"Writing a record is like dating a few men at once. You take them to the same restaurants to see if they measure up, and at some point you decide who you like best. When you make music or write or create, it’s really your job to have mind-blowing, irresponsible, condomless sex with whatever idea it is you’re writing about at the time.” -- from current issue of Blender

I've been feeling lately like Lady Gaga is the official signification that the hipster-electro scene has become completely embedded and devoured by pop culture. As if American Apparel's proliferation didn't already tell us that. Or the moment Gap started making skinny jeans.

But Gaga signifies a much deeper infiltration: her style is a celebration of narcissistic glamor that I think was at first intended as ironic, but has lost its original parodic elements and indeed turned into an exclusive and popular style. That is to say, I think anyone who dresses the way she does five years ago was implicitly mocking popular culture. But now that style IS popular culture, and thus the element of parody is lost.

This was perhaps most clear when Christina Aguilera blatantly ripped off her style when she performed at MTV's VMAs last year.