section_path: Artistry/Videos and stage
section_name: Videos and stage
paragraph_text: Videos and stage
  
  Featuring constant costume changes and provocative visuals, Gaga's music videos are often described as short films. The video for "Telephone" earned Gaga the Guinness World Record for Most Product Placement in a Video. According to author Curtis Fogel, she explores bondage and sadomasochism and highlights prevalent feminist themes. The main themes of her music videos are sex, violence, and power. She has called herself "a little bit of a feminist" and asserted that she is "sexually empowering women". Billboard ranked her sixth on its list of "The 100 Greatest Music Video Artists of All Time" in 2020, stating that "the name 'Lady Gaga' will forever be synonymous with culture-shifting music videos".
  
  Regarded as "one of the greatest living musical performers" by Rolling Stone, Gaga has called herself a perfectionist when it comes to her elaborate shows. Her performances have been described as "highly entertaining and innovative"; the blood-spurting performance of "Paparazzi" at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards was described as "eye-popping" by MTV News and ranked among the best MTV VMA performances of all time by various publications. She continued the blood-soaked theme during The Monster Ball Tour, causing protests in England from family groups and fans in the aftermath of the Cumbria shootings, in which a taxi driver had killed 12 people, then himself. At the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards, Gaga appeared in drag as her male alter ego, Jo Calderone, and delivered a lovesick monologue before performing her song "You and I". She stated that she created the character to explore "what I was looking for in men, and also what I was maybe lacking in myself". When asked about the persona in 2025, she said that Calderone was "no longer with us". As Gaga's choreographer and creative director, Laurieann Gibson provided material for her shows and videos for four years before she was replaced by her assistant Richard Jackson in 2014.
  
  In an October 2018 article for Billboard, Rebecca Schiller traced back Gaga's videography from "Just Dance" to the release of A Star Is Born. Schiller noted that following the Artpop era, Gaga's stripped-down approach to music was reflected in the clips for the singles from Joanne, taking the example of the music video of lead single "Perfect Illusion" where she eschewed "the elaborate outfits for shorts and a tee-shirt as she performed the song at a desert party". It continued with her performances in the film as well as her stage persona. Reviewing The Chromatica Ball in 2022, Chris Willman of Variety wrote that Gaga "could have further played the authenticity card for all it's worth" after the release of Joanne and A Star Is Born, but instead "has determined to keep herself weird — or just weird enough to provide necessarily ballast to her more earnest inclinations".
  
  Featuring constant costume changes and provocative visuals, Gaga's music videos are often described as short films. The video for "Telephone" earned Gaga the Guinness World Record for Most Product Placement in a Video. According to author Curtis Fogel, she explores bondage and sadomasochism and highlights prevalent feminist themes. The main themes of her music videos are sex, violence, and power. She has called herself "a little bit of a feminist" and asserted that she is "sexually empowering women". Billboard ranked her sixth on its list of "The 100 Greatest Music Video Artists of All Time" in 2020, stating that "the name 'Lady Gaga' will forever be synonymous with culture-shifting music videos".
  
  Regarded as "one of the greatest living musical performers" by Rolling Stone, Gaga has called herself a perfectionist when it comes to her elaborate shows. Her performances have been described as "highly entertaining and innovative"; the blood-spurting performance of "Paparazzi" at the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards was described as "eye-popping" by MTV News and ranked among the best MTV VMA performances of all time by various publications. She continued the blood-soaked theme during The Monster Ball Tour, causing protests in England from family groups and fans in the aftermath of the Cumbria shootings, in which a taxi driver had killed 12 people, then himself. At the 2011 MTV Video Music Awards, Gaga appeared in drag as her male alter ego, Jo Calderone, and delivered a lovesick monologue before performing her song "You and I". She stated that she created the character to explore "what I was looking for in men, and also what I was maybe lacking in myself". When asked about the persona in 2025, she said that Calderone was "no longer with us". As Gaga's choreographer and creative director, Laurieann Gibson provided material for her shows and videos for four years before she was replaced by her assistant Richard Jackson in 2014.
  
  In an October 2018 article for Billboard, Rebecca Schiller traced back Gaga's videography from "Just Dance" to the release of A Star Is Born. Schiller noted that following the Artpop era, Gaga's stripped-down approach to music was reflected in the clips for the singles from Joanne, taking the example of the music video of lead single "Perfect Illusion" where she eschewed "the elaborate outfits for shorts and a tee-shirt as she performed the song at a desert party". It continued with her performances in the film as well as her stage persona. Reviewing The Chromatica Ball in 2022, Chris Willman of Variety wrote that Gaga "could have further played the authenticity card for all it's worth" after the release of Joanne and A Star Is Born, but instead "has determined to keep herself weird — or just weird enough to provide necessarily ballast to her more earnest inclinations".