August 18, 2010

Surprisingly, for someone who says he's burnt out on Lady Gaga, I think, and write, about her often. This shows her great talent -- and reveals the pitfalls for the others: she's changed the game and now everyone will be compared to Gaga.

I am obsessed with pop stars, like most other gay men. And since fashion is full of fairies (can I write that here, hmm?), it's only natural that pop princesses and fashion go hand in hand. This happened way before Gaga strapped on those McQueen armadillos. Pop stars are fashion icons. They always have been and always will be.

Think of Nancy Sinatra in her boots. Liza Minnelli in Halston. Madonna and Courtney Love in Versace. Lily Allen in Chanel. Cher in Bob Mackie. The stylings and fashions of female pop singers are always on display. Sometimes the couture favorably distracts from an inability to carry a tune. Other times, as in Gaga's case, it accentuates a natural talent. What Gaga needs to worry about is if the visual ever starts overpowering her musical chops. Fashion's that powerful. The clothes could become a distraction, in the wrong way.

There is one singer whose unique personal style is so perfectly matched to her musical vision that it would be hard to imagine the voice without the look and vice versa.

Robyn's saving pop music. She may be saving pop fashion, too.

If ABBA and the Pet Shop Boys had had a love child and raised her in Sweden in a home full of disco records, the child would most likely have grown up to be something like Robyn. Imagine giving that child Madonna's ability to pick prime collaborators and Cyndi Lauper's helium high voice, and then you'd dress her in avant-garde club gear, but with that quirky Scandinavian sensibility. Throw in a little Salt-N-Pepa realness and you'd have Robyn.

She's a porcelain-skinned, platinum-haired Björk, without all that high-art weirdness. She's the girl in the corner dancing to the beat at the club. She owns her look as much as she owns her musical career (she left her major label, started her own, and is reaping that success now).

Robyn's is a look for a new era. She incorporates the feminine and the masculine in equal measure. She shaves her head and actually pulls off Jeremy Scott (who can actually do that?). And though her look is at times very high-concept, it never appears to be high-effort. She has a natural ease.

Her music and her look are easy to fall in love with. There's something humorous, but not cartoonish, to her clothing and her records. With any luck, she'll take over the U.S. market the way she's conquered Europe. She'd be a welcome, and needed, fashion force in a sea of Gaga-wannabes and fashion-victim pop tarts.