Unraveling Lady Gaga’s VMAs Spotlight: What Kept Her Center Stage Beyond the Awards?

Over the years, Gaga’s shape-shifting has painted a collective portrait of a complex, restless, fearless woman. Photo: Kevin C. Cox/Getty Images

*This article was originally published in November 2018. It has been updated to include Gaga’s subsequent releases.

Although Lady Gaga has been a household name for more than a decade, the first half of her career still feels as daring, vital, and relevant as ever. From her 2008 debut, The Fame, to 2014, when the ARTPOP-hype bubble burst, Gaga sped through several careers’ worth of highs, lows, and controversies.

Each release became an event; her every move was dissected by social media. Gaga’s imperial phase was such a whirlwind that, in hindsight, it feels as if we’ve yet to take the collective time to reflect on the full depth of her artistry.

Looking back on her first four albums — The Fame, The Fame Monster, Born This Way, and ARTPOP — her sheer ambition was dizzying. No pop star of the 2010s was more committed to achieving transcendence through her art. She almost single-handedly raised the bar for pop music, videos, fashion, and live performances.

But the comedown, if you can call it that, was fascinating in its own way. Since Cheek to Cheek, 2014’s duet album with Tony Bennett, we’ve witnessed a gradual unraveling of Gaga’s once messianic image. She was superwoman no longer, and 2016’s Joanne allowed her to be more vulnerable, to find a sense of equilibrium in her art.

Lady Gaga has influenced several generations of weird, countercultural, often LGBTQ+ pop stars — everyone from Lorde to Sia, Nicki Minaj, Charli XCX, Halsey, Troye Sivan, SOPHIE, Janelle Monáe, Billie Eilish, Lil Nas X, and Dua Lipa owes Gaga some debt.

Ironically, the sound of Gaga’s iconic dance-pop hits fell completely out of fashion alongside the moody, trap-tinged, playlist-centric downturn of late-2010s pop. But seemingly through sheer force of will, 2020’s Chromatica channeled four decades of house-music history to reclaim Gaga’s dance-pop throne for the first time since 2013.

Since then, she has stayed busy — releasing the future-house Dawn of Chromatica remix album, leading the charge on Love for Sale (Tony Bennett’s final record and set of live performances after his Alzheimer’s diagnosis), and holding both pop and jazz-piano residencies in Las Vegas.

It’s true that sometimes the dazzling, attention-seizing provocateur who gave us the VMAs meat dress and vomit art feels like a distant memory. Then she’ll go and do something like almost single-handedly carrying the quarantine-era 2020 VMAs or stealing the show in Ridley Scott’s House of Gucci, and you’ll remember — she’s still Lady Fucking Gaga.

Over the years, Gaga’s shape-shifting has painted a collective portrait of a complex, restless, fearless woman. In every guise, she’s given it her all. No artist is completely original, but time has proven Lady Gaga sui generis. There’s no question that she’s an all-timer. What will she do next? Your guess is as good as hers.

This list is less about judging Lady Gaga’s catalogue than making sense of the recent past — much of which we’ve already forgotten! It includes every commercially released studio track and her more significant featured credits. That gives us 136 songs, with fewer stinkers than you’d expect, and a top 70 that could rival any pop star’s catalogue

No list can represent every fan’s opinion, but I’ve tried my best to rank her songs (along with her more impactful videos) based on their emotional, autobiographical, and cultural significance. Disagree? To quote the Lady herself: “I stand here waiting for you to bang the gong / To crash the critic saying, ‘Is it right or is it wrong?’”