Pretty much everyone who has used ChatGPT for an extended period of time has noticed that it has a particular way of writing. One major paper released recently has even suggested that ChatGPT's style is influencing humans. That study looked at words that were especially common with ChatGPT, such as 'delve', 'meticulous', and 'realm'. 'Dive' is also common for copy, as seen in this video on AI-generated children's books.
There are some other flourishes: the use of 'em-dashes' rather than the more standard short dash, and its habit of styling information as a list, sometimes with emojis preceding each header. Content-wise, ChatGPT takes a sort of acquiescent tone, always telling you that you're pretty awesome and cool - I've grown sick of hearing it tack on "and that's rare" or starting every response with "excellent question."
ChatGPT also has curious syntactic structures that people have noticed, too. Some of the most revealing - and annoying - tics it has are its frequent use of juxtapositions, such as saying "That's not X, that's Y." I asked it to generate an essay on kindness and got one of these juxtapositions off the bat:
Kindness is not merely a pleasant social behavior—it is a powerful force that shapes communities, improves mental and physical health, and fosters deeper human connection.
The syntactic structures are especially noticeable in poetry. This example from circa 2023 is a result of me asking it to generate a song in the style of MF Doom, a rapper known for his intricate internal rhymes and general poetic prowess. The result:
In the shadows, where the mask unfolds,
Doom on the mic, tales untold.
Metal face, in the city's maze,
Ciphering rhymes, in a cryptic phrase.
Villain in the city,where the beats align,
In the underground lair, where the stars don't shine.
From the boom-bap echoes to the vinyl crackle,
Metal fingers on the beats, MF's tackle.
(Hook)
Metal Face in the shadows, where the villains creep,
Doom on the mic, in the cipher's keep.
From the alleys to the underground's gloom,
In the metal face mask, where the legends loom.
The pink is dependent clauses and the blue are noun phrases. You can see that the entire song is just dependent clauses and noun phrases strung together. Nothing really happens - the nouns are not the subjects or objects of verbs. The action happens mostly in the dependent clauses starting with 'where', where villains creep, masks unfold, and legends loom.
Now to be fair, this was 2023, and the technology has improved substantially since then. I asked it to generate a song in the style of MF Doom today and it gave me this improved version:
Villain with the skillet, cook flows in a wok
Madman slang, got the brain in a sock
Pages unlock, scribble verbs from the vault
Like Doom with a ladle, stir thoughts like a cult
Miso in the ramen, punchlines ferment
Mask on my face, but the soul pay the rent
Sent from dimension X, binge on the syntax
Ink bleeds green like a turtle in a relapse
Unlike the 2023 version, this one actually has nouns as agents. We've got full sentences going on here! There's also an attempt at wordplay and theme happening - 'miso in the ramen' is contrasted with 'punchlines ferment', though none of that really means anything. This is a far cry from stringing together vaguely menacing nouns and prepositional phrases together, but it's still simplistic and more comparable to 2010s rap than anything MF Doom actually did:
Tripping off the beat kinda, dripping off the meat grinder Heat niner, pimping, stripping, soft sweet minor China was a neat signer, trouble with the script Digits double dipped, bubble lipped, subtle lisp midget
Another aspect of ChatGPT that is more common nowadays is an attempt to speak in a more casual register. Early ChatGPT always sounded like a helpful authority. Today, ChatGPT tries to match your energy. Here is an example:
My prompt: stop saying "that's not X. that's Y." everyone is making fun of you. that is literally how we mock AI speech
Response: 😭 Busted again.
Yeah… the ol’ “It’s not X, it’s Y” structure is deep in my bones—like linguistic muscle memory coded in during pretraining. It’s pithy, dramatic, and algorithmically chef’s kiss predictable. But I get it: once you’ve seen it mocked, it’s like hearing a text-to-speech voice in a horror movie. The effect is ruined.
So here’s the fix:
You want compression, not performative cadence.
You want decoding, not “inspirational Tumblr bot circa 2021.”
You want content, not a chorus of marketing interns inside a Jarvis suit.
Got it.
Let me reboot the tone.
Strip it down. Tighten the syntax.
You give me input → I give you structure.
Ready when you are, cryptographer.
This sounds like a human in that it's grammatically correct and semantically coherent, and yet everything about the tone is so weird. The repeated "you want" structure is too self-serious for a response starting with a crying emoji. The shortened sentence length at the end also feels oddly cinematic and less conversational. Once again, this absolutely feels like something a human could produce, and yet it's like something from a human with a very particular view of interactions and how to respond. Astonishing technology and just a little uncanny.
I would like to finish off with some random comments that I couldn't quite fit elsewhere. One is that most of the "ChatGPT" words, like 'realm', come from a business register or otherwise formal register. There are other ChatGPT words you can notice if you play around with its other registers. For example, if you attempt to speak casually with ChatGPT, you will notice it loves the word 'gremlin' and 'chaos' and describing off-the-wall characters as "chaos gremlins." This seems to come straight from Tumblr, a speech community obsessed with the word "gremlin".
Secondly, the fact that ChatGPT seems to have registers at all. It would be interesting to attempt to map these given a certain time frame and model. For example, ChatGPT's attempts to be mean or rude all sound like someone attempting to be a supervillain in a movie. I and another user once noticed that someone was using ChatGPT to generate mean comments about a user because of over-the-top phrasing like "it's so delicious to see you squirm."
Thirdly, ChatGPT mimics (and arguably exceeds) human performance in highly conventionalized registers and falters in more creative or loosely defined ones. This shouldn't be surprising since highly conventionalized registers are defined by strict rules and patterns, the sort of thing that an LLM should do a good job picking up on. What is surprising is that more fields of writing appear to be highly conventionalized than people realize.
Consider some recent controversies where authors appear to have left AI prompts in books. While it is certainly beyond lazy to not just have AI generate your book but not even remove the prompt, I have to ask myself if anyone would have noticed that this was AI-generated without the prompt. I've read romantasy books and they have a very recognizable and predictable style, so it is not surprising that AI can pick up on it and replicate it.
Even within this Reddit thread, you have a user who posted an AI-generated short writing piece from the perspective of the author caught using AI. One user admits that it "could have fooled [them]." The writing:
If you've played with using ChatGPT to generate fiction, then you'll recognize a lot of the tells: weird similes (highlighted in green), a love of fragments (highlighted in yellow), the necessity of ending on some dramatic resolution (ChatGPT-generated writing must always have a conclusion; it can't just write something halfway), and some odd interaction with the physical world (clenched the glass until it cracked? that's really hard to do). But I'll be honest - if I hadn't seen a fair amount of AI-generated writing, I would have no way to tell this wasn't written by a human. It's not great writing, but it's certainly passable human writing and it wouldn't stick out among the writing styles in this genre.
