ABSTRACT
Music television, as opposed to Music Television (MTV),2 has been an intriguing, frequently dynamic, hybrid, its two components sharing an often fertile, sometimes tense, relationship over the last six decades. This extended association has witnessed two hyperactive fi elds of post-Second World War creative activity-the medium of small screen broadcasting and the project of popular music recording and production-often engage while playing out a complex power relation, the ascendancy of one or the other never fully established in an inter-weaving narrative. It has, in other words, been hard to assert which format has been driven by which, and the question whether popular music needs TV more than TV needs popular music has been intermittently raised but never satisfyingly resolved. Perhaps there has been an ideal symbiosis, each medium nourished by the other: TV benefi tting from the abundant supply of new artistic content, popular music gaining critical advantage from a key promotional platform which has frequently displayed the ability to transcend traditional demographic communities. This chapter will attempt a concise summary of this cross-media history but principally endeavor to explore the connection through a particular contemporary lens and a focused case study: the contribution of an early twenty-fi rst-century pop star, Lady Gaga, to this creative exchange, with specifi c reference to her links to a current and highly successful, teen-oriented television show, Glee. What occurs when a performer, who appears to straddle the two worlds of mass culture and the avant-garde, becomes entwined in the agenda of a mainstream television production? Is her art compromised or does her radicalism have impact on the more conservative foundations of the standard entertainment menu? What does television do to the pop star and what does the pop star bring to the medium? And do the middle-of-the-road protocols of the prime-time screen have the capability of containing the sometimes taboo-testing behaviors of a controversial artist who courts media headlines?3
