The previous post in this series went live last week. Be sure to check out The Envelope's new blog Awards Tracker to stay up to date on all things Oscars, Tonys, Emmys, Grammys and more. Don't fret, Pop & Hiss Grammy fans, this blog will keep you informed of anything of Grammy importance that you need to read on Awards Tracker.

The Grammy Awards went young -- and pop -- in 2010, awarding crossover teen star Taylor Swift the show's top crown -- album of the year. Will the popularity trend continue, or will voters finally throw a curve and honor something a bit more unexpected? Answers will be forthcoming soon enough. 

Grammy ballots were due Wednesday, and nominations will be revealed in early December. Here's a look at some of the likely nominations -- and perhaps some deserving ones. 

This is Part 2 of a two-part post. Looking for thoughts on the Arcade Fire, Eminem and more? Those are in Part 1. 

Lady Gaga, "The Fame Monster" (Interscope)

Grammy potential: This is sort of a wild card. Sales have surpassed 1.3 million, according to Nielsen SoundScan, and voters embraced Gaga in 2010, giving her an album of the year nod for "The Fame." Television plays a part here, as Grammy no doubt wants the Monday-morning talk that a Gaga performance typically brings. Yet "The Fame Monster" is only eight tracks, and could be classified more as an EP than an album. Though Gaga has supported it as if it's a full-length release, voters may wait till her 2011 album rather than nominate a shortened effort.

Grammy deserving: Again, this is kind of a toss-up. With "The Fame" scoring an album of the year nomination in 2010, voters happily embraced Gaga's spectacle, and in terms of major pop stars, this year's field lacks a Beyoncé or a Black Eyed Peas (don't expect to see a Ke$ha or a Katy Perry in the album of the year field). From start to finish, "The Fame Monster" packs more hooks, and more weirdness, than "The Fame," and tracks such as "Bad Romance" and "Alejandro" have instantly become Gaga signatures. 

Bob Leone fondly remembers the first time he met Lady Gaga. The pop star wasn't donning one of her outlandish costumes made of meat or hair and she wasn't anywhere close to ranking on any Forbes list.

She actually couldn't even pick her head up off the floor.

"She was painfully shy. A lot of people think she was born Lady Gaga. She wasn't. Stefani Germanotta was a whole nother person," he recalls of the first time he saw a reserved young Germanotta attend one of his open mic nights in New York City with her mother.

Leone, a former director for the Songwriters Hall of Fame, approached the teen -- she was around 13 or 14 at the time -- and asked her to perform onstage after she sat timidly in the audience for two weeks in a row.

"She would sit there with her face to the floor. I approached her and said, 'Look, I want to see what you've got … if you've got it in you. The next open mic she sat down at the piano and blew everyone away. She's an excellent keyboardist, and had a decent voice for someone that age. I was struck by the quality of songwriting," Leone said. "It was obvious she had a special talent. It was clear even then."

He began working with Germanotta for several years and assumed the role of manager for six months in 2006, he said, under two conditions: it had to be part time (he was still employed with the Hall of Fame), and once a major label showed interest, he would step aside in favor of a manager that could give her full-time attention.

Responding to a piece of pop-musical analysis by Camille Paglia carries risks not unlike those involved in publishing images of a burning Koran. She is a self-serving provocateur with a dogmatic world view, more interested in swatting down others' assertions than in advancing cultural discourse. Remember the bad old days of the early 1990s, when she first made a splash, trashing feminism in order to elevate her idol Madonna and blaming college girls for walking into the "Testosterone Flats" of fraternity row and getting themselves date-raped?

Well, now Paglia's back, saying absolutely nothing that advances our world view in her attack on Lady Gaga published in London's Sunday Times. She attacks Gaga as not just unsexy, but also "stripped of genuine eroticism"; she argues that Gaga's embrace of freaks is insincere because she herself has a privileged background. Downplaying Gaga's sincere advocacy of gay rights, she calls her a corporate shill; ignoring the new ways in which she's deployed familiar images and sounds, she simply says she's unoriginal. Decrying Gaga, Paglia also trashes her fans as emotionally impoverished, and (diehard baby boomer that she is) expresses longing for fleshy 1960s heroines such as Tina Turner and Janis Joplin.

Once again, Paglia's arguments have smart, progressive people up in arms. I hate to join the fray running around trying to swat this fly.

