Review Revue: Lady Gaga’s “You And I” Video

There’s something about Yuyi (aka Lady Gaga’s mermaid alter ego) and Jo Calderone (her male drag alter ego) in Mother Monster’s video for “You And I,” the fourth single release off Born This Way. The clip was set to premiere this Thursday on MTV. But as fate and the online gods would have it, the country-tinged visual surfaced two days early. Head below to see what the Internet at large had to say about Gaga’s latest epic!

:: The Daily Mail commented on the video’s early arrival: “Cheeky Gaga leaked the video on her own YouTube page, and it lived up to her usual bizarrely epic standards. She dons a series of wacky ensembles the singer would claim are works of high fashion.”

:: CNN’s Marquee Blog thought “You And I” was a standout: “While some of her prior videos for Born This Way tracks have had a lukewarm reception, this one holds promise.”

:: Rolling Stone got more specific: “Though the last two videos from Born This Way – ‘The Edge of Glory’ and ‘Judas’ – were fairly disappointing, ‘You and I’ is a return to form that throws roughly eight million visual ideas at the viewer. At least a handful of Mother Monster’s looks in the video are instantly iconic – Gaga in young Bob Dylan-ish drag, the official debut of the singer’s mermaid alter-ego Yuyi, the shot of the Cher-like dancers grinding away in a barn.”

:: E! Online also noted the following: “Besides her over-the-top outfits and quick sexual scenes that we’d expect in a Gaga video, we also see Mama Monster sing to her ‘love interest,’ played by none other than…Lady G herself, who skips the heavy eyeliner and dark lips for a ’50s greaser look. Talk about loving yourself.”

:: Meanwhile, the Washington Post‘s Click Track blog simply quipped, “It’s, you know, a Lady Gaga video.”

:: For those not in the Gaga-know, the New York Daily News points out, “The lyrics were inspired by Gaga’s on-and-off relationship with New York City bartender [Luc] Carl.”

:: AOL Music also speculates, “Just maybe, Lady Gaga was inspired by one of her favorite artists Marina Abramović, who walked the length of the Great Wall of China to meet her boyfriend and performance-art partner Ulay. Or, just maybe, it’s a mad mix of all her creative influences and fantasies.”

:: SheWired highlighted Mother Monster’s ability to adapt to online leaks: “The early leak sunk Mother Monster’s plans to release the video on Thursday as her 1000th tweet when it showed up earlier today. However, Gaga isn’t easily upstaged. When the songstress got wind that her video had begun to sail through cyberspace ahead of schedule she quickly sent out a series of tweets reading, ‘Fuck,’ ‘Thurs,’ and ‘Day’ followed by her ‘1000th’ tweet containing the link to her new video.”

:: Finally, yours truly said on Chart Rigger, “I don’t know what goes through Lady Gaga’s mind when she comes up with the sick trash that winds up being her music videos, but her ‘You And I’ clip comes off like a combo of cheesy romance, cutting room floor footage from some lost John Waters flick and the Nebraska Chainsaw Massacre. In any case, this is her best music video from the Born This Way era.”