Gaga even told MTV News that she wanted the performance to focus on how “the celebrity sort of has this inevitable demise that we love to watch” back in 2009. News of Lindsay Lohan’s struggles with sobriety filled the pages of tabloids. Rihanna’s face had been plastered across the homepage of TMZ earlier that year after suffering abuse at the hands of her then-boyfriend Chris Brown. Britney Spears was still attempting to put the worst of her highly publicized personal demons behind her. The toxic relationship between tabloids and (specifically female) stars had reached a fever pitch back in 2009. She recovers and eventually kills her boyfriend as the press eagerly watches on, while grotesque flashes of dead young women periodically blink into frame. Perhaps containing the most closely studied lyrics of her The Fame era, “Paparazzi” deals, on the surface, with unrequited love - the song’s protagonist pines for her lover’s attention, creating a metaphor of herself as the crowd of paparazzi aiming for a glimpse of attention from her lover, the celebrity.īut the song and video both operate as a clear-cut commentary on the status of celebrity media in the late ’00s: In the video, which earned her three nominations at the 2009 VMAs, Gaga is seen as a starlet being thrown from a balcony by her lover, which is obsessively captured by standing-by photographers. The singer had a point to make, and she made it. But Gaga’s first-ever performance at the award show proved to be more than just a flashy show of talent. Gaga certainly wasn’t the first to turn a VMAs performance into an event - Madonna had wowed audiences with extravagant sets and conceptual performances across multiple decades, as had artists like Britney Spears, Michael Jackson and Eminem. The camera zoomed in, and viewers stared at Gaga’s glossed-over eyes covered in fake blood as she slowly spun, looking as though she’d violently hung herself. The star dropped her mic, both literally and figuratively.
As she sang the song’s final strains, a team of backup dancers strung her up to a rope as she screamed, hoisting her above the stage. Lurching across the stage, wailing that she was “your biggest fan” and that she would “follow you until you love me,” Gaga was suddenly covered in faux-blood dripping from her abdomen, much to the audible horror of her audience. In a candid moment, as Gaga bashed her feet and hands on a nearby piano, the camera cut to Sean “Diddy” Combs, mouth agape, understandably attempting to grasp what he was watching.Īnd then there was the blood. Beginning sprawled out on the stage underneath a fallen chandelier, singing a stripped-down chorus to “Poker Face,” Gaga quickly transitioned into a dramatic rendition of her latest hit, “Paparazzi.” Staggering around the ornately decorated set, clad in a mask, cape and bejeweled bra and panties (and at one point a rhinestoned forearm crutch), the avant-garde performance seemed to give the audience artistic whiplash, as they searched the stage for what would come next.
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