Like Pastor Terry Jones, Paglia was an isolated figure who gained influence because her provocations complemented anxieties that were reaching a fever pitch when she emerged. In Paglia's case, feminism, not Islam, was the looming threat; her writing has sought to return gender relations to what she sees as a natural order. Her prose style is bloody and lurid and sometimes effectively comical, like a Rob Zombie-directed horror movie; it's hard to turn away.

But her assertions -- some of the bigger ones back in the day were that men were dogs, that women ruled  them by firing up their libidos; that feminists were a bunch of "sob sisters" to suggest that heterosexual relationships might reflect the larger realities of patriarchal powers; oh, and that the great feminist journalist Susan Faludi looked like a puppy dog -- basically sounded like reheated bohemian machismo, Henry Miller and Norman Mailer on a beer binge.

So -- Lady Gaga's meat dress at the VMAs last night. Times food blogger Jessica Gelt found it unsanitary and wasteful. Times art critic Christopher Knight found it trite and passe.

While my instinct as a nine-year vegan was to promptly dry heave at the sight of such a thing, let's assume she meant what she said that it's an indictment of the treatment of gays and lesbians in America. Wearing a dress made of raw flank steak is a real funny way to make a point about compassion and empathy.

And that's not to mention the absolute inanity of the metaphor itself, as if she were saying, "America treats gay people like meat, you see, and I will call attention to this fact by draping myself in it." That's some real Helene Cixous-level gender and sexual identity discourse there.

We're partial to Gaga's music and provocations around these parts, but doing something pointlessly repellent and vicious towards animals at a video awards show and calling it a commentary on gay rights doesn't advance any conversation or change a single person's mind about the virtues of marriage equality.

This feels more like a tipping point in revealing that Gaga's antics aren't in service of any real, learned feminism, activism or even pop-art bomb throwing. It's just about her. And if something's got to die to make her point? Well. Art!

[UPDATED: If Gaga is interested in a primer on the intersection of sexual violence and meat imagery, Carol J. Adams might prove an intriguing introduction to the topic for her.]

-- August Brown

Photo credit: Mario Anzuoni / Reuters

When Lady Gaga breathes, it’s an event. That’s not just hyperbole. The pop art star’s gasps, coming fast and frequent as she stopped to pose during her Staples Center concert Wednesday, played an important role in her performance.

The sound of Gaga’s exertion kept things real, on a gut level, despite the many fantastical outfits, elaborate sets and dreamlike films featured in this arena-sized reworking of her Monster Ball show. It reminded the audience that this self-created freak deity is also a woman working hard, testing the limits of her 24-year-old body.  Panting, sweating, even sometimes breaking into a little sob, Gaga continually shattered the fancy frames she puts around her music, stepping through the fantasy to force an encounter with the “very naked girl with a foul mouth” who still lives, she insists, within those intricate costumes.

Since the Monster Ball last came to Los Angeles last December in its Nokia Theatre-sized version, Gaga and her collaborators have grown the sets and expanded the show’s arc. The arena setup allowed the star and her dancers to writhe and shimmy on a ramp in the midst of the crowd, providing up-close views of  her Barbie Fairytopia-on-acid outfit, her sequined biker chick unitard, and her patent leather espionage ensemble, to name a few. As she moved through her many hits -- "Poker Face," "Bad Romance," "Just Dance" and "Alejandro" among them -- the main stage housed props like a steaming yellow taxi and a mini-subway train, as well as Gaga’s lascivious dancers and her cartoonishly hard rocking band.

When it was first mounted in theaters, the Monster Ball was an impressionistic journey into Gaga’s fluorescent subconscious, with a strong moral: Embrace individuality and practice compassion to gain happiness. Standing up for the community of “freaks” -- club kids, drag queens, metalheads, free thinkers in general -- with whom she identifies, Gaga presented herself as the glorious spawn of the cultural underground’s long, daring history, crediting her fans (her “Little Monsters”) for building the bohemias that nurtured her.

Lady Gaga -- real name Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta -- has, over the course of a few scant years, scaled to pop heights not witnessed since the glory days of Madonna (and we're not just talking about those 10-inch Alexander McQueen heels). Not a week goes by that she's not in the news for something or other. Her Lollapalooza turn this past weekend confirmed her stature, as if there were any doubt, as America's new Queen of Pop.

