year and put her singing abilities on full display. She continued moving in the same direction while recording the soundtrack for the 2018 musical A Star Is Born and received several awards for co-writing the song “Shallow”.
Lady Gaga’s latest album Chromatica marked a return to her dance-pop roots, but that didn’t stop her from tackling some serious issues and proving her voice is stronger than ever.
Proving Herself
When Lady Gaga started her rise to the top, most people failed to notice her incredible vocal abilities and focused solely on her eccentric look and catchy tunes. She spent years struggling to be taken seriously and came to the conclusion that sexism was one of her main obstacles.
In an interview from 2009, Gaga shut down a reporter who claimed that provocative references undermine the value of her music. She said that people only feel that way because she’s a female pop artist, and don’t hold male rock stars to the same standard.
She also addressed sexism in the music industry in her speech at the Billboard Women in Music event in 2015 and explained why it’s so difficult for women to make it in that world.
“I tried for so long, I just really wanted to be taken seriously as a musician for my intelligence more than my body ever in this business … You don’t always feel like when you’re working that people believe that you have a musical background, that you understand what you’re doing because you’re a female,” said Lady Gaga.
The dismissal of Lady Gaga’s musical talent is a part of a much bigger problem. People finally started taking her seriously after she took the “stripped-down” approach to music with her album Joanne and critically acclaimed role in A Star is Born, but many wondered why it took that long.
Glamour and Vox analyzed this issue and came to the same conclusion. Lady Gaga is only one of many performers who struggled to be taken seriously because they’re female pop stars, and people tend to dismiss their vocal abilities because they’re focusing on all the wrong things.