Evil GaGa?

Recently Radio 1's chart blog, which is actually very well written, very funny, very clever and very readable, had this to say about the Nicole Scherzinger single/video/package:

"There's a latin expression which fans of the old TV show The West Wing will be aware of, and it's kind of relevant here so...

It's post hoc, ergo propter hoc, which means something like "after this, therefore because of this". And it refers to the assumption people make when something happens after something else. So if there's a dramatic drop in the sales of washing machines, but a huge rush to buy chocolate, you could make a reasonable claim that there was a trend to do less washing and eat more chocolate. You could even extrapolate that people were choosing to eat less crumbly, flaky chocolate, and therefore had less need to wash their clothes after eating than they had in the past.

It would be total codswallop, but SOMEONE would believe it."

Anyway, the basic thrust of it, is that Nicole's "Poison", which is not only identically themed to Britney Spears' superior "Toxic", but has a similarly-themed video directed by the same man, could be interpreted as copycat and 'influenced by'. It's not, or at least, probably not, and to suggest so, one would have to take the theory to its logical conclusion and declare, not just all pop, but all art, unoriginal and bereft of ideas. Sometimes, different creatives teams behind popstars (writers, A&R, video directors) have similar ideas, and it's not because they're unoriginal, it's because they have one vital thing in common: they are human beings.

Anyway, what does this have to do with Natalia Kills, we hear you ask? Well, a similar thing is applicable here. If Natalia Kills had appeared and released this music video for (un)guilty pleasure, "Mirrors", in 2007, before anyone knew who Stefani Joanne Germanotta was, we would be hailing her (or at least the people behind her) a creative genius, taking razor-sharp pop culture references and melding them into a dark reverie/postulation on the over-exalted modern values and myths tied to fame and beauty and death. But this is not the case.

We've already explored these themes with GaGa, and exhausted them to the extent that she, herself, has abandoned them in search of 'deeper', less wilfully shallow ideas. This is unfortunate for Natalia Kills who may (you never know) have come up with these ideas all by herself. If she did, she must be heartbroken that now everything she does will be measured against GaGa, without having ever had anything to do with her. Well, that's one theory.

The other is, that if this had been unleashed into the world pre-GaGa... well... it wouldn't have been. This couldn't exist without pop culture's current most ubiquitous person. Before being signed to Lady GaGa's label, being managed by the man who kickstarted Lady GaGa's career and hooked up with some of Lady GaGa's producers, Natalia Kills was a rapper (she actually had a minor UK hit as Verbalicious if you can remember it) and had roles in - deap breath here - Casualty, Coronation Street, Doctors, Blue Murder, No Angels, Silent Witness, Tripping Over and Cape Wrath. So was this her plan all along? Is this a concept borne of a creative genius? Or just a label's attempts at recreating past successes.

Either way, pretty but dull music video.