Gaga commences the first of a two-night stint at Staples Center in downtown L.A. on Wednesday night; Times pop critic Ann Powers will be there to review the show. In the meantime, the graphic below provides a few details that Gaga's so-called "little monsters" might enjoy. For a more nuanced look at Gaga, read Powers' fascinating conversation with the artist.

-- Randall Roberts

 

(Chart compiled by Todd Martens and Gerrick D. Kennedy)

The Recording Academy has altered the eligibility rules for the best new artist category at its annual Grammy Awards, amending the fine print to allow for some leeway if an artist had been previously nominated. The changes will be in place for the 53rd annual Grammy Awards, which are set for Feb. 13 at downtown's Staples Center.  

Best new artist has long been one of the most contentious categories at the Grammy Awards, with veteran artists often showing up on the ballot. This year, for instance, Silver Lake's Silversun Pickups were in the running, despite having a commercial breakthrough with their 2006 debut, "Carnavas." The year before, Disney's Jonas Brothers scored a best new artist nomination, despite having a top 10 album in prior eligibility years. 

Headlines were made when Lady Gaga, who shot to international superstardom with her debut effort, "The Fame," was deemed not eligible for the best new artist field. Lady Gaga was nominated at the 2009 awards for her single "Just Dance," which was submitted in the best dance recording field. At the time, it was noted than an artist who had received a nomination at a previous ceremony could not be in the running for best new artist at a future Grammy program.

The changes for 2011 will allow for an act in a similar situation to be considered for best new artist, provided the act or group did not win a Grammy. This will be good news to rap artists such as Kid Cudi and Drake, both of whom were nominated for singles at the 2010 awards but failed to win. 

We all know who's going to win this one, even if the rockers don't want to admit it. Lollapalooza, the annual music festival held in Chicago's Grant Park, has announced the set times for its 2010 installment, and the two Friday night headliners, the Strokes and Lady Gaga, will be performing at the same time. The Strokes, who are returning after a three-year hiatus, will perform on the Budweiser stage; Lady Gaga will perform on the South stage.

You can find the entire schedule here.

Oh, and, yes, that is the brand new Gaga clip embedded above, for the song "Alejandro." Directed by fashion photographer Steve Klein, the clip reinforces the notion that no one understands the convergence of image and music right now better than Gaga.  

-- Randall Roberts

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After accepting the imposingly named BMI Icon Award on  Tuesday night, rocker John Fogerty strapped on a guitar and blazed like a bullet train through a brief sampling of the even more imposing songbook that earned him the career honor at the performing rights organization's annual dinner at the Beverly Wilshire hotel.

“I got a little scared with that ‘icon’ stuff,” the 64-year-old Rock and Roll Hall of Fame member said good-naturedly just before peeling off nearly a dozen rock classics such as “Green River,” “Travelin' Band,” “Up Around the Bend,” “Bad Moon Rising,” “Fortunate Son” and “Proud Mary,” along with a couple of newer tunes for several hundred fellow songwriters and other members of Broadcast Music Inc., the organization that collects and distributes publishing royalties to songwriters.

As this year’s Icon honoree, Fogerty joins a class of celebrated songwriters that includes Paul Simon, Brian Wilson, James Brown, Willie Nelson, Carlos Santana, the Jacksons and Dolly Parton.

Shortly before the ceremony, Fogerty told me that his interest in songwriting was spurred when he was 3, and his mother gave him a children’s recording of “Camptown Races” and “Oh! Susanna,” taking time to point out the name of the writer of those two American folk standards: Stephen Foster.

“I’ve thought about that a lot over the years,” he said. “I don’t know why she did that,  but after that I was always attracted to great songwriters, people like Irving Berlin, Hoagy Carmichael, who was one of my favorites, Cole Porter and George Gershwin. When I saw the [1946] movie ‘Night and Day’ about Cole Porter, as a kid I thought, ‘Hey, that’s pretty good -- they made a movie about this guy. He must be important.’ ” 

Never one to put her poison pen down for long, the agit-pop rapper M.I.A. has turned her ire toward Lady Gaga in a recent NME interview (unfortunately, unavailable in original form online). In it, she tosses off probably the best one-line takedown of Gaga yet put to print.

