#854 – Lady GaGa’s Poker Farce

You MUST watch Lady GaGa’s live acoustic version on AOL of “Poker Face.” I rarely recommend things in this space – other than playing more poker on Full Tilt – so I have to be certain something is really great or really awful before I give it The Full Tilt Poker Blog Seal of Approval (TFTPBSoA).

But this is worth it.

I once had a friend who would call me after seeing a bad movie and say, “This movie was so awful! You have to see it so we can talk about how bad it was!” I could never understand that … until now. I’m not sure I’ll ever ask someone to waste two hours of their life on HUDSON HAWK, but this video is all over the internet and lasts only four minutes (though it can seem much longer).

I admit that I’m outside Lady GaGa’s prime demographic. But I don’t think my reaction to the AOL acoustic version is due to a generation gap. I have very diverse musical tastes – I have two teenage daughters and I introduced THEM to Katy Perry – and the song is, after all, about poker.

Sort of. The video has almost nothing to do with poker or cards. The lyrics make a few references to poker but even some of those are nonsensical. (e.g., “Love game intuition play the cards with spades to start”?)

Lady GaGa herself (Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta) may not be sure what the song is about. According to Wikipedia, she told a UK newspaper she wanted her boyfriends, who were into “booze and sex and gambling” to like it. She told ROLLING STONE part of it was about her vagina. Then she told a concert audience is was about her experience with bisexuality.

You’ll forgive all that once you find the live-AOL acoustic version online. It appears she is making up the song as she goes along. Trapped behind a keyboard, she channels her dancing instincts into a series of finger movements and sunglass adjustments. At the beginning, the she sounds like Liza Minnelli belting out “Cabaret.” But she gets bored after about thirty seconds and dials it way down – so far down that she is whispering the lyrics with her mouth an inch from the microphone and making tiny staccato movements to play the keyboard. Without warning, she starts growling lyrics at the top of her lungs. That’s all in the first 2:11 and it gets even more outrageous after that.

I don’t want to give it all away, so I’ll provide a reference you have to be at least forty to understand: think William Shatner at the climax of his version of “Mr. Tambourine Man.”

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