Madonna Versus Lady Gaga? Madonna.

Among my crowd, a debate has been raging as to who is better: Lady gaga or Madonna. As a quick look at this list, all and everyone great songs, the debate seems to be closed: they are co-equals. But the truth is, Lady Gaga isn’t there yet. Lady Gaga has released three and a half albums of original material and a covers album, that’s Madonna having a bad couple of years. For Gaga, I adore everything but the covers album, for Madonna there are entire albums, American Life for one, Hard Candy for another, which I hate from one end to another. BUT even so, Madonna has a vastly deeper and richer catalog.

Now, sure, yes she has been at it a lot longer and while Madonna wrote some of her own songs on the first two albums, it wasn’t till the third that she took over… even still, song for song? Let’s look at the first four studio albums

Here is a (subjective true, I had one person tell me Madonna has never written a good song. Really? Not even “Born This Way”?) list of great songs by Madonna through her fourth studio album, then the same for Lady Gaga.

With the exception of “Lucky Star”, Madonna wrote none of the songs listed below till you reach “Papa Don’t Preach” and then she wrote co-wrote all the rest.

1 – Lucky Star

2 – Borderline

3 – Holiday

4 – Physical Attraction

5 – Material Girl

6 – Like A Virgin

7 – Dress You Up

8 – Papa Don’t Preach

9 – Open Your Heart

10 – Live To Tell

11 – La Isla Bonita

12 – Like A Prayer

13 – Express Yourself

14 – Cherish

Now, let’s do the same with Lady Gaga’s first four albums, she co-wrote all of them except for “Cheek To Cheek” which I included despite my dislike of it, just out of a sense of fairplay.

1 – Paparazzi

2 – Pokerface

3 – Bad Romance

4 – Alejandro

5 – Telephone

6 – Born This way

7 – Judas

8 – You And I

9 – Applause

10 – Cheek To Cheek

Just by the numbers, Madonna was off to a better start and if you cut this list down further to flat out masterpieces?

Madonna:

1 – Lucky Star

2 – Material Girl

3 – Like A Virgin

4 – Dress You Up

5 – Papa Don’t Preach

6 – Express Yourself

And Lady Gaga

1 – Paparazzi

2 – Pokerface

3 – Bad Romance

4 – Telephone

So not only has Madonna got more good songs, she also has more great songs, and they are sprinkled liberally over all four albums while Gaga is very very top heavy.

So why is there even a debate over who is superior?

For one thing, Madonna has had three terrible tours to go along with three terrible albums in succession,  and she has been arrogant and nasty about both it and us and Lady Gaga. They don’t like her music because they don’t like her any more.

For another, backlash is the nature of the game.

Third, anybody that successful is fair game.

But I am as completely unbiased when it comes to music as I can be, and if you want proof here is my review of Madonna at Yankee Stadium. But there is no doubting her pop music genius and while Lady Gaga may one day find herself in the same league, it sure hasn’t happened yet.

Meanwhile, here is a playlist.