Lady Gaga: "You and I"

It's Wednesday. I need me some Lady Gaga.

First thing's first: Lady Gaga is not a musician. She's a performer. I mean this in the most complimentary way, as she goes beyond delivering good music to delivering an entire experience. Consider the scene: She's performing on The View for a middle-aged female audience that probably associates her music with their kids' generation. Gaga shows up in an almost traditional Houndstooth suit, complete with pearls and matching hat and purse (though she couldn't resist the matching Houndstooth face paint). She sits with the gals and politely, eloquently discusses everything from gay rights to drug use.

Then she gets up to perform, and somehow even a Houndstooth-patterned piano seems par for the course with Gaga. Rocking Houndstooth sunglasses, she perches on the bench, leaning into the Houndstooth microphone, singing directly to the audience and her "View" hosts. She takes her sunglasses off, then her hat, then she uncrosses her legs to get a better handle on the piano pedals. She growls to the audience -- "Come on!" -- and stands up, shoving the piano bench back, pounding the keys. And then she picks up the microphone and abandons the piano altogether, singing the bridge sans accompaniment (though the unseen band backtrack plays on). She returns to the piano for the final chorus, and then finishes off the song as she poses on the piano, flipping her skirt up to make sure enough leg is showing. Her stockings are Houndstooth as well. It was beautifully choreographed. As if you already couldn't take your eyes off the Houndstooth, Gaga's performance ensures you can't look away.

The song itself speaks directly to the listener -- "you and I," Gaga twangs, "there's something about you and I." Apparently her lover is a whiskey-swilling, Nebraska-bred boy for whom she's returned to claim as her own. It's pure fiction, but she sells it with details -- "six whole years" and being swept off her feet with Neil Young's "A Heart of Gold." She pounds her Houndstooth piano and pleads with the audience as if she really isn't going to leave the cornfield until she's convinced this guy to come with her. Where will they go? Back to her home in New York?

And why are they in Nebraska? I was excited to play this song for my true Nebraskan grandparents, but they were underwhelmed. The song's not really about Nebraska, of course; "Nevada" rhymes with "I love ya" just as well as "Nebraska." It's not about the location, though this song will likely still go down as "one about Nebraska," proudly played in bars from Omaha on the east border to Scottsbluff on the west. "Nebraska, Nebraska, I love ya!"

If you haven't yet, be sure to watch the legit weird music video for the song. There's a mermaid and some kind of alien robot and Gaga making out with her male alter ego. There's an entire film dissertation somewhere in the subtext of that video, but in live performance, we don't have to process any of that. Just focus on the Houndstooth, the perfectly timed crescendos of intensity, the acts of performance.