Once in a while a popular music artist comes along who seems to appeal not only to ordinary audiences, but to academics too. One only has to recall the embrace of Bob Dylan in the 1960s and David Bowie in the 1970s and 1980s to realise that performers who combine intelligence, creativity and a mission to make political progress can inspire scholars in cultural studies and popular music research to discuss their phenomenon. Lady Gaga is one such artist. Not only is she a female role model who achieved global popularity, but she has also combined pop and art in a way that questions the fixity of gender and offers hope to fans of marginalised identities. It is not surprising, then, that there has been a flurry of articles, books and theorizing devoted to Gaga and her phenomenon. Jack Halberstam's Reference Halberstam2012 concept of ‘Gaga feminism’ set the benchmark for a range of scholars to use Gaga to explore their academic interests and rethink their ideas. Working in the fields of musicology and music aesthetics, Martin Iddon and Melanie L. Marshall have put together an edited volume that demonstrates a range of perspectives on Gaga as a complex and evolving celebrity text. I say ‘text’ because, as the subtitle implies, the emphasis is on performance here, and its close reading in relation to intertextuality, rather than any sustained focus on media production or audience reception. There is still a lot to talk about; as the editors immediately explain, ‘Lady Gaga's output is firmly embedded in an intellectual pop culture tradition’ (p. 1). Her music videos and other representations reflect up on queerness, technology, disability, monstrosity and authenticity in fascinating ways. The consequent enthusiasm of the book's contributors is almost palpable. What unites them is an effort to frame Gaga in relation to contemporary theories from a range of disciplines and subdisciplines, plus a positive understanding of the singer's creative project.

Iddon and Marshall's book is divided into two sections: the first on Gaga's many contexts, and the second on the broad topic of Gaga and representation. This does not seem to interfere with the process of reading Lady Gaga and Popular Music, however. In fact, the editors have tended to pair up some chapters on associated topics. So, for example, Chapters 2 and 3 deal with Gaga's controversial costumes, While chapters 7 and 8 both address her videos for ‘Telephone’ and ‘Paparazzi’. Iddon and Marshall have recruited some experienced popular music scholars, among others, to discuss a wide range of topics. Stan Hawkins leads the first section with a lucid analysis of Gaga's ‘Judas’ music video. For Hawkins, Gaga's over-stylised gendered performance ‘activates a vision of the carnival of the oppressed’ (p. 16). Next, Lucy O'Brien examines Gaga's connections to fashion, especially the star's famous donning of ‘that’ Franc Fernadez ‘meat dress’ at the MTV Video Music Awards in 2010. O'Brien argues, ‘Gaga is a perfect example of pliable postfeminism. She operates in a pop cultural milieu where it is clumsy to be too literal, where the past has little significance’ (p. 32). The London-based scholar concludes: ‘Even if the meat dress wasn't a conscious feminist choice, the confluence of image and idea lends itself to a feminist reading’ (p. 41). Sally Gray and Anusha Rutnam continue the sartorial discussion by locating Gaga's costuming in relation to couture, gay culture and post-fashion. They contribute an interesting discussion of the gender politics of Gaga temporarily cross-dressing as the invented character Joe Calderone, concluding that Gaga's sartorial performance is not a reflection of her ‘true personality’, but it is instead ‘sophisticated and informed’: a creative project evolving in relation to its own previous incarnations and perhaps more about Gaga's own choice as an artist than the industrial inputs of her record label or fashion advisors (p. 61).

The next two chapters offer further, fascinating perspectives on Gaga's image. Lisa Colton places Gaga's 2009 song ‘Telephone’ in relation to previous songs on the same theme, then explores the gendering of telephones as a form of communicative technology. She concludes that analysis of the song shows how Gag embraces the politics of diversity, equality and female empowerment. Paul Hegarty, on the other hand uses the ideas of Georges Bataille to begin talking about Gaga and eroticism. Keeping the focus on French theory, Craig Owens explores Gaga's celebrity image in relation to Deleuze and Guattari's notion of a ‘body without organs’. Owens's account names diverse aspect of what he calls the ‘Gaga assemblage’, which, towards the end of the chapter, includes her engagement with horror monster images, such as that of the zombie.

