HE ULTIMATELY KNEW THAT EVERYTHING AROUND HIM WAS ARTIFICE. HE WAS SIMPLY THE ONLY ONE BRAVE ENOUGH TO SAY: I AM ARTIFICE. WE ARE ALL ARTIFICE.
lishment-overturning genre on its head. His pouty vocals, equal parts shrill and syrupy, on songs like “Crocodile Tears” and “When in Doubt Just Go,” exist somewhere in the gray area between Yoko Ono and Patti Smith—if you can imagine that. His voluminous hair, myriad blazers, and pink, neon-colored socks (as seen in a rather surreal 1973 Dick Cavett interview) scream 1983—but precede it by ten years. And his stage choreography, so aerobic and over-the-top in its startling velocity, harkens to a type of showy, galvanizing exhibitonism reminiscent of Madonna or Lady Gaga—albeit years before they set foot onto the show business tableau. But what is important to remember about Lance is his intrinsically performative nature. It is easy to judge a book by its cover, to listen to his “bad” (as deemed by conventional tastes) music, gawk at his “tacky” (but nonetheless ahead-of-its-time) fashion, ogle over his seemingly stimulant-fueled on-stage antics. But Lance understood, probably more than any other working artist of his generation, the qualities and inner mechanisms of popular culture—specifically as an art form. Everything he did was intentionally plotted, born out of an acute self-awareness of the media and mythos
We Haven’t Forgotten You, Lance Loud
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