How important are image and visuals to your music?

Very. But it’s not like “Haus of Gaga” (laughs). Me blindfolded with naked men feeding me apples and ....

It comes as part of a longer, must-read ethering centered around  a popular criticism of Gaga’s music: that her fashion sense seems to far exceed her songs in terms of future-thinking ambition. 

“None of her music’s reflective of how weird she wants to be or thinks she is. She models herself on Grace Jones and Madonna, but the music sounds like 20-year-old Ibiza music, you know? She’s not progressive, but she’s a good mimic…. That’s a talent and she’s got a great team behind her, but she’s the industry's last stab at making itself important - saying, ‘You need our money behind you, the endorsements, the stadiums.’ Respect to her, she’s keeping a hundred thousand people in work, but my belief is: Do It Yourself.”

In New York magazine’s earlier, fantastic profile of Gaga, one of the more intriguing subplots is how much shape-shifting Gaga went through to become a star known for morphing – from grungy rocker to drum-machine-driven hope of Def Jam to the kind of arena-trance pop that finally clicked. The story suggests that the whole point of Gaga is that others project ideas onto her charisma and taste, but that her charisma and taste are as flexible as her desire for fame and influence requires.

Will the kids call it Lollapagaga?

Perry Farrell's long-running alternative music festival Lollapalooza announced Wednesday morning which bands would rock Chicago's Grant Park Aug. 6-8. Headliners ranged from alt-pop rockers Green Day to top 40 dance phenom Lady Gaga.

Other acts include Soundgarden (who will reunite for the first time since 1997), Arcade Fire, Devo, Cypress Hill, The Strokes, Wolfmother, Gogol Bordello, Drive By Truckers, Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros, Phoenix, Social Distortion, Jimmy Cliff, Spoon, The New Pornographers, The xx, AFI, Erykah Badu, Metric, Blitzen Trapper, Grizzly Bear, Minus the Bear,Yeasayer, and dozens more.

The three-day traveling festival originated in 1991 and had a strong run through '97. In 2003 Farrell resurrected the tour for an additional year. In 2004 there was no concert or tour, but in '05 Farrell and his partners settled in on hosting a two-day festival in Chicago's Grant Park. The popularity of the Chicago event turned Lollapalooza into a three-day affair in 2006, which it has maintained ever since. 

Much like our local Coachella and Tennesse's Bonnaroo, Lollapalooza often draws the biggest names in alternative and pop music -- sometimes some of the same artists play all three festivals. Jay-Z, for example, will headline both Coachella and Bonnaroo. 

Individual tickets for Lollapalooza have sold out, but three-day passes are still available for $215.

We here in Los Angeles expect an East Coast bias from ESPN. Now with all due respect, we do, however, feel a little -- how shall we say, dishonored? -- when such favoritism is evident in our rappers. 

Dr. Dre unveiled some Boston Red Sox-branded headphones Sunday night at baseball's opening day game -- a bout between the only two teams network executives care about -- and we can't help but feel a little burned by the lil' devils pictured to the right. Really, Dre, did you have to coat it in blue? That hits Dodgers fans where it hurts.

But the release of the latest Dre-branded/endorsed product would certainly be forgiven if it brought us closer to some actual new music. That's apparently the case, but you'll forgive us a little skepticism.

In a pre-game interview posted on NESN.com, in which Dre proudly sports a Red Sox jersey (we'll pretend this is largely an anti-Yankee sentiment), Dre and Interscope chief Jimmy Iovine reveal that the Los Angeles rapper has a collaboration with New York's No. 1 cheerleader in Jay-Z titled "Under Pressure," a song that sounds finished enough that Dre is already imagining it as walk-on music at a baseball game. 

All fine and dandy, but we refuse to get excited this time. No, we've been hurt before. "Detox," the followup to Dre's 1999 album "2001," has been an urban myth since about 2002. Back in 2007, Dre told The Times that "Detox" was two or three songs from completion. "I was really hoping to have it out this year, but it's going to have to be pushed back a while because of some other things I've got to work on," he said.

Indeed, Dre hasn't exactly been agoraphobic, and in the eight-plus years that Dre has spent working on "Detox," his supposed last album, there's been plenty of distractions. Some of Dre's greatest post-"2001" hits -- of the non-music sort -- are listed below.