“First of all, my sister’s a huge fan, and she’s 17 years old. So when I called her and said ‘Gossip Girl’ wants to put my whole new album on the show and have me perform, she was like ‘Oh my God, you have to do it. It’s an amazing show,’ ” Gaga told MTV News. “And I’d seen it. It’s a great show.”
Of course, Gaga didn’t want her time on the show to be a stereotypically awkward musical-guest appearance on a TV show. She wanted it done the Gaga way. “I hate TV series performances, because they kind of come in out of nowhere, and everyone’s, like, really into the story, and then all of a sudden somebody breaks into song,” she said. “And it has nothing to do with the storyline, and then it screws everything up.”
Rather than showing up on the set for the day, Gaga met with the writers and producers first to make sure she was doing a performance that she felt comfortable with.
“I really sat down with the writers,” she said. “I was like, ‘Look, I want to do this, and the reason I want to do this is because I am trying to say something that is not mainstream in a mainstream capacity. So, if I can say it on your show, that would be, like, a real coup d’état for me as a performance artist.’ ”
The result sounds like an elaborate music video. “I am the narrator behind what is going on with the characters and make the song part of the moment,” she explained about the “crazy performance-art piece.” “We used these ladders, and I’m falling off ladders. Ladders are kind of a monster symbol about bad luck. And I have this 35-foot-long dress on and these X’s, very gothic-inspired. It was great. They let me do whatever the hell I wanted. It was amazing.”