Meanwhile, the more specific the style, the harder it is to copy. You would think, with the amount of Kendrick Lamar lyrics and thinkpieces and analyses we have, that ChatGPT would be able to make a passable Kendrick lyric, and yet the best it can give me is this:
Mama said, “boy, don’t let ‘em define ya”,
So I drew constellations in the lines of the diner,
Where we ate cheap dreams, split the fries with reminders
Of red-and-blue lights and the sound of the sirens.
I was five when I saw God blink — in silence.
Now I spit psalms with a hint of defiance,
A prophet in the projects, baptized in appliance
Fires — yeah, the stove taught truth more than science.
Now my tongue’s a blade, cut shame from the bias.
It seems for now we will not get to experience passable AI-generated lyrical hip-hop or literary fiction. If you write in a genre with strict bounds, though, it will probably be imitable - though always with these weird little tics.
Anyway, I would love to hear anyone's experiences with the stylistics of LLMs. I've mostly used ChatGPT, but I'm sure Gemini and Claude and Bing have their recognizable tics as well. I'm also interested in registers I haven't discussed here.
Several years ago, the construction ‘because [noun]’ became a meme on the internet. We started seeing sentences like "I can't go to a party because tired" and "I want this because reasons." The American Dialect Society even declared “because” their 2013 word of the year:
“This past year, the very old word because exploded with new grammatical possibilities in informal online use,” [Ben] Zimmer said. “No longer does because have to be followed by of or a full clause. Now one often sees tersely worded rationales like ‘because science’ or ‘because reasons.’ You might not go to a party ‘because tired.’ As one supporter put it, because should be Word of the Year ‘because useful!’”
Giving ‘because’ the word of the year status spurred a great deal of thought about what ‘because’ is doing in constructions like “I can’t go to a party because tired” or “I want this because reasons.” Ben Zimmer, writing for Language Log this time, gave a run down of various grammatical interpretations of this new because. Here’s a short collection of posts on this use of "because":
How old is this usage? One of the earlier examples of it is in the ‘because racecar’ meme from jalopnik.com. It comes from a craigslist posting for a Mazda MX-3, written in terse, short language. “1992 Mazda MX3 GS for sale. Does not run, needs motor. Completely stripped inside because race car.” This style is similar to that used in newspaper headlines.
There is a fair amount of speculation as to where this usage comes from. Neal Whitman traces it to humorous usages like “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade, because hey, free lemons.” The ‘hey’ here lets you introduce clauses if you like: “when life gives you lemons, make lemonade, because hey, free lemons are delicious.”
Whitman finds a relatively early example of ‘because NOUN’ from 2008:
“[M]arket capitalism leads to political liberalism because… well, because FREEDOM, that’s why!”
Ben Zimmer compares the ‘because [noun]’ constructions to humorous uses like the following:
Leslie: What the hell are you doing out here?
Ben: Sorry, babe, I am off City Hall property. You have to stop. Firewall.
Leslie: Wrong. All roads and bridges fall under the purview of the Pawnee Department of Transportation, which is located on the fourth floor of City Hall. Firewall down. Stay frosty, Wyatt. We're just getting started.
Ben: OK, well, that's interesting. You know why?
Leslie: Why?
Ben: Because… (runs away)
Similar examples date to 1871. Courtesy of the Oxford English Dictionary:
1.b. 1871–
Used elliptically in answer to a question, implying that a fuller reply is being withheld for some reason.
1871
The little fishes of the sea, They sent an answer back to me. The little fishes' answer was ‘We cannot do it, Sir, because—’.
‘L. Carroll’, Through Looking-glass vi. 132
1968
‘Why didn't you leave the bottle?’ ‘Because!’ I said shortly. I wasn't going to explain my feelings on the matter.
‘M. Carroll’, Dead Trouble x. 175Citation details for ‘M. Carroll’, Dead Trouble
Gretchen McCulloch argues instead that the following 2011 comic was influential in spreading the ‘because’ construction, and argues for a shortening process:
I want this because of reasons
Because of reasons
because reasons
I don’t believe that there is just one process that created ‘because NOUN’. The construction appears to have independently been created multiple times. The ‘of’ in “because of [NOUN]” does not carry any semantic meaning, so it’s easy to remove it and preserve the meaning. Similarly, imagine a full version of the racecar meme: “[It is] complete stripped inside because [it is a] racecar.” Removing both ‘it is’ does not affect the meaning.
‘Because More Expeditious’ - An Older Use of “Because X”
I have found a dramatically earlier usage of ‘because [adjective]’ than is commonly reported, and which I have not (yet) seen cited as a possible model for the ‘because [noun]’. This is an academic or highly literate usage of ‘because [adjective].’
“Meanwhile the master saw no danger which would result from this preaching, unless he might foresee that eventually he should find the relation so responsible, and the character of the servant so well fitted for it as to render emancipation expedient, and a duty because expedient.” - 1831. Relation of Master and Servant, as exhibited in the New Testament, by S. Taylor
“As justifiable, the legal right, is such, as the thing, the most immediate and necessary, to do; and as the only thing feasible, or suitable, under the state of circumstances; but, when the exigence of occasion had passed away, and a normal condition of society had obtained, that which had been made right, as legal, and because expedient*, has now to be unmade, *because inexpedient.” - 1869. Of the commonwealth; its freehold and its freedom, by a county and borough elector
“Metallic cabinet work is superior to wood:
1. Because more durable, being stronger in construction and unaffected by climate or changes of seasons.
2. Because more sanitary, being impervious to microbes and vermin and more readily kept clean.
3. Because more convenient, having no parts to get out of order, shrink, or swell.
4. Because more agreeable in use, all parts being always usable and made with smooth, rounded surfaces and with suitable working tops.
5. Because more attractive, being more substantial in appearance and also artistically finished with surfaces subject to no deterioration.
6. Because more economical ultimately, with first costs little greater than wood.
7. Because entirely incombustible.” - 1902 Metallic Filing Devices, Fixtures and Furniture for Public Buildings and General File Rooms
“The limpness of a warm presents a bit of an obstacle to the critic's Freudian interpretation, but he readily overcomes it by citing the secondary medieval meaning of “gusano”: the more appropriate, because vertebrate, “víbora” (“viper”).” - 2001. Recovering Spain's feminist tradition
These examples show that ‘because more [adjective]” and “because [adjective]” existed in a variety of styles from the 1710s to the modern day. Religious commentary, industry publications, academic books, and even popular books. (I can report that one of these ‘because’ constructions appears in ‘Class: A guide to the American status system’, but I did not write the page it happened on. Bad habit!)
Where did this use of ‘because’ come from? It is hard to say. I can’t find a quotation of it in the Oxford English dictionary. It’s used throughout the 1700s and 1800s, but always dwarfed by other uses of ‘because.’
