Lady Gaga said that when she joined forces with Beyoncé for the latter’s “Video Phone” clip, she wanted to “pay tribute” to the Destiny’s Child alumna by stripping down to look more like the “Bootylicious” superstar.
Well, for the pair’s most recent collaboration, B certainly returned the favor (and some!) by entering Gaga’s world for “Telephone.”
Gaga went as far as to suggest that the new video is more about “Honey Bee” than herself and claimed that Beyoncé is her “vehicle” for changing the idea of what a visual product can be.
“The video in a lot of ways is more about [Beyoncé] even than it is about me,” Gaga told L.A.’s Power 106 radio station after the premiere. “It was sort of a pop-art venture for me to bring her into my world. In a way, the video is an attempt for her and I to erase pop music as we know it up until this very point. It’s meant to change the perspective of the world on what a pop music video should be and she’s kind of the vehicle for that. In reality, more people around the world are familiar with her aesthetics than they are with mine. It was something for me to kind of change the way that you see her for one video.”
Certainly, it is different to see Beyoncé in a Bettie Page haircut and various Gaga-esque costumes as she murders her boyfriend in a diner. But she fit in perfectly with the homages to the campy “Batman” series of the 1960s, Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill,” Japanese manga, Salvador Dalí and Madonna that made the “Telephone” video an epic pop-culture adventure.