Born This Way MEGAMIX

Lady Gaga's 'Born This Way': Vogue Yourself

Lady Gaga has said "Born This Way" is a new gay anthem. She's said she wrote it in "10 f------ minutes." We'll buy both of those statements: Her new single sounds like it was Frankensteined in a lab from harvested parts of other artists' gay anthems... in 10 minutes. It's overworked, overwrought, noisy, cheesy, and very, very derivative. That doesn't mean it isn't catchy -- or that it won't become Billboard's 1,000th Hot 100 Number One next week -- but it's literally a hot mess.



"Born This Way" follows the blueprint for an early '90s club hit remarkably carefully: keening strings on the first verse, a propulsive four-on-the-floor thump, layers of squelching synths, soulful vocals. We hear a bit of Kelly Rowland and David Guetta's "When Love Takes Over" in here and some melody from TLC's "Waterfalls," but mostly it's a hodge-podge of Madonna's greatest hits: the chorus from "Express Yourself," the glitter disco of "Ray of Light," the spoken-word bridge from "Vogue" -- there's even a hint of "Future Lovers" from her 2005 disc "Confessions on a Dance Floor" crammed in the last 10 seconds. Bits of the song are so reminiscent of "Express Yourself," the name of the 1989 track is currently trending on Twitter.

[Photos: See more of Gaga's wild fashions]

"Born This Way," produced by DJ White Shadow and Fernando Garibay, arrived at 6 a.m. this morning along with a pair of mysterious YouTube videos of Gaga discussing the track. " 'Born This Way' in so many ways is about the way we see the future. Right now, we're in a state of drifting. We're not so sure where we're supposed to go, or what we're supposed to replicate or imitate, so we're drifting in space towards the light. And 'Born This Way' tells us that the light is within us, and to follow yourself," Gaga says in the first YouTube clip. "Replicate"? "Imitate"? Perhaps a bad choice of words. Many of them.

Note: This "BTW" review isn't coming from a Gaga hater -- in fact, we're big fans of her past work (check out our 2009 and 2010 critics poll ballots for proof).

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Oh Gaga :-(