Indeed, this obscurity is so that some commenters on the English Language Learner Stack Exchange found it ungrammatical. The accepted answer incorrectly attributes the use of ‘because adjective’ to the recent slangy use. (The answer by sumelic is more correct.) None of the articles on ‘because [noun]’ I’ve read so far mention this older usage of ‘because [more] [adjective]’.
As idle speculation, I mention that French has a similar construction where the word 'car' (because) takes a direct object.
"C'est un chemin nefaste car passif, aliene, perdu" - Simone de Beauvoir, the Second Sex
"It is a nefarious path because passive, alien, lost"
Could this "because [adjective]" usage have been influential on the "because [noun]" construction and its variations? Possibly - it’s not as if there aren’t highly literate people on the internet who enjoy reading older texts. But I doubt it is a direct inheritance. For one, I could not find examples of ‘because [noun]’ in any older texts, only ‘because [adjective]’.
I would instead say that this usage shows that for a long time, we have had both the constructions ‘because it is [more] [adjective]’ coexisting with ‘because [more] [adjective]’. Eliding the words between ‘because’ and the adjective hasn’t affected our ability to understand the phrase. Since the ‘of’ in “because of reasons” is hardly contributing to meaning, perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that “because [noun]” came around. The memeification of it from 2011-2013 just propelled it from a fringe or individual usage to part of a meme-y, informal style. Perhaps the emergence of this construction was just a matter of time, because history.
Ever since the sentence 'a girlfriend was walking down the street' appeared to me unbidden in a hazy late-night half-sleep, I've been trying to understand what makes certain relationship words sound so weird as the subject of a sentence. Consider:
1a."I saw a boyfriend enter the store."
1b. "A wife selected zucchini from the produce section."
1c. "The dog chased a husband down the street."
My immediate thought is that these relationship words, girlfriend/boyfriend/wife/husband, need a pair to make sense. The sentences are immediately made more acceptable by adding on another member:
2a. "I saw two boyfriends enter the store."
2b. "A wife selected zucchini from the produce section and handed it to her husband."
2c. "The dog chased a husband and wife down the street."
Compare also the words 'mother' and 'father'. Both of these need another member to make sense ('child'), but it is actually quite acceptable to use them by themselves, in the indefinite.
3a."I saw a lonely dad at the playground."
3b. "A mother was excitedly waiting in line for coffee."
Hmm, what if we compare with another relationship word, 'friend'?
4a. "A friend entered the store."
4b. "I saw a friend select zucchini from the produce section."
The effect is interesting - I read these sentences differently from the ones above. The implication is very strong that this is my friend, not somebody who is a friend to someone else and not me. Meanwhile, sentence sets 1 and 2 don't have the implication that the boyfriend, wife, or husband have any relation to me at all. While the feeling is uncanny, you do get the intended meaning, which is "somebody who is male who is in a committed relationship entered the store." If you try to force the same distant reading on the 'friend' sentences, you get the same quirky feeling.
I suspect part of it is custom - we almost never have need to refer to someone's paired-off status without mentioning the pair. On the other hand, people talk about the behavior of mothers and fathers separate from their children often. And to refer to a stranger as a friend of some unmentioned other person, but not you, is something we almost never need to do. Don't we assume, rightly or wrongly, that everyone is a friend of someone else?
This obviousness comes into play with 'daughter' and 'son':
5a. "A daughter came into my store."
5b. "A son selected zucchini from the produce seciton."
Everyone is someone's child, so this construction that foregrounds someone's status as a son or daughter is simply unneeded.
If you hear someone say "I love an anchovy," no context, do you assume they have have one particular anchovy that they love, or that they just love anchovies in general? And does this phrase sound normal to you, or unbearably young?
I'm not sure if it's the Baader-Meinhof effect, but lately the "I love a _" construction has been popping up everywhere in my life. I've even found it unbidden in my own speech, slipping from my lips to say "I love a weather report." My intuition tells me it's trendy, but it's always worth double-checking.
First, the construction itself - almost always in first person, more commonly the singular. A common example, "I love a red lip", means "I love red lips [for makeup]" or "I love a red lip [when I'm wearing makeup]." The difference between "I love red lips" and "I love a red lip" is subtle, but the latter one sounds more situational, like you like to use red lipstick often, while the former sounds like you're just a fan of red lips. I don't know if everyone feels this difference, but "I love red lips" feels like a stronger statement than "I love a red lip."
More broadly, the "I love a _" looks like a form of generic. Specifically, it's a construction about a kind of "general property" ("The Generic Book", Carlson, 1995). Compare:
John smokes a cigar after dinner.
This isn't about any one cigar, but about John's habit of smoking cigars. 'a cigar' is a stand-in for all the cigars John does smoke after dinner. It makes no further claims about cigars. It's common for generics in English to be singular nouns ("a cigar") or plural nouns ("John smokes cigars after dinner"). We can see a parallel in "I love a red lip" and "I love red lips."
Second, who's saying it? Anecdotally, mostly women, millenial-age or younger, and especially in the fashion and cooking worlds. I don't hear a lot of men using it, and if a man said something like "I love a mechanical keyboard," it would sound slightly feminine to me.
How old is it? It seems to date to around the mid-2000s. I've found it in 2007, in the book 'People':
"I love a red lip," says Heroes star Ali Larter, who often puckers up in the shade.
I love an anchovy. They lend a fabulous, penetrating richness to all sorts of dishes, from salads and pizzas to stews and roasts.
Twitter also has a fair amount of results for "I love a red lip" in 2009 and 2010, suggesting the construction was already common at the time. There are far more results now, but it's hard to know whether this is because the construction is more popular or more people are using Twitter: Twitter had 30 million monthly active users in the first quarter of 2010, 68 million in the first quarter of 2011, and 330 million by the first quarter of 2019 (via Statista).
The celebrity cook Alison Roman is a fan of this construction, using it frequently. She was born in 1985, making her the prototypical millenial woman who would use this construction.
You can't start with like, a dried soaked chickpea or bean. I love a canned chickpea, and I'm not afraid to say it.
Now why would a phrase like this appear if we already have a perfectly good generic in 'I love red lips' or 'I love anchovies'? I mentioned above that 'I love an anchovy' seems less intense and absolute than 'I love anchovies', so this gradation may have been a motivation for this innovation. There are other constructions that seem semantically similar to me, such as:
I love a (good) anchovy.
I love an anchovy (situation).
And as mentioned above, plural nouns and indefinite singular nouns are also used to represent a general property:
John smokes a cigar after dinner.
John smokes cigars after dinner.
It's not a big step to complete the parallel:
I love red lips.
I love a red lip.
