We're plastic but we'll still have fun

So this month's Vanity Fair cover story is about Lady Gaga. Perhaps you've heard of her? I don't know about this girl. Sometimes she gives the impression of wanting to be, you know, famous or something.

There are about a million and a half reasons to be thoroughly sick of her by now, but for some reason I just can't get with the haters. I mean yeah, she's got the whole surrealist-space-ninja-meets-robotic-Muppet-dominatrix thing going on -- like a Gaultier runway show that's evolved independent consciousness, learned to play the piano and started granting interviews. And yeah, I could do without all of the triumphalist "little monsters" Twitter posts.

But for all the relentlessness of her ambition, there's something oddly endearing about 24-year-old Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta. It's the playfulness of her act: the sense that -- however calculated the grand strategy -- she's mostly just making this shit up as she goes along. She loves cannonballing into the MTV Awards or the New York Yankees' clubhouse just to see how big the splash will be.

In this, she stands in refreshing contrast to Beyonce, Rihanna, Christina, the hapless American Idol kids, and just about every other major corporate pop artist of the last decade. Bearing down on the business of stardom with the anxious intensity of junior high honour students cramming for a geography final, they're exhausting to watch. Children, it's pop music. It's supposed to be fun. Gaga, to her credit, seems to get this, and to revel in playacting new variations on her Ziggy Stardust-meets-Evita persona. Behind the poker face, she's laughing her ass off.

And also this: the music. What other major artist of the last, say, 30 years has delivered Grade A hit singles with such consistency? Only Madonna comes to mind. (And Madge never seemed to be having that much fun doing it.)

It confounds me that so many commentators dismiss Gaga's songs as an afterthought.  I mean, have you listened to The Fame Monster? In its deluxe version, a repackage that combines her 2008 debut and follow-up EP, it's a near-perfect pop record: big beats and shiny hooks that sustain for nearly 85 minutes. (The convincer, for me, is the strength of its second half: it keeps coming on strong, long after most other dance-pop albums have wandered off in search of the afterbar.) Among major label acts, only The Black Eyed Peas released a better, more consistently pleasurable product last year -- and earned as little critical love for their pains.

Mostly what I love about her music is the hint of vulnerability beneath the big-bam-boom of her widescreen sound. There's a real, breakable heart in there somewhere -- or at least a convincing simulacrum: like a killer android that's been programmed to believe it's human. Poignant.

Plus: her brassiere shoots fire. How fucking awesome is that?