woolfinbooks's reviews
520 reviews

 Hmm... you can definitely tell this isn't an official biography. The whole thing reads like a copy and paste of the Lady Gaga fandom site mixed with quotes from various news publications. If you're big enough of a fan to be on Gaga Daily, or similar fan sites, there won't be anything new for you here. The overall timeline of events is accurate, but there were moments where they introduced something and then backtracked a few pages later to speak about it as if it were just now being introduced. This isn't a major issue but they said Gaga identifies as bisexual. She doesn't. She IS bisexual. The wording of that matters, especially in this era of rampant biphobia and ignorance towards the overall LGBTQ+ community. Also, the Sound of Music medley wasn't for a Julie Andrews tribute. It was for the 50th anniversary of the film version of The Sound Of Music. That performance was referred to as both for some reason.

Some parts felt like they were written in vignettes. Other parts felt like they focused too much on one specific moment while glossing over a sort of butterfly effect that led to the more monumental moments in her career. Honestly, it feels like I read a high school midterm paper where everything is worded just differently enough to not get a strike for copyright.

There are been dozens of unofficial biographies about Gaga. All of them state pretty much the same info in varying amounts of detail. It feels very much like "if you've read one you've read them all" There's nothing in this that 20 other unofficial biographical authors haven't done before. The timing of the release is unfortunate as it ended near the release of Joker: Folie à Deux but came too late to discuss the failure of that film and the announcement of her new single and album. Not even two weeks after it's released it already feels outdated, which is a side effect any author will face with an active musician, especially during the start of a new era. 

I'm unsure why The View interview is referred to as her last interview when Kathryn Ferguson's documentary 'Nothing Compares' (2022) made the same claim. She was on The View two years before her passing. She did several interviews after that. The focus is mostly on interviews from the '90s and '00s. Her queerness was barely visible. It doesn't have any reference to her conversion to Islam, which was a huge part of her identity and healing. She preferred the name Shuhada' Sadaqat, which wasn't mentioned once. Nothing about who she was outside of the peak of her mainstream career and the SNL protest is really covered. It doesn't show care or respect for who she was at the time of her passing. It treats her as a nostalgia trip and a controversial figure who did one act of protest. Her entire life was a protest! She adamantly stood up for the rights of all oppressed peoples. 

I don't know who this is supposed to be for, but it's not for her fans. It feels like a cheap gimmick to make a profit off of a dead queer Muslim woman.