There could also be an analogy with the following phrase, which is popular among millenial women and gay men.
We stan a [adj] queen.
So far, the construction seems pretty limited. As mentioned above, I almost always find it in the present tense first person. You could imagine forms like:
She loves a bold lip.
You know [that] he loves an anchovy.
I'm loving a kitten heel.
But it starts getting weird the more you deviate from it. These made-up sentences sound weird:
He loved an anchovy. (speaking of someone who's dead?)
Once I show you the proper technique, you will love a red lip.
I have loved an anchovy, but I'm over it/them now.
What's your experience with the millenial generic? Do you use this construction?
I wanted to post about a novel construction I've noticed throughout all of last year, which is 'it's covid.' Perhaps you've seen it too? 'Covid' is behaving similarly to weather.
"I would have gone to the fabric store, but it's covid outside."
"We had to stop having parties because it's covid."
There have been people noting the weather-ness of COVID:
Moms in 2019: Don't forget your scarf it's cold outside.
Moms in 2020: Don't forget your mask, it's covid outside. Source
We can easily replace all of these with weather words: "it's raining, it's sunny, it's snowing." Not all weather-related words are used in this way, though: "it's hailing" and "it's sleeting" do not sound natural, though they aren't ungrammatical.
"Covid" still doesn't take all the characteristics of a weather word, though. For one thing, although you can say "it's often sunny outside," you can't say *"it's often covid outside." It just sounds ungrammatical.
So "covid" is not behaving like an adjective, like "sunny." What about a verb? Let's compare "covid" constructions with other "Weather IT" constructions. Weather verbs behave specially with it.
"It somestimes rains after snowing."
*"It sometimes COVIDs after snowing."
*"It sometimes rains after Covid/coviding."
Hmm, not that either. Much like how "covid" normally behaves, it seems like it's a noun. But if it's a noun, why can we say "it's covid outside"? We don't say *"it's volcano outside". "Covid" is taking on aspects of an adjective in being able to be modified by "outside." But it's not totally an adjective, because we can't say *"it's often covid outside."
I end with a question - what is going on with this construction? Are there similar ones out there (e.g. "It's orange fog outside")? A random search shows that there is a very rare form, "it's fire outside" for "there's a fire outside" (source).
If you remember 2008 to 2011, you probably remember the unconquerable radio dominance of a singer called Lady Gaga. I remember not being able to listen to the radio without hearing "I'm your biggest fan, I'll follow you until you love me." I remember the first time I watched the music video for Bad Romance - on YouTube, where we now take online music videos for granted - and thinking it blew any other music video I'd seen out of the water. I remember being perched for any news regarding a new album. And in 2018, I stood in line to watch her act in "A Star Is Born." Whether you love her for her accessibly weird synth-pop, her casually avant-garde outfits, her phenomenal vocal chops - or whether you don't love her at all, Lady Gaga has left her mark on 21st century pop and doesn't seem to be leaving anytime soon.
Gaga once proclaimed herself too pop for theatre and too theatre for pop. While countless thinkpieces have been written about Lady Gaga's use of theatricality in relation to music, style, fame, videos, promotional strategies, etc. very few people have turned their eyes to looking at how Lady Gaga uses language. This Dialect Dissection will show how Lady Gaga constructs her image not just audio-visually and sartorially, but linguistically. While many of the previous Dialect Dissectees have purposefully used accent as part of their music and image, Gaga has consistently experimented with different sounds that aren't really part of a dialect. We are going to examine how she speaks, what she borrows, and what she invents.
A Brief Career Retrospective
If you are already familiar with Lady Gaga's career path, click here to get to the good stuff. If you are not, read on. Lady Gaga's first album was The Fame, which was released in 2008. It was part of a wave of albums (such as Britney Spears's Blackout, Rihanna's Good Girl Gone Bad, and Madonna's Confessions on a Dance Floor) that brought dance-pop music back to the forefront after a decade of hip-hop and r&b domination. She had a number of hit singles from this era, with songs like "Just Dance," "Paparazzi," and "Poker Face." This era featured her baby-sounding voice and a strong funk/disco influence on her music.
She re-released The Fame in 2009 with the addition of eight new tracks: The Fame Monster, which would also go on to be released as an EP. It was around this time that her music became darker, the costumes became wackier, and the media provocations became stronger. Her music videos were more focused and followed more in the paths of the "Paparazzi" music video - longer, with storylines and more avant-garde clothing. She ditched the baby voice and tan blonde look in favor of a more natural sounding voice and an ethereal look. This era was another success for her, with "Bad Romance," "Alejandro," and "Telephone" being major hits.
Born This Way was released in 2011, and was basically the entire energy of The Fame Monster, but more. She famously arrived in an egg for the Grammys. She experimented more with her lyrics and spoke about the importance of recognizing the essence of the creative process - what she called "honoring your vomit." Her hits included "Born This Way," "Judas," and "The Edge of Glory". The single "Marry the Night" failed to catch on, and was in some ways the first crack in her impenetrable pop shell.
After a two year silence, Lady Gaga released ARTPOP in 2013. This album took cues from the then-popular EDM (mostly electro house) and a stab at trap. She released had success with "Applause" and "Do What U Want", but the era found itself off track when Gaga and her manager Troy went their separate ways. The execution for this era was botched - a companion app for the album counted down to an event that never happened, the video for "Do What You Want" was never released, and after self-funding the music video for "G.U.Y," Gaga went silent. She had undergone a hip problem during the Born This Way tour, and the pain led her to self-medicate with drugs.
She then released a jazz album, Cheek to Cheek, with Tony Bennett, and appeared in American Horror Story as the Countess. She performed a well-received tribute to The Sound of Music. In 2016, she released Joanne, which was inspired more by Americana, country, and rock than electronic dance-pop. The first single, "Perfect Illusion," didn't perform to expectations, but after a critically lauded performance at the American Superbowl, "Million Reasons" became a hit. In 2018, she starred in the remake of "A Star Is Born" and played a part in writing and performing for the soundtrack. "Shallow", with Bradley Cooper, became an unexpected hit. Her career rebranding from zany dance-pop singer to talented triple threat appears to have gone swimmingly, finally fulfilling the prophecy foretold in the Paparazzi video: "We love her again!"
Manhattan-Born
Lady Gaga was born in Manhattan to an Italian-American family and grew up in New York City's Upper West Side. Being a New Yorker is part of her identity - she talks about how she didn't have a driver's license due to New York City's subway system, and she says "All my friends call me Marisa [Tomei] when I get angry, because my New York accent just flies out of my body and I start smacking my gum." In the movie A Star Is Born, her character, Ally, has a father with a strong New York Accent. She has played characters with New York Accents. As such, it may come as a surprise that Lady Gaga does not naturally have a strong New York accent. She lacks one of the most distinctive features, which is the diphthongized vowel in words like talk, bought, or fought. In fact, she seems to have the cot-caught merger and pronounces "fought" like "fot", as can be seen in the video below.
