lady gaga music videos, ranked
a labor of gay love
Eh, Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say): Barely a Gaga video. It’s literally just her walking around Little Italy and interacting with Italian-American men, who do a lot of gesturing and silenced yelling. This video reminded me a lot of the film Little Italy, and that made me like this song less than I did before.
Shallow: Technically this is a music video, even though it’s just clips from A Star Is Born. I fucking hated A Star Is Born and I think Bradley Cooper struggles to create characters who are real people and not just collections of infuriating tics; however, this video is better than “Eh, Eh (Nothing Else I Can Say)”. So it is written, so it is decreed!
Hold My Hand: Same as above; this video is basically just a clip show for Top Gun: Maverick. It’s ranked higher than “Shallow” because I’d rather watch clips from Top Gun: Maverick than A Star Is Born. I’d also rather eat glass than watch A Star Is Born, but that’s neither here nor there.
Beautiful, Dirty, Rich: Another early video that isn’t much to look at but does give some inkling of the aesthetic Gaga would later be successful at going for.
Poker Face: Frustratingly literal - Gaga does a lot of posing with cards and poker chips - without any great looks or choreo to spice things up. Also, the wig is wearing her, not the other way around.
Million Reasons: Sure, it’s a slow song, and her videos can’t all be bananas, but I did find myself hoping that Gaga would show up as a centaur or something. She does not.
Just Dance: Lady Gaga’s whole vibe is very “try-hard theater kid”, so this video - which basically just chronicles a wild party in a basement - feels more like a somewhat generic, mildly interesting throwback to 2008 than a particularly engaging work of art.
LoveGame: An interesting early Gaga video, where the seeds of her artistry are on display (the choreo! those chain-link glasses!) but the production value isn’t quite there yet. Come for the video, stay for the product placement: is this the only music video on Earth to shill both Baby-G watches and Campari?
Perfect Illusion: It’s fine. The song matches the video well, and I like how chaotically the crowd scenes are shot. But can you blame me for wanting… well, a little bit more?
Rain on Me: It’s just dancing, in the rain, which is fine. Couldn’t Gaga have dressed Ariana Grande up as Jesus and then dancily crucified her?
Marry the Night: Perhaps Gaga’s most autobiographical video, and parts of it work nicely - I’m a fan of the opening voiceover, and she sells the emotional beats with her acting (future acting Oscar winner Lady Gaga!!!). In general, though, I think it’s a bit too long (it takes about 9 minutes to even get to the song), and I appreciate it more than I love it; this one doesn’t get replayed often in my house.
G.U.Y.: It says a lot about Lady Gaga that a video where she hires Andy Cohen to play God, clones Jesus and Gandhi in a futuristic lab, and shoves a tambourine in Lisa Vanderpump’s hands is one of her weakest. I think it boils down to the looks (or lack thereof). She’s never looked more like Kim Kardashian and less like herself.
The Edge of Glory: As simple as Eh, Eh - Gaga just kind of wanders around and dances while Clarence Clemons chills on a stoop - but she’s magnetic and a complete joy to watch. (And the song is way better, which doesn’t hurt.)
John Wayne: The best of the Joanne visuals, this video scores points for its lurid color palette and appealingly sound-effect’d stompy gun leg. It loses points for relatively uninspired costuming and choreo.
Stupid Love: Lady Gaga’s whole appeal (to me, anyway) is how tactile and real she feels. Her greatest looks include death-defying heels and scuffed bondage gear - she is part of the physical realm, tied to it. This video doesn’t quite work for me because it feels so artificial; for instance, when she magically levitates a man, the slickness of the world causes it to ring false. I’m always appreciative when she takes us to an alien world, I just wish this one weren’t so bloodless.
Paparazzi: The beginning is appealingly Hitchcockian, but the production value is so dated it’s hard not to imagine how cool it would look like if Gaga made it today. This video is all about the looks, though: the red bejeweled neck brace, the android-on-crutches moment, that yellow jumpsuit, Alexander Skarsgard’s metallic eye patch. It’s deliciously macabre, with some strong images.
Yoü And I: Criminally underrated, this video has some of Gaga’s best costuming (even her look in a simple shift dress is stunning) as well as some of her most arresting images (her nipple-less mermaid is deliciously disturbing, and her male alter ego Jo Calderone was… let’s just say… influential??? on me???). My main gripe? The song doesn’t fit the video here; these visuals are crying out for more of a “Bad Romance” vibe than what the country-tinged song has to offer.
Born This Way: Who else would start the music video for a fairly straightforward LGBTQ+ anthem with two and a half minutes of detailed sci-fi exposition set to the iconic Vertigo score? The skeleton makeup with the huge ponytail is unforgettable; the Metropolis-inspired android look is another favorite. Put Lady Gaga in charge of the next Dune, maybe it’ll actually be interesting!
Applause: There are plenty of Gaga videos that sprawl comfortably over the 10-minute mark, but this one shows why she doesn’t always need all that extra time. Cramming in visual references ranging from German expressionism to Botticelli, Gaga makes this a kinetic, propulsive three and a half minutes, complete with some of her best looks (I’m a big fan of the hand bra).
Bad Romance: It’s all worth it for the final shot, Gaga dispassionately smoking in bed next to the charred remains of the golden-jawed man while her cone bra sparks and sputters. It’s both an evolution of Madonna’s look taken to a grotesque extreme and something that would, just one year later, set her apart from Katy Perry and her infamous whipped cream bra - a sign that Gaga isn’t afraid to dive into the ugly, sordid depths where pop often fears to tread.
911: It squanders some of its goodwill in the last 30 seconds or so, which hit the viewer over the head with the *~*meaning*~* of the video, but it’s genuinely gorgeous. Every shot is composed like a painting, the color palette is stunning, and the medical/religious imagery make for some ingenious scenes. (It was directed by Tarsem Singh, who did The Cell and The Fall, and his aesthetic blends with Gaga’s perfectly.)
Alejandro: When Gaga veers from a Gothic fascist winter wonderland straight out of Pan’s Labyrinth to a genuinely sexy bondage nun moment, it works, but when she pops up in a Beatles wig and a jazzy jumpsuit, it doesn’t quite mesh. Points for yet another projectile bra; this one features two machine guns jutting out from her tits. It’s all very sexy, very Madonna (complimentary), and more than a little bit gay.
Judas: Maybe the finest pairing of a song and video that Gaga has. I’m a little biased because this is one of my favorite songs of hers (“I've learned love is like a brick, you can/build a house or sink a dead body”) but every time I see it I’m floored by how beautiful and cinematic the video is. Flawless costumes, a wonderfully acted lead performance, killer dancing. I have wanted that lipstick gun for like 10 years.
Telephone: It’s not just the greatest Lady Gaga music video, it might be the best music video ever made (and it doesn’t hurt that it’s one of the best pop songs of all time). I had to stop counting the number of iconic looks in this video because there were too many!!! The Diet Coke can hair curlers, the telephone in her hair, the cigarette glasses, her enormous swoopy hat, hang this video in the Louvre! It’s easy to do a take on Tarantino, but you can tell Gaga really understands his influences, from small-town diners to prison exploitation flicks. And the choreo here is fun, punchy, and occasionally hilarious. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: this is the only good music video where a dog is killed.