The second part of Lady Gaga and Popular Music deals with Gaga's relationship to representation in the broadest sense. Lori Burns and Marc Lafrance start the section with a discussion of the videos for ‘Paparazzi’ and ‘Telephone’ in relation to celebrity, spectacle and surveillance. Their scene-by-scene analysis includes discussion of race, gender and disability. The two scholars conclude that Gaga and her director Jonas Åkerland embed a complex critique of stardom and fandom in their collaborative work. Carol Vernallis, on the other hand, shows how the video for ‘Paparazzi’ superimposes classic Hollywood narrative structures on its musical form. Simon Warner takes on a different theme, and explores Gaga's wider participation in television, and in particular her mutual affiliation with Glee and associated support for gay rights. Alexandra Apolloni's chapter is about Gaga's cyborg persona and the way it links to representations of disability. Apolloni suggests that Gaga's performance on the video for ‘Paparazzi’ casts technology as enabling while celebrity is framed as a ‘disabling force’ (p. 205).

This is followed by Theresa Geller's fascinating and timely essay on ‘monstrous masculinities’ and Gaga's performance of ‘trans/affect’ when she adopted the character of Jo Calderone at the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards. Geller carefully explores how drag deconstructs the essentialism claimed for gender by saying that it ‘transubstantiates’ sex into signs. She concludes by asking what it means for female stars to ‘occupy the space of transmen’ and argues that it allows an encounter with the sublime (p. 227). Melanie L. Marshall's chapter is novel and equally engaging; it examines the Gaga phenomenon through controversies around food. Co-editor Martin Iddons rounds off the collection, not with a conclusion but with a ‘supplement’ in which he considers Lady Gaga as a cipher: ‘she reveals too that the role of the celebrity is no more or less a performance – with no original … she is, as a celebrity, only present insofar as she presents her own absence’ (p. 261). Iddons argues that this is not mere postmodern simulation, but that Gaga brings absence itself to the forefront of her image and continually makes it legible (p. 262). His work presents a rather spectral ending to a diverse and timely collection.

Lady Gaga and Popular Music presents an array of contributions unified in the fact that they are relatively celebratory of their subject. They ignore Gaga's earliest beginnings flirting with go-go dancing in New York's bohemian club culture. They dismiss claims that she is unoriginal. To ask for a volume that is more ‘critical’ of its chosen artist does seem appropriate, however. As popular music scholars, why should we judge? A more useful question might be to ask whether the interpretive and theoretical frameworks that the contributors present can offer significant insights into Lady Gaga as as a spectacular, and in some ways spectacularly ‘queer’, pop performer. On that score, many of the chapters more than deliver. There are a few caveats, however. The first is that, at least in my own view, the deeper contributors got into the realms of cultural theory, the more abstract and less insightful they seemed to become. A small minority of chapters read like their writers were perhaps more interested in their pet theorists than in Gaga herself, although there were plenty of others that got the blend exactly right. Second, while the book is very diverse and interdisciplinary, it read as if the long-running debates in popular music studies that discuss pop and authenticity, for example, were unimportant or non-existent. That seemed a shame to me. While some such scholarship emerged as a reaction to MTV and the 1980s era, questions of artifice continue to be an issue that informs how music is performed and understood, albeit in new ways. Finally, since the collection makes a strong case that Gaga's celebrity text is an inherently artistic and creative one, a chapter would have been very useful comparing the famed singer to Warhol, especially since they have both made celebrity central to their art. Lady Gaga and Popular Music is, in many ways, a state of the art collection and a useful addition to the Routledge series, Studies in Popular Music. It will be interesting to see how the book stands up in years to come, when Gaga assumes her place in the parade of pop history. My guess is that it will both stand up and act as testament to a diverse and thriving intellectual field.