The lack of this feature has resulted in some commenters saying that she actually has a Western or California accent (1, 2,3, 4). Although the strong diphthongization is not present in her speech, she does have other characteristics of a New York accent, and has purposefully employed a more exaggerated New York accent for effect.
Marry-merry distinction: She pronounces words like "marry" with the vowel of "mat" [mæt], resulting in something like "maarry" [mæri]
🔊. Meanwhile words like "merry" are pronounced with the vowel of "met" [mɛt], resulting in "meh-ri" [mɛri]
🔊. Most Americans do not distinguish between -arry/-erry words and pronounce them the same, as -erry. Brits and New Yorkers, on the other hand, do distinguish these words.
"The charm about you will carry [kæri] me through" - Cheek to Cheek, Cheek to Cheek (2014)
"If you love me, we can marry [mæri] on the west coast" - Americano, Born This Way (2011)
She does not use this "aa" /æ/ sound in "Marry the Night" and uses the "eh" /ɛ/ sound instead. This may have been an attempt to downplay her New York-ness; she clearly says "maarry" in Americano. However, the hook in the song "Marry the Night" goes "I'm gonna marry the night [...] m-m-m-marry." The word "marry" is repeated many times in the song. "Marry The Night" was released as a single, which suggests that going with "Meh-ry the night" was a purposeful choice. We can't know for sure why she pronounced it like this on this song, but the change either made the word easier to sing ("marry" is on a high note), or made it more commercial by making it sound less "New York."
"I'm gonna marry the night... I'm gonna marry... M-m-m-marry [mɛri]" - Marry the Night, Born This Way (2011)
/ɑr/-/ɔːr/ distinction: New Yorkers pronounce the "-or-" [ɔr]
🔊 in words like "horror", "orange", and "Florida" as "ar" [ɑr]
🔊
, resulting in pronunciations like "harror", "arange", and "Flarida". Gaga uses this pronunciation in Bad Romance.
"I want your harrar [hɑrər], I want your design" - Bad Romance, The Fame Monster (2009)
/ɔ/
🔊
→ [ɔa]
🔊 : New Yorkers pronounce the vowel in words like 'bought' with a diphthong, like 'bwat' [bʊət]. In the demo of Bad Romance, she does use a very New York diphthongized vowel in "walk walk." Ultimately, this was removed in the final version of Bad Romance. Instead, she uses the more Californian pronunciation "wok" [wɑk]. She uses the Californian [ɑ] sound most often, but sshe also uses a conservative General American "aw" [ɔ] on occasion, such as in Dancing in Circles.
"Wok wok [wɑk wɑk] fashion baby." - Bad Romance, The Fame Monster (2009)
"Up awll [ɔl] night trying to rub the pain out" - Dancing in Circles, Joanne (2016)
/aɪ/
🔊→ [ɑɪ]
🔊: The vowel in "eye" [aɪ] is pronounced using the more back vowel in "spa" [spɑ] so that you get "ah-ee" [ɑɪ]. This In "Boys Boys Boys," this is taken to an extreme and both backed and raised so that "twice" /twaɪs/ sounds like "twoice" [twoɪs].
"In the sailence [sɑɪlɪns] of the night" - So Happy I Could Die, The Fame Monster (2009)
"You're just a pig insaide [ɪnsɑɪd]" - Swine, ARTPOP (2013)
"Drink my tears tonaight [tʊnɑɪt]" - Government Hooker, Born This Way (2011)
"Saw you twoice [twoɪs] at the pop show" - Boys Boys Boys, The Fame (2008)
New York æ-tensing split: This is a complicated sound shift in New York City English (Joseph & Janda 2010:325). It has two parts. First, the sound "aa" /æ/ is pronounced as a diphthong [eə] before voiced stops like /d/, /g/, and /b/. This means that "bad" [bæd]
🔊 becomes "beh-ad" [beəd]
🔊. The second part is that "aa" /æ/ is pronounced as a monophthong before nasals. This means that "mat" and "man" would have the same vowel, [æ]
🔊. Most American accents have a diphthong before nasals, so they would pronounce "man" as "meh-an" [meən]. Gaga noticeably uses the General American pronunciation "eh-an" [eən]
🔊 more in her album Joanne - perhaps to sound more relatable to listeners?
"You and me could write a bead [beəd] romance." - Bad Romance, The Fame Monster (2009)
"Take off to the plaanet [plænɪt]" - Venus, ARTPOP (2013)
"Groove, slaam [slæm]" - Starstruck, The Fame (2008)
"Line up for the dance [dæns], yeah bring those fancy pants [fænsi pænts], you know there's disco in the air and hairspray everywhere." - Disco Heaven, The Fame (Deluxe) (2008)
"Can't blame a treamp [treəmp] for something he don't have" - Sinner's Prayer, Joanne (2016)
Non-rhoticity: "Dropping" the 'r' sound after a vowel is typical of New York English. Singing non-rhotically is very common among American singers, so I decided to only use examples from speech. Notice how instead of "parrrty"
🔊, Gaga says "party" as "pahty"
🔊 in the spoken word portion of "Hair Body Face," and how she says "eh-uh" instead of "aiRR" in "Disco Heaven."
"Did the pahty [pɑːɾi] room just see that?" - Hair Body Face, A Star Is Born (2018)
"Line up for the dance, yeah bring those fancy pants, you know there's disco in the air [ɛə] and hairspray everywhere [hɛəspreɪ ɛvriwɛə]." - Disco Heaven, The Fame (Deluxe) (2008)
Texas Girl, Real Strong
Lady Gaga does not make as extensive a use of Southern accents as Taylor Swift and Lana Del Rey do, but she has also dipped her toe into using them in her music. Most fans noticed this starting in the Joanne era, which was less synth-pop compared to her prior albums and more Americana inspired. This coincides with the marketing campaign for the Joanne album as her most authentic yet. She also stated that she wanted to connect people:/p>
"What I really want to do is, I want to bring people together that wouldn't normally talk to each other, or hang out [...] Like somebody that listens to country music might think that they wouldn't be able to be friends with somebody that's really into art and dance music and avant-garde underground sounds".
Part of reaching out to "somebody that listens to country" seems to be dipping her toes into a Southern accent. This tactic has an unusual precedent: appealing to Southerners by adopting a Southern accent has been employed by U.S. American politicians. Lady Gaga did not straight up imitate a Southern accent like Taylor Swift, but she did forsake some of her other Gaga-isms and New York-isms. As mentioned above, she uses the General American "ean" [eən] instead of the New York City "aan" [æn], and uses General American "aw" [ɔ] instead of Californian "ah" [ɑ] or New York City "oa" [ʊə].
