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David Bowie’s Son Didn’t Like Lady Gaga’s David Bowie Tribute at the Grammys

The Grammys are just another PR event to sell records under the offset of controversy. As such they’re not meant to be enjoyable, they’re just meant to exist. It’s the one night of the year artists are expected to take all their pent-up bullshit and chuck it at a wall of 25 million viewers with hope that something sticks.

Pulling out all the stops for her tribute to the late David Bowie, Lady Gaga took to the Grammy stage with a medley of Bowie songs, including “Space Oddity,” “Suffragette City” and “Let’s Dance.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3fGBZhsa4VU

In one of her more mild performances, Lady Gaga donned an outfit reminiscent of Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust persona and she went hard balls to the wall–the way only someone mourning the loss of a hero will. The reality of all creative minds is that sometimes an idea works and sometimes it doesn’t, and it always depends on who you ask.

Ask me how Gaga did, and I think it’s an almost decent celebration of one of the men who undoubtedly helped raise me into the proud queer I am today. And hell, it’s way better than I could ever do. I might have preferred the Confessions of a Teenage Drama Queen version, but it didn’t not work. It just didn’t entirely work.

Ask David Bowie’s son, Duncan Jones and you’ll get a more passive aggressively elaborate diss in Lady Gaga’s direction.

With a definition ripped from the Merriam Webster Dictionary, Jones completely dismisses the entirety of the performance. The word he was looking for was Gaga. *flames emoji* Ouch. Maybe? Or maybe not? Gaga’s whole schtick has always to be as outlandish as she and her costume designers see fit. Who says her theatrics aren’t meant to be perceived as such?

And while we’re free to judge whatever we want, as harshly as we see fit, it’s brazen to dismiss Gaga’s performance of anything other than a calculated, cathartic dedication of one artist’s appreciation for another. No one else could have performed in a manner more appropriate to honor our Bowie. But damn did she feel it, before she took the stage, Gaga posted a video to Instagram of a tear-filled glam session. Maybe she got liquid eyeliner in her eye, but hey, maybe just maybe, this is a really important thing for her to do.

The only qualm with the performance seems to be a qualm with the Grammys in general. Not one advertising block can be missed and it almost seems like a shout out to Intel before a tribute to Bowie. That offends me.

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