- Alternative Character Interpretation: "Donatella" is a song that sings the virtues of being a rich, blonde, upper-class model, making her life seem amazing and perfect. However...
- Some lyrics suggest that this might be a Stealth Parody, and the song is meant to be a cynical look at a shallow person.
- Another interpretation is that the song isn't mocking the model; it's about a girl who's seen as as perfect, carefree, and above the criticism of others, but beneath the mask feels misunderstood and that no one knows the real her. Some also believe that she's purposely setting up the misunderstanding as a mask to hide her true feelings.
- Anvilicious:
- The video for "G.U.Y." is a painfully obvious and almost barely symbolic Take That! at people she felt betrayed her in the music industry.
- "Born This Way," meant to be an anthem about accepting yourself, whoever or whatever you may be. It's not even subtle about the message, and it forgoes symbolism and her usual mystique of her music; it just straight up says that you were born perfect and should accept yourself, over and over.
- Award Snub:
- She lost the 2009 Breakthrough Artist Award at the 2009 American Music Awards... to Gloriana, a One-Hit Wonder Country Music group. In an awards show where country music artists almost never even get nominated in the all-genre awards.
- "Till it Happens to You" lost the 2016 Oscar for Best Original Song to Sam Smith's "Writing's on the Wall" despite being the favorite to win.
- Though she walked away with a Best Original Song award at the 91st Academy Awards, many were surprised when Best Actress, the award many felt she was a shoo-in for, went to Olivia Colman for The Favourite.
- Awesome Music:
- "Poker Face" has become one of the top dance songs of the past decade, and possibly one of the biggest since the 1980s. Then "Bad Romance" came out and topped that. "Born This Way" has already no. 1 on the Billboard 100.
- "The Edge of Glory"
is pretty damn awesome, too. - Three fan favorites from "Born This Way": "Marry The Night", "Americano", and "Bloody Mary". The last one is the current subject of a campaign by fans for it to be Gaga's next single.
- The second one even made it into the end of a hit movie, Puss in Boots!
- The second one even made it into the end of a hit movie,
- Also for fan favorites, "Scheiße" and "Heavy Metal Lover" were the top two songs suggested by her favorite fan site to be her next single (after "The Edge Of Glory").
- Every track that showcases her piano-playing talents, like "Speechless" and "Again Again".
- Even though ARTPOP wasn't as commercially or critically successful as her other pieces, there are still some cracking tunes on it; "G.U.Y" and "Applause" definitely have their fans.
- Several of her songs from A Star Is Born (2018), especially "Shallow".
- Big-Lipped Alligator Moment:
- The operatic opening to "Government Hooker" has absolutely nothing to do with the rest of the song. It shows off her range, though.
- "Bloody Mary" also has a classical opening.
- She once advertised a therapeutic course she'd taken by posting a clip of herself on it wearing a blindfold while otherwise naked in a forest clearing, and loudly yelling. Literally no one has a clue what was going on.
- Broken Base:
- Since the release of the "Born This Way" single, fans seem to have been locked in an endless debate as to whether is was really as groundbreaking as Gaga promised or just a rehash of Madonna's "Express Yourself", with a subtle bit of the Gap Band's "You Dropped a Bomb on Me."
- Fans of The Fame vs. fans of Born This Way. Fans of the former will say that Gaga is no fun anymore, while fans of the latter will dismiss The Fame as vapid and fake when compared to Born This Way. There's even a third group of fans who think the additional songs for The Fame featured in The Fame Monster are Gaga at her peak.
- ARTPOP quickly generated this debate from people; either she had made a fun, sexy, light-hearted comeback, or she dropped the ball and alienated fans left and right. It didn't help that it ended up being completely overshadowed by other albums upon release, despite the amount of effort she put into promoting it, and that two of the tracks ("Aura" and "Gypsy") could be seen as culturally insensitive. And let's not dig into "Do What U Want"…
- Her halftime show performance at Super Bowl LI was widely praised for great performances of several of her biggest hits, plus some subtly subversive bits like performing a snippet of "This Land Is Your Land" (originally written as a scathing anti-Fascism screed). But there's also a sizable group of people saying they were let down by her not taking the opportunity to be more overtly political like Beyonce the previous year, and especially upset that she got the same amount of attention for doing far less.