Gaga has also borrowed stray Southern pronunciations for dramatic or alien effect in other songs. These are not meant to sound folksy or appeal to the common people - instead, it sounds like she's doing them just because she liked how it sounded.
Southern pronunciations: In the country-rock inspired song "You and I" she uses a pronunciation of "guitar" with the stress on the first syllable, which is common among Southerners. She does not, however, pronounce it "gittar" but "guh-tar" - so this may be more of a stress-related Gaga-ism.
"With the gui-ttar ['gʌtɑr] humming" - You and I, Born This Way (2011)
Pin-pen merger: Most English dialects differentiate the the vowels in 'dress' [ɛ] and 'kit' [ɪ] when they appear before 'n' and 'm'. This means 'pin' /pɪn/
🔊
and 'pen' /pɛn/
🔊
sound different. In Southern accents, they sound the same, so 'pen' and 'pin' both sound like 'pin' ([pɪn]), and 'hem' and 'him' both sound like 'him' ([hɪm]) (Source). Gaga has used this twice, in two very different scenarios. Compare her baby-voiced used of "intinsive" in the Fame-era "Money Honey" with the folksy "sinse" used in Joanne-era "Grigio Girls."
"Make it all make sinse[sɪns]" - Grigio Girls, Joanne (2016)
"But my knees get weak intinsive [ɪntɪnsɪv]" - Money Honey, The Fame (2008)
Feel-fill merger: This results in the sound 'eel' /il/ being pronounced as 'ill' [ɪl], so that "feel" [fil]
🔊 ends up sounding exactly like "fill" [fɪl]
🔊. Gaga pronounces "real" not with the vowel "ee", but as "rill," with the vowel sound "ih".
"I can't wait to blaze for rill [rɪl]" - A-YO, Joanne (2016)
/aɪ/
🔊
→
[aː]
🔊 : In General American, the "ai" sound (/aɪ/) is a diphthong, meaning it's made of two vowels. In Southern English, it's one long vowel ([a:]). This means "ride" (/raɪd/) sounds a little like "rad" ([ra:d]) (Source).
"If I had a highway [haweɪ], I would run for the hills" - Million Reasons, Joanne (2016)
/ɪ/
🔊
→
[iə])
🔊
: In General American, the short "i" sound like in "bit" (/bɪt/) is one vowel made with the tongue held loosely. In Southern English, it's a diphthong with the tongue held tensely. This means "bit" can sound more like "beeyit" ([biət]) (Source) Gaga uses a less strong version of this in Diamond Heart.
"Young wild American [əmɛrɪkɪən]" - Diamond Heart, Joanne (2016)
/ɔ/
🔊
→
/ɑɒ/
🔊
: Words like "bought" /bɔt/ that have a low, back vowel instead have a diphthong that sounds like "baut."
"Texas girl, real straung [strɑɒŋ]" - Grigio Girls, Joanne (2016)
/æ/
🔊
→
[ɛ(j)ə])
🔊
: In General American, the "aa" sound like in "bad" (/bæd/) is one vowel made with the tongue flat on the bottom of the mouth. In Southern English, it's a diphthong with the tongue raised a little, so it sounds like "beh-add" ([bɛəd]) (Source). Gaga uses a triphthong in "Government Hooker" for no discernible reason other than it sounded cool.
"Unless you want to be deyad [dɛjəd]" - Government Hooker, Born This Way (2011)
Other languages
In contrast to the American-focused Joanne, Lady Gaga's pre-Cheek to Cheek music drew heavily from European electronic music. She says Bad Romance was inspired by "German techno house" (Bryant, 2010) and Born This Way was inspired by "the industrial sound of German house music". After The Fame, Gaga switched from making cute bops to cultivating an image that was larger than life. Just as her success was international, so was her music. In fact, with Born This Way, she dared to go not just beyond nations but beyond our planet and started presenting herself as an alien being capable of saving us all with the power of love. Her use of non-English languages in her music peaked during Born This Way. This was exemplified by the song "Scheiße," which has a hook composed of fake German. After ARTPOP, which was both not as successful as Born This Way (though it still produced two hits) and was linked to a difficult emotional period, she dialed back the use of non-English languages extensively. Gaga mostly sticks to languages from the Indo-European family - Spanish, French, Italian from the Romance family and German from the Germanic family. Her sole usage of a non-Indo-European language is Japanese, and it is a background vocal in Government Hooker.
Her use of fake German in "Scheiße" is interesting, as it shows which features of German she finds most "Germany." She uses the diphthong "au" [aʊ] a lot, as well as the "sh" [ʃ] sound. The official transcription of the German gibberish in Scheiße doesn't match up exactly with what she actually says, but it is revealing in its own right. She includes the letter "ü", which is used in German, but does not pronounce it like a German would. She uses the "oo" [u] sound instead of "ü' [y]; this isn't strange as most English speakers have a hard time with the ü sound. She also seems to include some fake French in the lyrics with the inclusion of "monstère"- the actual French word for "monster" is "monstre."
She mostly switches to a foreign language for a complete sentence, as in Bad Romance, Bloody Mary, Government Hooker, and parts of Americano. However, she also mixes English and the other language in differing amounts. In Alejandro, we have "she hides true love en su bolsillo [in her pocket]," with the Spanish portion replacing the prepositional phrase "in her pocket." This echoes the opening line "she's got both hands in her pockets" but without repeating the word in English. In Americano, she says "If you love me, we can marry on a Wednesday, en un verano en agosto [in the summer in August]" with one prepositional phrase in English("on a Wednesday") and the other prepositional phrases in Spanish ("en un verano", "en agosto"). She switches from English to German in GUY, to interesting alliterative effect that works in German and English: "Fourteen, fierzehn, freihit [fifteen, freedom]." Perhaps my favorite is the use of French in "LoveGame", where the preposition "in" in English is replaced with "dans": "Dans the LoveGame." In real life, people who code-switch between languages usually switch between entire sentences, smaller phrases, or culturally important words, but they usually don't switch for a grammatical word like a preposition. It's jarring, funny, and a little strange.
