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Lady Gaga’s 15 Greatest Music Videos

From “Paparazzi” and “Bad Romance” to “John Wayne” and “Rain on Me” — we talked to the Gaga collaborators who helped make some of the best videos of the 21st Century

Filippo Monteforte/AFP/Getty Images

Lady Gaga will go down in history as one of pop’s great visual auteurs. With every new era, she has delivered instantly iconic imagery, fashion statements and, of course, videos that have further amplified whatever sound or style she’s experimenting with at the current moment. Inspired by the daring imagery of Michael and Janet Jackson, Madonna and David Bowie, Gaga has taken advantage of every mode of changing technology available to build complex, forward-thinking universes in her music videos. For 15 of her most memorable, thrilling videos, here are the stories behind how they were made as told by her collaborators.

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“Edge of Glory”

Joseph Kahn was set to direct the “Edge of Glory” video before a disagreement between him and Gaga led to the pop star’s Haus taking the reigns. The final product is another tribute to where she comes from: Gaga strutting down the streets of NYC, while also dancing on fire escapes and stoops. She’s joined briefly by Clarence Clemons, the late E Street Band member, who plays the sax solo on the song.

“I wanted to create my sweater set of a video,” Gaga said during a press conference in Singapore. She revealed that when she danced on the fire escape while shooting the original video, she realized she needed to pare down the vision and pay tribute to her roots. “I had a fire escape outside my teeny tiny apartment in New York. I used put on all my clothes, and I would go out on the fire escape and I would dance.”

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“You and I”

For Gaga’s first foray into country-pop, she set out to Nebraska to remember a great lost love. Wandering down a dirt road in a black veil, she’s struck with the memory of her past: a barn, a mermaid, a mad scientist and, of course, Gaga’s male alter ego: Jo Calderone. “She was totally in character,” Efaw says of Gaga as Calderone. The dancer portrayed Gaga’s body double in the scene, imitating the singer’s flamboyant piano playing whenever Gaga was dressed as Calderone. “She was sitting up on the piano like a dude, with a cigarette. She was like, ‘Hey, how ya doin’?’ I think I just started laughing, and she laughed too!”

Besides Calderone, Gaga’s other on-screen love interest for the video was actor Taylor Kinney, whom she would eventually date. During an interview with Andy Cohen on Watch What Happens Live, Kinney recalled an improvised kiss during a scene that led to Gaga slapping him after the take. “It was just awkward,” he said. “The next take, I did it again, and she didn’t slap me.”

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“Applause”

You may have heard that Lady Gaga’s work draws heavily from fine art and fashion. Oh, you haven’t? Well, let the video for “Applause” remind you just how much she loves Warhol and Botticelli. Directed by fashion photography duo Inez and Vinoodh, “Applause” is Gaga’s attempt at bringing “iconography in motion” to her work, animating pivotal scenes from art history, film history, and her own career.

That swan body, for instance, was inspired by an earlier photo shoot she did with Interview magazine. And according to Inez, that part where Gaga glides down the runway in purple, holding up her own leg like Jesus holding the cross, was drawn from the artist’s real-life hip injury that left her unable to perform for months. “She’ll do anything in this video to make her audience happy and give them inspiration,” Inez said. “We wanted to bring it back to a very basic element.”

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“G.U.Y.”

Shot in Hearst Castle, Gaga’s directorial debut, the Artpop film “G.U.Y.,” is an epic work that features everything from cast members of The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills to the resurrected “bodies” of Jesus, Michael Jackson, and Gandhi. Clocking in at nearly 12 minutes, the video features four songs from Artpop as Gaga embodies a Greek goddess, a broken bird, and a criminal mastermind.

“There were so many scenes in that one shoot,” Efaw, who appears in the all-white dance scene, recalls. “I would go watch different ones as they were shooting. It was all going so fast and everything felt so elaborate and expensive.”

“She wanted us to feel and look beautiful and fierce,” RHOBH star Kyle Richards told The Hollywood Reporter soon after the video’s release. “There was one scene where I kill a man. She was like, ‘I want you to whip that ponytail even more. Go back and really exaggerate your head-flipping.’ I was like, ‘Whatever you say.’ Even if I get whiplash, it’s OK. Lady Gaga told me to do it.”

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“John Wayne”

One of a trilogy of music videos from her cowboy-inspired album Joanne, “John Wayne” sees Gaga reuniting with Jonas Akerlund for a rapid-fire, beer-swilling tale of outlaws and freaks causing mayhem on a country road. In just under three minutes, the Tarantino-esque video packs a huge amount of chaotic surprises, most notably when Gaga’s thigh-high boots start shooting bullets. “I think we shot it all in one day — that was a crazy day,” Akerlund tells Rolling Stone. Though not as well-known as “Paparazzi” or “Telephone,” “John Wayne” certainly stands out from the more subdued, sincere visuals of the Joanne era.

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“Rain on Me”

If you grew up watching any of the Spy Kids movies, or The Adventures of Sharkboy and Lavagirl in 3-D, then you’ll easily recognize the aesthetics of “Rain on Me.” It’s directed by Robert Rodriguez himself, who brought his love for giant CGI stadiums and cyberpunk to the Gaga universe. That would be a star-studded collaboration on its own, but then there’s Ariana Grande, who goes toe-to-toe with Gaga when it comes to sci-fi outfits, a cyborg dance squad, and Sailor Moon-worthy hair.

“We wanted to keep with the style that [Grande is] comfortable with, while staying with the futuristic theme of the video,” said designer Laura Pulice, who created the latex costumes for the video.