“You and I” – Lady Gaga’s new video (and possibly her best yet!)

Maybe you can’t buy a house in Heaven, but you can sure take a 6 minute 22 second vacation there.

You may have been let down by the unabashed normality of Lady Gaga’s last video (“The Edge of Glory”), but her video for “You and I” has no lack of peculiar artistry. The music video for the song (which was written about her now ex-boyfriend Carl Luc) was filmed in Nebraska and opens as Gaga is walking down a deserted dirt road, picking grass from her bloodied feet laced up in high heels. She falls on her knees at the foot of an ice cream truck (which says “Follow the Crowd” on the side of it if you look carefully) and a woman drops a brunette doll down at Gaga….afterwards, the video flies from clip to clip – Gaga getting married, Gaga in a tank of water, Gaga tied to a vertical examination table at a labratory….and then the music starts.

The next 5 minutes are a flurry of symbols carefully scrambled together in one video. Remember that doll that the ice cream lady tossed at Gaga? It’s now next to her as her lover/husband/whatever ties her into that examination table and tries to make her resemble it so she can fit in. After half a video of cutting and shocking Gaga with electricity, his work finally yields a mermaid version of Gaga  (named Yuyi). Surprisingly, she and lover/husband/whatever seem overly happy by this unexpected result. “The more he tries to fix me, the more magical I become.” Gaga wrote on her Twitter this Monday. Her point? The guy she wrote this song about made her comfortable in her own, not-so-typical skin – he loved her the way she was when all she wanted to do was fit in.

However, what I find is the more interesting idea in the video is the strong concept of self-love. Gaga takes the idea to an extreme as she plays the piano innocently in a cornfield while her male alter-ego Jo Calderone sits atop the piano and smokes, rolls up his sleeves and drinks beer (yes, that guy is actually her – you can see the resemblance ion his face). To really hit home her point, Jo reaches down from the top of the piano and starts kissing Gaga. Okay, so maybe that’s  a bit much (and freaky) but you get her point – you have to love and embrace every side of yourself before you can love someone else. And because she loves herself in the end, she can love herself no matter how different she is (even as a mermaid) and other people can love her (and thus, she gets married at the end of the video). In short, self love yields love for others.

And, of course there are the typical Gaga video characteristics: new wigs,almost nudity, a plethora of back-up dancers, at least one revealing outfit, all that jazz…..but you were expecting that! You probably weren’t surprised when mermaid-Gaga was kissing her husband/lover/whatever….but Gaga kissing GAGA? Looks like she threw us for a loop – again!

See it and be amazed at http://www.youtube.com/user/LadyGagaVEVO