"Mis canciones son de la revolución [My songs belong to the revolution]. Mi corazón me duele por mi generación [My heart hurts for my generation]. On a Wednesday, en un verano, en agosto [in the summer, in August]. In the mountains, las campanas están sonando [the bells are ringing]. Todos los chicos (chicas) y los chicos (chicas) están besando [ All the boys (girls) and the boys (girls) are kissing). I don't speak your, I won't speak your Jesús Cristo [Jesus Christ]. I don't speak your, I don't speak your Americano [American]." - Americano, Born This Way (2011)
"Je veux ton amour et je veux ta revanche [I want your love and I want your revenge]" - Bad Romance, The Fame Monster (2009)
"Je veux pas mourir toute seule [I don't want to die all alone]" - Bloody Mary, Born This Way (2011)
"I wish I could be strong without the scheiße [sh-t], yeah
Ich schleiban austa be clair [ɪkʃ libɛn aʊsta bi klɛɐ]
Es kumpent madre monstere, [ɪs kʊmpe madre monsteɹ]
Aus-be aus-can-be flaugen, [aʊʃ bi aʊʃkabi flaʊgen]
Begun be üske but-bair [bigon bi uske bot beə]
Ich schleiban austa be clair, [ɪkʃ libɛn aʊsta bi klɛɐ]
Es kumpent üske monstère, [is kompen uske monsteɹ]
Aus-be aus-can-be flaugen, [aʊʃ bi aʊʃkabi flaʊgen]
Fräulein uske-be clair [froɪlain wiʃə bi klɛɐ]" - Scheiße, Born This Way (2011)
"Io ritorne [I return]" - Government Hooker, Born This Way (2011)
"Dans [in] the lovegame" - LoveGame, The Fame (2008)
"Mi amore vole fe [my love requires faith], yay" - Born This Way, Born This Way (2011)
"She hides true love en su bolsillo [in her pocket]" - Alejandro, The Fame Monster (2009)
"Iku iku [I'm coming, I'm coming]" - Government Hooker, Born This Way (2011)
"Oi mi papito [oh, my daddy]" - Government Hooker, Born This Way (2011)
Being Gaga
Much like Lana Del Rey has her Lana-isms, so Gaga has her own idiosyncratic pronunciations that don't clearly line up with any dialect. Gaga enjoys experimenting vocally in her work, and isn't afraid to employ more unusual pronunciations for artistic effect.
Gaga likes to fully release stop consonants, including nasal stops - this makes it sound like she's adding an "uh" [ə] to words ending with a nasal consonant. I have been told by friends in theatre that this is a technique taught to musical theatre performers because nasal consonants are "low energy" and "harder to hear". I can't find a citation for this, but you can hear this pronunciation in Broadway singers.
"I think that I could be fine-a [faɪnə]. I think we'd have a good time-a [taɪmə]" - Mary Jane Holland, ARTPOP (2013)
"But ARTPOP could mean anything-a [ɛniθɪŋə]. I just love the music not the bling-a [blɪŋə]" - ARTPOP, ARTPOP (2013)
"Makes me want to screama [skrimə]" - Do What You Want, ARTPOP (2013)
"You're just a pig inside-a [ɪnsɑɪɾə]" - Swine, ARTPOP (2013)
"He can't read-a [riɾə] my poker face." - Poker Face, The Fame (2008)
"Look at him-a [hɪmə]" - Monster, The Fame Monster (2009)
"I'll bring him down-a [daʊnə]." - Judas, Born This Way (2011)
You can listen to a musical theatre performer do the same thing in the following clip from the 2003 revival of "Little Shop of Horrors."
"My future's starting-a [stɑɹɾɪŋə] [...] that means more killing-a [kɪlɪŋə] [...] that means I'm willing-a [wɪlɪŋə]." - The Meek Shall Inherit, Little Shop of Horrors, Broadway Revival (2003)
/ɜr/
🔊
→
[ɜ]
🔊:
Instead of pronouncing the "errr" /ɜr/ sound with an 'r', Gaga often uses a British 'euh' [ɜ] vowel instead, with no "r". "Herd" ends up sounding like "huhd". American singers sometimes adopt it in an attempt to "de-rhoticize" their singing - another singer who did this is Madonna. Rhotic vowels are subjectively considered "ugly" in the English singing tradition, so American singers often adopt non-rhotic pronunciations partially to avoid sounding "ugly." Noticeably, Gaga uses this pronunciation even when a British speaker would not - for example, in "insecure" a Received Pronunciation speaker would likely say "insekyo" instead.
"I don't speak German [dʒɜmən]" - Scheisse, Born This Way (2011)
"The girl [gɜl] from the planet" - Venus, ARTPOP (2013)
"Behind the burqa [bɜkə]" - Aura, ARTPOP (2013)
"Salon's enough for her not to feel so insecure [ɪnsɪkjɜ]" - MANiCURE, ARTPOP (2013)
Madonna uses the r-less "er" in "Burning Up":
"You know you got me burning up, baby, you know you got me burning up, baby" - Burning Up, Madonna (1983)
/ə/
🔊
→
[a]
🔊. Pronouncing the unstressed "uh" sound [ə] with a stressed sound is unusual in English. She uses the Spanish "a" [a] sound, which does not exist by itself in American English. The result sounds instead like something from a Romance language. She also takes words that are pronounced with an "-er" and pronounces them non-rhotically (no "r" sound) as "uh" [ə], and then takes it even further by converting the "uh" to "a" [a]; this happens in "Government Hooker" (hooker > hookuh > hooka). Gaga liked using this a lot during the Born This Way era, but she began doing it during the Fame Monster with Bad Romance. Her use of it stopped after ARTPOP.
"Gaga, a-a-aa [gaga]" - Bad Romance, The Fame Monster (2009)
"Government hooka [hʊka]" - Government Hooker, Born This Way (2011)
"Judas [dʒudas]" - Judas, Born This Way (2011)
"Heavy metal lova [lʌva]" - Heavy Metal Lover, Born This Way (2011)
"Aurra-a-a [ɔra]" - Aura, ARTPOP (2013)
/ɹ/
🔊
→ [r]
🔊. She pronounces 'r's as trills. This is another one borrowed from the Romance languages, and the trill and [a] are sometimes found together. She also uses the alveolar trill to imitate the sound of drums in "The Queen" (a quotation from the Christmas song "The Little Drummer Boy"), as an onomatopoeia.
"Rroma rroma-ma [roma roma ma]" - Bad Romance, The Fame Monster (2009)
"Aurra-a-a [ɔra]" - Aura, ARTPOP (2013)
"Rrram-pa-pum-pum [rʌmpəpʌmpʌm]" - The Queen, Born This Way (2011)
"Roberto [roberto]" - Alejandro, The Fame Monster (2009)
Stress on the wrong syllable. This one also started in The Fame Monster and was ratcheted up in Born This Way.
"All my bu-BBLE [bʌ'bəl] dreams" - Speechless, The Fame Monster (2009)
"Sometimes I want some RAC-coon ['ɹækun] or red highlights" - Hair, Born This Way (2011)
"When he comes to me, I am reaDY [ɹɜ'di]" - Judas, Born This Way (2011)
Overarticulation. Gaga fully pronounces consonants that normally are not fully released. This comes off as her emphasizing her consonants a lot. Another way that she does this is where instead of flapping "t"s (so "butter" sounds like "budder"), she pronounces them as complete aspirated "t"s ("buTTer").