- Crosses the Line Twice: Most of what she does, except for "Telephone", which crossed it twice then looped around and crossed it twice again...repeatedly
- Fandom Rivalry:
- Lady Gaga fans versus Taylor Swift fans. Any thread discussing the former will bring up the latter as a point of debate, and vice versa. Gaga fans scoff at Taylor Swift's cutesy love songs and "anti-feminist undertones", while Taylor Swift fans dislike Gaga's hypersexual/controversial image and prefer their pop to be sweet. For the record, Gaga has said that she loves Taylor Swift, and Swift said the same, so the whole thing is pathetic. It's just the fans, not the personalities.
- Also, there seems to be a rivalry between the Little Monsters and the fans of every other diva. Fans of Christina Aguilera and Madonna are particularly aggressive in their hatred. Gaga fans are nasty and elitist to these woman too. And yet again, Lady Gaga likes and respects the women (well, just respects Madonna), making the whole rivalry pointless.
- Also, between Plague Rats of Emilie Autumn and Gaga's Little Monsters.
- For actual friction between personalities, Katy Perry fans seems to have a distaste for her, though both singers are good friends in real life.
- There is a fairly vehement rivalry with Billie Eilish because Eilish criticized Lady Gaga's meat dress, resulting in Lady Gaga fans viewing her as a young upstart challenging a more established pop star, as well as an annoying vegan. Billie Eilish fans think this reaction is too extreme for a teenager expressing an opinion. For the record, she has said that she's happy about Billie Eilish being successful in her music career.
- Fan Nickname:
- Some people have taken to calling her "Godga", sometimes extended "Praise Godga!". Likewise, Beyoncé is sometimes called "Beysus".
- Gaga also has the nicknames of "Lady Caca" ("Spanish for "crap"), while would be insanely ironic; the name Lady Gaga came from a mishearing of Queen's song "Radio Ga Ga", which in TURN came from a mishearing of Roger Taylor's son saying "radio ca-ca" while listening to a bad song on the radio while Queen was in Los Angeles. And that's when it's not "Lady Cock-a", "Man Gaga", "Lady Gag", "Lady Gag-Gag", "Lady Gay-Gay" (a nod to her being an LGBT rights activist), "Lady Dada", "Mama Monster", "The Lady of Gagalupe", and "Ga-Galore". A tongue-in-cheek remix compilation done by Digital Vomit credited the tracks to her as "Lady Gagging."
- On the other hand, several fictional characters have also been nicknamed "Lady Gaga", generally because of their blond hair and/or their outrageous fashion senses. Here are some examples:
- A card in Magic: The Gathering (specifically nicknamed "OMG they killed Lady Gaga!")
- And in the next expansion over, Elesh Norn, Grand Cenobite has also been given the nickname "Lady Gaga".
- A space marine turned angelic emissary (including her One-Winged Angel form by endgame).
- Mrs. Chizuru Kirishiki◊, from Shiki.
- Elesa◊ from Pokémon Black and White.
- Shih-na◊ from Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth.
- Gloria from Devil May Cry 4 as seen here◊ and here
- Lissandra◊ from League of Legends. Considering she looks a bit like Elesh Norn stated prior... yeah.
- A card
- Faux Symbolism: Sometimes there are so many visuals in her day to day life, her music videos, her shows, her outfits, some of them seem meaningless or don't make sense or directly conflict with the idea she says they are for.
- Fetish Retardant: Though some have noted that she has the oddest habit of wearing makeup that makes her look like a man in drag, Lady Gaga has confirmed that she does indeed that she does this on purpose for whatever reason this may be.
- Germans Love David Hasselhoff: While Gaga is indeed popular in the States, (though sometimes on the internet...she can be a bit of a divisive here in the USA), the Japanese love her. What with her unique fashion, combined with her pop songs, you could say, she was born for Japan.
- Hilarious in Hindsight:
- "I'm gonna change the world with my lips."
- "Just Dance" contains the lyric "control your poison, babe". It didn't seem important at the time, but then came the video for "Telephone"… wherein Gaga and Beyoncé poison a man.
- "I'm gonna change the world with my lips."
- Les Yay:
- "Sexxx Dreams" seems to be about a female friend who she had a sexual dream about. The song doesn't specify the friend's gender in itself, but certain lyrics read like a pitch to experiment while their boyfriend's out of town, including the pre-chorus ("Heard your boyfriend was away this weekend/Wanna meet at my place?/Heard that we both have nothing to do").
- "Hey Girl", from the album Joanne, is essentially a love song duet between herself and Florence Welch.
- LGBT Fanbase: On a truly massive scale. Gaga, of course, is well-known for embracing them as wholeheartedly as possible, and "Born This Way" cemented that.
