The Ladys Gaga Moment

If youre Lady Gaga,you have lots of ways to quantify your success.

If youre Lady Gaga,you have lots of ways to quantify your success. Your two albums have sold nearly five million copies combined in an era of chronically low sales. MTV has nominated you for more Video Music Awards in one year than it has any other artist. You have more Facebook fans than any public figure except Michael Jackson.

But at Lollapalooza stage in Boston last week,in the kind of festival publicity that money cant buy,Lady Gaga revealed that one of her most treasured trophies is Lollapalooza itself. Three years ago,she played an afternoon set here as a virtual unknown,booked on the strength of her MySpace page. Since then,she has racked up those five million sales,met the Queen of England and returned to Lollapalooza as a ruling queen herself,performing a two-hour version of her mega-spectacle Monster Ball tour.

It has been said before that Lady Gagas greatest work of art is her own persona,and that has only increased with the progress of her pop conquest. Here,she appeared obsessed,and almost bitterly petty,in making her victory lap,delivering a message somewhere between fist-clenching triumph and rage toward anyone who didnt see her as a game-changing star from Day 1.

She sported for a while the same disco bra she had worn at the festival three years ago. Her sermonising about being a messiah for societys outcasts turned into a harangue about her own slightly-delayed super-stardom. They told you you werent thin enough,pretty enough, she shouted,They told you your show was a train wreck,she added sprinkled with profanities,her voice rising to a scream,all pretence of this being about anyone but herself,gone. You remember that you were born a superstar! You were born that way!

Some critics feel part of Lady Gagas genius has been to make her career a self-fulfilling prophecy of fame,which she has done not only by creating irresistibly catchy music and building a persona around spectacular excess,but also by making her fans feel complicit in the accomplishment. No act since Kiss has been more endlessly flattering of fans some might say obsequious. Hardly a tweet goes by without Lady Gaga calling out to her little monsters,and she was careful to do it at this performance too,making her rise to the big time a collective told-you-so moment. It wasnt gracious,but it had the mark of a star.

We did it,little monsters, she said as she began her encore,We made it to the main stage at Lollapalooza.