Lady Gaga an unstoppable Pop Culture and Music Icon? West Coast Midnight Run

"I was onstage in a thong, with a fringe hanging over my ass thinking that had covered it, lighting hairsprays on fire … singing songs about oral sex. The kids would scream and cheer ... It represented freedom to me. I went to a Catholic school but it was on the New York underground that I found myself." (The Telegraph)

The description is a little reminiscent of the stage acts from Van Halen but for some on the music, whom from the teen set today exactly remembers David Lee Roth and his guitar antics with his bareness showing?

Plus this was the female showdown to counterpunch the rock guys' ascension to power. Lady Gaga has never disguised the fact that she recycled older material into her own from colleagues and artists preceding her in industry.

Gaga doesn't fantasize about worshipping a female monarchy, she is an avowed "feminist" - if the term has any substance. She openly credits Queen, David Bowie and Michael Jackson although anyone familiar with her operatic acts would automatically leap to Madonna as the pre-eminent influence while not discounting Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones, Van Halen or Elton John with his erstwhile flourishing costumes and stage personas.

Really?

And yet any person familiar with the rock scene might shake their heads and reminisce about the jamming days when Alice Cooper went to work the audience while the antics of Iggy Pop and Ozzy Osbourne are dwarfed in comparison to Marilyn Manson's and let's not leave out The Mentors,
a music group that crafted its stage acts with the help of elaborate costumes coupled to obscene lyrics and advocated rape on national TV.

As of the past couple of years, Lady Gaga's personna, under careful guidance, has transcended the music scene into mainstream super pop icon status. Her fame and personality is being systematically weaponized and mobilized onto the glamour and luxury stage for fashion and lifestyle products.

From being the spokesperson for ultra glamour fashion designer Versace to a string of European commercials for RTL Radio that seem to have adapted elements of Disney's Tron Legacy and the Daft Punk visual look to her personality, Lady Gaga's futuristic cyberpunk accoutrement became far more visible and etched in the public eye as her trademark style.

"The largest misconception is that Lady Gaga is a persona or a character. I'm not - even my mother calls me Gaga. I am 150,000 percent Lady Gaga

every day." Stefani declared to Rolling Stone in 2009.

In 2013, on billboards across the biggest towns in the world, Lady Gaga was shown in panoramas solidifying her connection to the Bondage (S&M) scene with a tantalizing and sultry layout depicting small male sex slaves catering to, and clambering over her giant half naked goddess body.

On a pop culture level, this is the first instance ever of a mainstream music artist bridging openly the gap with the hereto quasi-underground BDSM scene. For many in New York and Los Angeles it is a ho-hum moment yet it speaks volumes about the power of her presence on the music scene and with the makers of public opinion.

Madonna a decade ago took a severe beating when she attempted a similar effort as Lady Gaga by flaunting open sex and sexuality to the mainstream.

The publicity crew of Lady Gaga have learned a great deal from the blowback and this time around Stefani and her team are masters at managing risks and downturn in public opinion.

Her appearance in the movie Machette Kills, although brief has only endeared her to the masses by playing a bounty hunter. The movie is a parody and social satire from Robert Rodriguez, who shows off his directorial talents and plays adroitly on the theme of women with balls, and we're not talking about all the right marbles either it's balls south of the equator, using atypical Mexican panache and flavor. For Gaga, Machette Kills was a carefully calculated move that strengthened her hand.

The Vibe and The Hollywood Reporter in 2013 featured Kelly Osbourne, daughter of musician Ozzy, calling Gaga a hypocrite and full of contradictions. The UK Daily Mail, as of 2010, says as much and the NY Daily News called her "one walking contradiction".

In canvassing through a deluge of media interviews in recent years, one theme stands out the most, Lady Gaga is a paragon of contradictions. How would she not be? If Lady Gaga is building her iconic figure as a top pop culture artist and interpreter, she is often quoted enunciating the latest buzz words, ideas or hooks from her environment. She is repping the art world and artists around her, only she might add a little personal touch here and an artistic twist there. But in retrospect, she is editing different viewpoints from various trend-setting artists and these artists do not necessarily agree with each other.

If Lady Gaga positions herself as the pre-eminent redux of the cutting edge art world how could she not be a walking, talking contradiction? Where is the mystery in this pronouncement? The real mystery is the reason the press and media are mystified by her comments and pronouncements.