- Magnum Opus Dissonance: She feels that ARTPOP is her best work yet, but many Little Monsters think she reached her apex in Born This Way. Some fans, and most not so ardent/fence sitting fans prefer her The Fame Monster work the most.
- Memetic Mutation:
- YES! THIS PLEASES GAGA!◊
- Troll Gaga/Mother Troll.
- It is common for Little Monsters to use 'ü' instead of 'you' or 'u', due to Lady Gaga saying "this album [Born This Way] is for ü [Little Monsters]."
- Laurieann Gibson, Gaga's choreographer, becoming a laughing stock in the Little Monster community after she went on an unintentionally hilarious Twitter rampage. Two tweets that went memetic were "listen u disrespectful fuck they had an issue on set I don’t lie!!!!!" and "ignorance breeds all this bad tweeting about someone u don’t know.", which morphed into just "you disrespectful fuk" and "ignorant breeds" respectively.
- Some people are fond of photoshopping a certain face Gaga made into everything. This blog is dedicated to the meme.
- Parodies of Born This Way, which include Bathe This Way and Disrespect This Way, and, of course, "Weird Al" Yankovic's "Perform This Way."
- Troll gifs of Gaga bashing her contemporaries. Then the meme broke out of the fandom and people started believing them.
- Fans like to photoshop this face◊ into everything as well.
- Buy "Applause" on iTunes.
- "It looks like _______ is/are the thing now", whenever Katy Perry does something Gaga had done before. This stems from an actual tweet once posted by Gaga in response to Katy using "green hair and mechanical horses" on her Prism tour, which Gaga has also used on her Born This Way Ball tour.
- "no negativity on this site thank u" (sic), posted by Gaga on her social networking site littlemonsters.com after a fan joked about Katy Perry's lack of Grammy wins.
- "One second __________, then suddenly __________", derived from the "Applause" lyrics mentioned just below.
- YAAAAAS GAGA.
- Talented. Brilliant. Incredible. Amazing. Show stopping. Spectacular. Never the same. Totally unique. Completely not ever been done before.
- Her love of reminding everyone about her italian descent.
- Her anecdote trotted out on every single stop of the A Star Is Born press tour, and with Gaga always acting like it was her first time saying it. All together now: "If you're in a room with 100 people, 99 don't believe in you..."
- The release of the "Stupid Love" video had lots of people claiming Gaga looks like a Power Rangers villain. Even the Power Rangers Twitter got in on it.
- The unusual merchandise that came out as part of Chromatica's promotion, topped off by a vivid hot pink jockstrap. Pandering to the Base at both its finest and most hilarious.
- I BELIEVE IN GOD note .
- YES! THIS PLEASES GAGA!
- Narm Charm:
- And we don't want it any other way.''I want your love
LAAV LAAV LAAV" - In the Bad Romance video, towards the end, we get a shot of her draped in a polar bear rug, pulling an epic pose with fire in the background. It's hilarious, jarring and it's one of the best moments in the entire video.
- So much of "Telephone", but especially the dialogue.Beyoncé: You've been a very bad girl. A very, very bad, bad girl, Gaga.
- Another "Telephone" example:LET'S MAKE A SANDWICH
- The Gagacycle on the cover of Born This Way is arguably this.
- Speaking of Born This Way, "Hair" qualifies. It's about comparing her desire for individuality with her hair. it works!
- "Work it, Black Jesus."
- Gaga's ham-tastic speech at the beginning of "Bad Kids."
- "Dirty pony I, can't wait to hose you down."
- I could be your girl/Girl, girl, girl, girl, girl/But would you love me/If I ruled the world, world, world?
- I'll dance, dance, dance/With my hands, hands, hands/Above my head, head, head/Like Jesus said.
- We could say a lot of her lyrics fall into this.
- And we don't want it any other way.
- Periphery Demographic: She's actually very popular with middle aged women and mothers, probably because of her heavy Madonna influence.
- Presumed Flop: Ask anyone on the performance of her 2013 album Artpop, and most will say that it was a flop, marking the point when she fumbled away her success overnight. However, in spite of lukewarm reviews and a genuine waning of mainstream interest, Artpop did sell very well — it was her second number 1 debut on Billboard with 258,000 copies on the first week, and the ninth global best-selling album of 2013 with 2.3 million copies worldwide. A lot of the exaggeration can be attributed to the fact that it was underperformance for Gaga standards — many compare it to Born This Way and its monolithic 1.1 million first-week sales, though even that figure is misleading given that album's unusual rollout, consequent sharp declinenote , and resting at its own comparable 2.5 million in total lifetime sales. Gaga was particularly offended by the rumor started by Examiner that Artpop led to a $25 million loss and massive layoffs, a claim which was spread by many news outlets at the time despite its lack of substantial proof.
