Gaga's New Video: a No No

Okay, we understand that Lady Gaga is a freak. We understand it and we love it; we're not asking her to change. Her newest music video, for the song 'You and I,' off her album Born This Way, epitomizes everything she stands for in ways of freakiness, what with the leather-thong hoe-down and nipple-less boobs, no one can argue that.

Here's the problem, though: we feel Gaga can't use her weirdness as an excuse for making shit videos anymore. That is SO 2010. We all forgave her when Alejandro ended up being some insanely homoerotic S&M orgy after we wanted it to be Gaga rolling around in the sand of some tropical Mexican location with a shirtless Latino, but this is going too far.

For one, 'You and I' sounds like a country song. It's twangy, she sings about whiskey and Nebraska, and the lyrics are as cliche as a red-checkered tablecloth at a summer barbeque. No one conjures up images of a bald woman strapped to an electric chair (??) when they hear this on the radio. 

Okay, did anyone else understand the plot line to this music video at all? Because we feel like we just watched spliced and diced clips from Edward Scissorhands, Frankenstein, and Aquamarine. There also seemed to be some weird mermaid sex going on, which is just biologically mystifying.

There were parts in this music video that definitely worked, specifically the scenes where Gaga is playing the piano in a cornfield and canoodling with a greased-up boy. After a few of these scenes, we realize the boy is actually Gaga herself, dressed in drag. Totally cool.

These parts, while not necessarily being in-your-face-dressed-in-steaks-freaky, were a different kind of weird, the kind that we feel Gaga needs to utilize more often--especially when the song calls for it. Making out with yourself in drag? WEIRD. Weird enough, in fact!

Bottom line: Lady Gaga can stay freaky. In fact, we'd prefer it if she did. But she can't get away with just being freaky anymore. It's time for her to channel her weirdness, focus it in a direction that is more subtle, but less easily dismissed as just another "Gaga stunt."