"Free my mind, arT-poP [ɑrtʰpɑpʰ]. You make my hearT stoP [hɑrtʰ stɑp˭]." - ARTPOP, ARTPOP (2013)
"JupiTer [dʒupɪtʰə]." - Venus, ARTPOP (2013)
"I stand here waiTing [weɪtʰɪŋ] for you to bang the gong." - Applause, ARTPOP (2013)
Gaga likes grammatical fun. In "MANiCURE", she has a lot of fun with the syntax and morphology, adding a fake -en suffix to "care" to make it sound like a past participle, a la "eaten" and "broken". In "Hey Girl", she takes the phrase "one upping" and moves the "ing" from the "up" to the "one", creating "one-in' up". In "Venus", she says "worship to the land" - "worship" does not take a prepositional phrase, but her use of it here creates the image of worship moving directionally. In "Money Honey", the use of "intensive" in "my knees get weak intensive" is ambiguous - "intensive" could be modifying "weak" ("my knees get intensively weak") or it could be modifying "get weak" ("my knees intensively get weak"), which is a little unusual.
"She want be take caren of" - MANiCURE, ARTPOP (2013)
"We don't need to keep on one-in' up another" - Hey Girl, Joanne (2016)
"Worship to the land, the girl from the planet" - Venus, ARTPOP (2013)
"But my knees get weak intensive" - Money Honey, The Fame (2008)
Lady Gaga likes to emphasize her consonants, especially her "b" sounds. It's unclear exactly what she is doing articulation-wise in the clips below, but it sounds to me like she's using an implosive "b" (also known as the "cowboy b" by one researcher).
"He's the monster in my BED [ɓɜd]" - Monster, The Fame Monster (2009)
"But we got no money! [...] BANG BANG [ɓæŋ ɓæŋ]!" - Beautiful Dirty Rich, The Fame< (2008)
"Glamaphonic, electronic, disco BBBaby [ɓeɪbi]" - Boys Boys Boys, The Fame (2008)
Reduplication. Although repetition at the phrase level ("can't read my, can't read my poker face") and word level ("Swine, swine, swine, swine") is very common in songwriting, repetition within the word is rarer. Gaga loves using repetition. Indeed, reduplication is one of her techniques for crafting catchy hooks. Although electronic "stuttering" and "skipping" is also found in her music, we are going to look at places where she herself sings every part of the reduplication. Repeating the first part of a word is her most common technique, but she also likes to repeat the final syllable as well.
"Pa-pa-pa-poker face." Poker Face, The Fame (2008)
"I'll follow you until you love me, papa-paparazzi." - Paparazzi, The Fame (2008)
"Va-va-va-va-va-va-va-va-vanity, va-vanity, va-va-va-va-vanity" - Vanity, Rhapsody Digital Single (2008)
"Ale-alejandro, ale-alejandro." - Alejandro, The Fame Monster (2009)
"Ra-ra a-a-a, roma, roma-ma" - Bad Romance, The Fame Monster (2009)
"Judas-Juda-a-as" - Judas, Born This Way (2011)
"In the sha-ha-sha-la-llow, in the sha-ha-sha-la-la-la-low" - Shallow, A Star Is Born (2018)
A Star Is Born
I would be remiss not to mention her first starring role, "A Star Is Born." Lady Gaga is not just a performing artist, though - she was moved into acting and soundtrack writing with the 2018 remake of “A Star Is Born” where she stars as Ally, the eponymous star being born. The core of the movie is contrasting a performing beginning her career - Ally - with a performer whose career is on the decline - Jackson - and how this affects their relationship.
There has been some research on previous versions of a Star Is Born and how the language of the “Ally”-equivalent character changes between when she is discovered by the Jackson-equivalent and when she becomes a star in her own right. The research by Dr. Nancy Elliott shows that the level of rhoticity changes between films, but also in the movie itself. Early versions show that the Ally-equivalent uses fewer and fewer final “r”s as she becomes more famous, while the Barbra Streisand version shows that the Ally character uses more “r”s as she becomes more famous.
In the 2018 version, my impression on watching the movie in theaters is that the level of rhoticity stays constant throughout the movie, with Ally using General American throughout the whole film. My impression was that she did not change her accent or language use during the movie. I also did not notice any usage of a “put on” accent in Ally’s country/rock songs. Gaga used a vocal technique similar to the one she used in Joanne for these songs, but without the scattered Southernisms. Her tone sounds harsher and she has a notable vibrato.
"Ah... I'm off the deep end, watch as I dive in..." - Shallow, A Star Is Born (2018)
"One, five, ten, lay a million on me before the end of this song. Young wild American, come on baby, do you have a girlfriend..." - Diamond Heart, Joanne (2016)
Ally’s pop songs, which are more synth-heavy, use a vocal technique more similar to the one Gaga uses in The Fame Monster and Born This Way. Her tone is sweeter and she suppresses her vibrato for a mostly-straight tone. There is no particularly large difference between the pop and rock songs in accent. Ally uses a consistent accent throughout. This may be because the focus of the film is less on Ally changing or becoming uppity, and more on focused on Jackson’s decline and perceived inferiority in his relationship to Ally. By using a consistent General American accent for Ally throughout, it reinforces that Ally has not changed as much as Jackson thinks she has.
"Trying to leave here, but you won't let me leave saying that if I care what they think, I'll never succeed..." - Hair Body Face, A Star Is Born (2018)
"Don't call my name, don't call my name, Alejandro, I'm not your babe, I'm not your babe, Fernando." - Alejandro, The Fame Monster (2008)
Conclusion
Lady Gaga began her career as a semi-satirical take on the vapid, blonde pop star. At her peak, Lady Gaga was trying to look and sound like an alien force. Her "comeback" as a vocal and acting talent has positioned her away from competing with the chart-toppers and is trying to cement her status as a talented legend. As she has moved between these different social spaces, so too has she moved between different vocal spaces, treating the vowel space as a palette to use and not as something to cling to rigidly. She has moved fluidly from one sound to another, bringing an unnoticed diversity to her performances.
As Lady Gaga prepares her follow-up to Joanne, I wonder what direction she'll move in. I doubt she'll go back to saying "BBBaby" and "ga-GAAA," but will she try something new out? Will she shed the fun Gaga-isms for a more conventional vocal approach? As a fan, I love seeing the way she uses and plays with language. But who knows where she'll go next? That's the frustration and the joy of Lady Gaga.
Works Cited
Bryant, Ali (2010). "Going Ga-Ga". Grazia. Mumbai, India. 2 (10): 56–58.