- Retroactive Recognition: She had a blink-and-you'll-miss-it background role in The Sopranos as one of AJ's friends in the scene where they destroyed the swimming pool.
- She Really Can Act: Gaga won a Golden Globe for her role in American Horror Story: Hotel. Her performance in A Star Is Born (2018) also received widespread acclaim and she was nominated for an Oscar.
- Signature Song: Generally considered to be between "Poker Face" and "Bad Romance". "Just Dance" and "Born This Way" probably the runners-up.
- So Bad, It's Good: Many of her outfits have been the subject of mockery due to how unprofessional it is for her to wear food. The infamous meat dress comes to mind.
- Suspiciously Similar Song: "Born this Way" is very similar to Madonna's "Express Yourself" both in terms of sound and theme. Madonna herself decided to take a shot at this by singing the chorus of Gaga's song during her's. Gaga Lampshaded it in a Saturday Night Live sketch where she performed an alleged Cover Version of "Express Yourself" that was actually "Born This Way". Also, there's a subtle bit of the Gap Band's "You Dropped a Bomb on Me" in there too.
- They Copied It, So It Sucks!: Similarities have been found between songs of hers and songs from years past, and this is used by many of her haters as a justification for hating her.
- Viewer Gender Confusion: Her outlandish makeup and outfits are often quite comparable to those of drag queens, which left many people wondering if she was one in the earlier phases of her career.
- Win Back the Crowd: "Aura", a considerably more fun and less serious track, drew back many folks who had dismissed Gaga after "Born This Way" took a turn into the preachy and serious. "Artpop" also regained many fans who ditched her due to Born This Way.
- Some of her recent costumes have been less flashy and more "normal", likely as a way to avoid alienating her more casual fans.
- Conversely, her re-embrace of the campy Fame-era dance-pop and outlandish costumes in Chromatica won back a number of fans who were concerned her success with Joanne and A Star Is Born would see her continue to pursue a cleaner, more "normal" image.
Music videos:
Telephone
- Best Known for the Fanservice: Inverted. There's so much in terms of Fanservice that Everyone Remembers The Sandwich instead.
- Les Yay: The scenes between Beyonce and Gaga seem to reflect this.
Alejandro
- Faux Symbolism: On top of her usual incredibly dense (and somewhat confusing) symbolism, this one is packed full of red skintight nun habits, Knight Templar robes (though the trope itself doesn't quite apply), and EATING rosary beads.
- She told Larry King before it premiered there was a central theme about Don't Ask, Don't Tell. While it might be hard to pick that up on its own, knowing about it in advance and applying the context could result in a Tear Jerker.
- Or perhaps another indication may be you shouldn't be so quick to accept her metaphors too literally. Out-of-context visual allegory inconsistent with the writing and that requires her yelling "SPOILERS!!" into a megaphone to understand should be a tip-off.
- Other sources, like the director, have said that it's about moving on after losing your love, and that the Rosary eating was symbolic of wanting to take holiness into one's self. The video is...layered.
- She told Larry King before it premiered there was a central theme about Don't Ask, Don't Tell. While it might be hard to pick that up on its own, knowing about it in advance and applying the context could result in a Tear Jerker.
Born This Way
- Misblamed: She took a hit for supposedly refusing to let Weird Al release a parody of "Born This Way", which sparked controversy given that all proceeds from the sale of the song and its video would go to the Human Rights Campaign (a LGBT group that Gaga would presumably support). As it turned out, however, this was done by her manager—who didn't even bother to show her the song, and insisted to hear a finished song before giving it any further consideration (something Al took time off of his family vacation to do). Gaga herself gave Al full approval once she was able to actually hear the parody Here it is.
- Nightmare Fuel: Bucketloads of it. Mainly, Gaga dancing while looking like a skeleton and the Gaga-factory.
Judas
- Faux Symbolism: The number of Biblical/Christian allegories in the music video (and the song itself) is astounding, see Theme Naming in the Music tab.
- Misaimed Fandom: This song got a whole lot of flak from evangelical Christians... Even though Gaga clearly states in-song that "Jesus is my virtue" and "Judas" is used as a metaphor for the kind of people that good people should avoid.
Marry the Night
- Les Yay: Gaga mentions the nurses who are wheeling her bed - "You see that nurse on the right? She has a great ass." *nurse bends over* "Bam."
