Why aren’t the media Gaga over Aventura?

It is difficult to peruse any avenue of pop culture these days without running across a video, a review, or at least some commentary on Lady Gaga. She’s everywhere. Granted she scored five top ten singles in 2009. And, truth be told, her opening performance at this year’s Grammys with (Sir) Elton John was captivating, if overblown. But then, everything at this year’s Grammys was overblown, from Beyonceé extravagant song and dance medley amid a gaggle of dancers who looked like starship troopers wearing World War II-era Nazi helmets to Pink’s cirque-du-soleilesque performance, suspended high above the audience (mostly upside down), while being drenched with water.

This kind of overproduction is a clear indicator that after a decade of its worst losses in history, the music industry has returned to the practice of crowning superstars. As the Boston Globe’s Ben Sisario put it, the music industry “reversed its recent trend of showering acclaim on modest sellers, sticking instead to the biggest names in entertainment,” or at least entertainers like Lady Gaga, or the young Taylor Swift, whom they hope will be able to generate mega-sales for years to come.