There’s really no way of knowing if TwentyFourBit followers like, hate, or love Amanda Palmer because our handful of posts about her tend to go up late at night with little fanfare. Either way, Palmer always has some thought-provoking, pseudo-feminist things to say and she’s kind of like an extroverted, female version of Jeff Mangum in my mind, so here goes nothing…
Before cutting a demo version via GarageBand or dictaphone (à la Conor Oberst), Palmer took her ukulele-backed “blog response to [a] discussion about Lady Gaga” directly to the YouTube masses. What follows is a vague defense of Gaga’s fashion and pop sensibilities by way of comparing her plight as a “23 and a half year old” female musician to that of other generations—specifically Palmer, who is almost exactly ten years her senior, and Madonna, who was the “first one to often have no clothes on.”
What starts out as an explanation of Gaga, Palmer, and Madonna as “part of the music continuum” ends up a kind of bizarro “Williamsburg Will Oldham Nightmare” (aka the questioning of the purpose of an artist’s struggle). For example, check out this fun Jeffrey Lewis-esque run-on toward the end:
Like Lady Gaga and also Madonna I’m just trying to entertain people, make a living and pay my rent without having to get a job I hate and hopefully find an audience who will love and accept me and not think I’m a narcissist for wanting to be a performer and find inner peace and that’s it.
I love it. Watch “Gaga Palmer Madonna” here or below: