This might make me a weirdo, but I’ve never really formed an opinion on Lady Gaga. When I hear one of her songs on the radio in the car, I usually listen to it. Other than that, nothing much bothers me or excites me about her. I get that she’s doing the whole “life/career/everything as performance art” thing, and I find some of her outfits funny. It’s strange to me that she elicits such strong opinions either way, but whatever. Different strokes, I guess. She seems pretty harmless. And the girl’s got pipes.

So Lady Gaga is on the cover girl for September’s Out Magazine. This might just be one of the worst cover photos ever, I think. I get that it’s supposed to make you stop and go, “Dirty Sanchez, much?” However gross that image is, it’s the first thing I thought of. The slideshow at Out isn’t much better. Lady Gaga is not a photogenic girl, and posing with bones and fake vampire teeth doesn’t help much. But, “performance art” or whatever. The whole Out interview is here, but I just picked some of the more interesting quotes. Lady Gaga isn’t a moron – but she isn’t really that interesting beyond what she has to say/pander regarding the gays:

“My whole life is a performance,” she proclaims, “I have to up the ante every day.”

She’s the Michelle Obama of pop; her fashion is the constitution for a new utopia. “I believe in living a glamorous life and I believe in a glamorous lifestyle,” says Gaga. “What that means is not money or fame or prestige. It’s a sense of vanity and glamour and subculture that is rooted in a sense of self. I am completely 100,000% devoted to a life of glamour.”

Gayness is in Gaga’s DNA. A little brunette lighting bolt of energy born in Manhattan to Joseph and Cynthia Germanotta — Catholics with a healthy appreciation for the arts and the good sense to recognize a star when they bore one — Gaga began playing piano at 4 and composing at 13 under the tutelage of several gay mentors.

“I had a few gay piano teachers. I was in acting class and ballet from a very young age, and I remember being around a lot of gay boys in dance class. I feel intrinsically inclined toward a more gay lifestyle.”

She did Ellen before Leno, performed in gay clubs before straight ones, and plugs the gays constantly in interviews, even those with straight publications. Despite a lesbian subtext to “Poker Face” — the song is about, among other things, a woman lusting after a woman while dating a man — Gaga says, “I myself am not a gay woman — I am a free-spirited woman: I have had boyfriends, and I have hooked up with women, but it’s never been like ‘I discovered gayness when I was dot dot dot.’ ”

Her devotion to gay culture is unparalleled by any other artist operating at her level of visibility or success. “When I started in the mainstream it was the gays that lifted me up,” she says. “I committed myself to them and they committed themselves to me, and because of the gay community I’m where I am today.” Earlier this year, in her acceptance speech for her MuchMusic award for best international video, Lady Gaga thanked “God and the gays.”

Before agreeing to tour with Kanye West this fall, Gaga told the rapper, “I just want to be clear before we decide to do this together: I’m gay. My music is gay. My show is gay. And I love that it’s gay. And I love my gay fans and they’re all going to be coming to our show. And it’s going to remain gay.”

That’s another clause in the Gagaland constitution: Gay culture shall gush undiluted into the rapids of society. It shall not be co-opted, fancified, dolled up, or Uncle Tommed. “I very much want to inject gay culture into the mainstream,” she says, “It’s not an underground tool for me. It’s my whole life. So I always sort of joke the real motivation is to just turn the world gay.”

As Gaga herself puts it: “You’re only as great as your best references.”

“What I want to deliver, as a message about fame, is that anyone can have it. My fame lives in my friendships, in my convictions about the power of art and love — you could have 500 pairs of shoes that cost 10 cents and still be famous.”

[From Out Magazine]

As for the Kanye part, I actually think that would be a great show, a great collaboration. Kanye tends to love the gay community too, and he’s taken pains to speak out about homophobia in the rap/hip-hop community. Plus, Kanye’s fashion sense is so obviously influenced by the gay community. I’d really like to know what Kanye’s response was to Lady Gaga’s “I need everything to remain so gay” speech. My guess is Kanye was like “okay, cool.” It seems that so far, they’ve been getting along famously. Lady Gaga told MTV yesterday that “I love Kanye … [he] is my very dear friend and we are creative kindreds… It’s been fun to work on the design of the tour with him — we’re finishing each other’s sentences. It’s going to be one of the most groundbreaking moments in touring history… I am sure of it.” Would anyone else like to hear Lady Gaga do a version of “Golddigger”?